[PEN-L:3628] Re: Re: Re: Re: Race as a "construct" <v04011707b2f60cb25c77@[166.84.250.86]> <v04011711b2f617b0f245@[166.84.250.86]>

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood wrote:

> This implies the w.c. is powerless and capital is almighty. Which may be
> true, but is very gloomy.

There is a difference between "powerlessness" and weakness. Were the
working class powerless these lists would not exist and Nike would have
no need either to have *or* to defend its sweatshops in Asia.

You asked once what precisely Lenin had to offer (or something to
that effect). My answer: an understanding of the absolute centrality
of spontaneous struggle to the communist movement. Because he
understood that centrality as no other marxists (including Marx
himself) had before him,  he devoted a good deal of his thought
to the struggle against misleading conceptions of working-class
spontaneity.

The reason I am such an admirer of  Mao's *Reflectijons on the
Peasant Movement in Hunan* is that, despite the obvious fact that
detail for detail it has no relevance to anything except China in
1930 or thereabouts it is the most profound application to concrete
conditions we have of this core insight of Lenin's.

A continual concern with what is "wrong" with Marxism in a period
when it is almost impossible that very much should be right with it
is in effect a denial of Lenin's discovery of the fundamental
importance of spontaneous working class struggle.

But the working class, internationally as well as in the U.S. is extremely
weak. And that is indeed gloomy enough without the extravagance of
converting "weak" to "no power at all."

Carrol