[PEN-L:1983] Re: Something completely different

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Dec 1995, bill mitchell wrote:

> i think that marxism in the 1990s is a much more sophisticated ideology (with
> the attendent need for a much more sophisticated praxis) than it was in teh
> 1960s - go get em era.
>
> we have to be mindful that the revolution cannot be merely economic. that does
> nothing much for women, minorities, unskilled, and fails to address the
> environmental issues entirely. i think the early marxist activist model which
> concentrated class struggle entirely on the economic mode is not appropriate
> now.
>

Louis: The revolution cannot be merely economic? No, it surely can't.
There is always a tendency for socialists to approach the class-struggle
undialectically. In the 1960s, SDSers wrote off the working-class, while
some Maoists and Trotskyists condemned feminism, black nationalism and
the student movement as "petty-bourgeois". In reality, the struggle
against capitalist rule never takes place in a pure form. Black
nationalism raised demands that were objectively pro-working class, such
as the fights in various auto plants led by formations like DRUM (Dodge
Revolutionary Union Movement). These workers were black nationalists who
started by reading Malcolm X, but fought over issues like speedup, etc.

The dichotomy between economic and "popular struggles" in the Laclauan
sense is a false one. Capitalism is a system which attacks on many
fronts. Nobody can predict whether black female poultry workers in
Arkansas will act first around issues that affect them as workers, women
or blacks. The role of socialists, however, is to support their struggles
without prior conditions. We should not belittle the struggles of blacks
to defend affirmative action because it "divides the working-class". By
the same token, we should support strikes by workers in lily-white unions
such as the construction workers. In the meantime, while providing
support, we should be working to break down racial divisions.

That is why many on the list, I suppose, are disappointed in Bill
Mitchell's apparent narrow-mindedness toward the French strikes.

> p.s. Louis seems to have a set against academics in tenured jobs. let me tell
> you that academics in OZ no longer have tenure. the start of us losing it was
> intiated by the pathetic academic union we have who traded award conditions
> relating to tenure for a measly 2 per cent pay rise.

Louis: I regard university professors as a petty-bourgeois layer that is
coming under the assault from the ruling-class. This often happens. For
example, the Populist movement of the 1890's was a radical struggle by
farmers who were being bled dry by the railroads and banks. These farmers
mounted a profound anticapitalist struggle, but this did not change their
class character. One of the reasons people on this list are so sensitive
to my charge that they are petty-bourgeois is that they interpret this as
a statement that they are privileged. Not at all. An instructor at a
college in the south could be making much less than a truck-driver. This
does not alter their class composition, or class outlook. Except for
circumstances of severe crisis, such as pre-revolutionary situations, the
role of a professor is to transmit the ideas of the ruling class in
society. They function like priests, journalists and other members of the
intelligentsia. From time to time, some of them rebel against their class
and become socialists, but this is the exception and not the rule.