Re: Marxism-International exchange on David Harvey

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:55 PM 4/30/98 -0400, Mike Yates wrote:
>I don't like cars much either, but at present I have to have one.  If I
lost it,
>I'd be in a bad way.  Sme too with the workers who are threatened with plant
>closings.  What are they supposed to do in the meantime?  Sit back and
enjoy the
>cleaner air?  Of course, we have to push for a world as auto-free as
possible.
>But in the meantime, we should fight for employment as a right and help
workers
>in struggles to keep their plants open or win some guarantee of decent
>alternative employment or enough to live decently until they can get new
>employment or just enjoy their leisure.

There seem to be (at least) four different kinds of struggles that leftist
activists can get involved in:

1) defensive battles, such as defending the Rover workers' jobs.
2) fights for reform, such as raising the minimum wage (or, to make Nathan
happy, raise the earned-income credit).
3) fights for structural reform, such as pushing for allowing "third"
parties to appear on the ballot, breaking the U.S. bad cop/nice cop duopoly.
4) revolutionary struggles, which actually undermine the viability of
capitalism and set the stage for socialism, going outside of the standard
rules of the political game.

I agree with Louis (and Teresa Hayter) that the Rover workers' jobs should
be defended, but we have to do more, i.e., try to _link_ the defensive
battle with broader issues, to try to make it more like #2, #3, or even #4.
For example, if the defense of workers' jobs and wages is linked to issues
of the _cost_ of lay-offs and/or wage-cuts to the working class and even
society as a whole, the struggle can be widened or maybe deepened. This was
one of the responses to Thatcher's attack on the coal-miners by people in
the Conference of Socialist Economists in the UK.

Unlike pen-l's self-anointed enlightened one (as I understand him or her),
I think it's possible to rail against cars (and pollution) while defending
workers' jobs in smokestack industries. I think it's possible to say "we
need to defend your jobs" and also "this industry can and _should_ be
converted to more eco-friendly purposes" (which, by coincidence will avoid
the problem of excess capacity in the auto industry). As someone noted,
this kind of conversion effort was considered seriously by the Rover shop
stewards. But it's quite possible to bring this up, as part of the effort
to both defend the workers and to raise consciousness. "We need to convert
this industry!" can be combined with "but capitalism and its rulers won't
allow it unless we fight like hell." The defensive struggle can even become
a transitional demand, one that points to the fundamental flaws of
capitalism and the need for something better. It seems like a lot of reform
struggles or defensive struggles these days go against the grain of
capitalism and thus lean toward being transitional demands.

I think a major problem with the left these days is that we lack a sense
that "we could run the world better than the capitalists." We've lost
self-confidence and a sense of the moral superiority of our ideals (except
the moralistic railing that PC types engage in). We've absorbed the
society's rampant cynicism, i.e., that "all is shit" and applied it to
ourselves. Or maybe I'm generalizing too much from the USA or from Los
Angeles.

(BTW, just because I'm advocating the raising of workers' consciousness
doesn't mean I don't think that we can learn from them, raising, widening,
and deepening our own consciousnesses. And there's a big difference between
a sense of moral superiority of  left ideals and the attitude that we're
better than everybody else, that no-one else's thoughts matter, etc. It's
possible to hold onto socialist moral ideals while being humble in
attitude. Remember that socialism, to be successful, must involve democracy
rather than benevolence despotism.)

Happy May Day, International Workers' Day! Only four shopping days left
until Karl Marx's Birthday [May 5, also Cinco de Mayo]!

in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.