[PEN-L:8833] racism

[Rod Hay <rodhay@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie

What your post tells me is that the left has been outmanoeuvered on the
question of racism. I think that happened because they became stuck with a
strategy that had produced so many victories in the 1960s, but eventually
the limits of the concepts, and the poverty of the underlying philosophy
caught up with them.

If the left sticks to the concept of the equality of races, once formal
equality (legal equality) is accomplished there is nothing left to do. The
race issue is dead as a political issue in the United States because the
formal battle is over. The left won. Legal racial equality is a fact. The
substantive issue remains, however. And that battle can not be won by
reverting to the old categories. A new understanding and a new strategy are
needed. We are forced back to the issue of class and socialism. But instead
of moving on the next battle. The left becomes irrelevant because in its
frustration in defeat it turns inward. Attacks on other leftist becomes the
order of the day. In its weakness it goes after the soft targets like the
university and avoids any difficult issues. Abandons the real issues in US
society to the right.

A new understanding and strategy must be based upon an understanding of
capitalism. The formal fight against racism has been won. The fight against
imperialism has been lost. Capitalism is global. The world is one. The enemy
is capital, so attack capital. Attack the corporation. If the new form of
capital is information attack property rights in information. If a
disportionate number of "blacks" are poor, then attack poverty. If wages are
too low to sustain a family, or to provide an attractive alternative to
crime, then attack that issue.

Quit wallowing in the past. The debate between the stalinist left and the
independent left is dead, because the soviet union is dead. A leninist party
has no chance of any popular support in the US, the habit of democracy is
too deeply ingrained (even if it lacks substance at present.)



Rod Hay
rodhay@xxxxxxxxxxx
The History of Economic Thought Archives
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Batoche Books
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