Re: Nick Cohen on Thomas Frank

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Brown wrote:

> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >
> > Charles' reference to Lenin's idea that there is a
> > labor aristocracy" that is bought off with the
> > superprofits of imperialism doesn't fit the "Kansas"
> > case very well, and specifically doesn'y explain why
> > people act against their own economic interests. The
> > labor aristocracy in the theory acts in its own
> > immediate economic interest.

> CB: Obviously the hypothesis that answers this is that the people "in
> Kansas" vote socially "conservative" and for imperialism because they have
a
> sense that 1) "America is the richest and greatest country in the world,
and
> they wouldn't want to live anyplace else " and 2) America is rich in part
> because it gets profits from its businesses in the rest of the world and
3)
> the people in Kansas ,though their wages and incomes may go down
sometimes,
> are overall richer and better off than the rest of the world _because_ of
> the foreign policies ( political and economic) of the "conservative"
> politicians who the people in Kansas vote for.
>
(snip)
---------------------------------------------------
Again, if you distinguish, as I do, between the unemployed Kansans in
declining sectors and the mass of employed workers in the cities, than the
better educated and higher paid professional and administrative workers,
especially those who belong to public service and other unions, might today
be the closest analogue to the skilled industrial trades the classical
Marxists described as an "labour aristocracy". But I represented social
researchers and statisticians as well as journalists after having earlier
worked in a Steelworkers plant and been an SEIU organizer of mostly
immigrant nursing aides and janitors, and I really can't say one group was
more aware of its economic interests or more progressive on international
issues than the other. If anything, the workers with higher education, who
are disproportionately represented on this list (and in the remaining
Leninist sects), were the more inclined to demonstrate against imperialism.
So I'm not sure how useful an analytical category it still is, but if there
is some power left in it, I'd suggest the college-educated would be the
stratum to examine.

Marv Gandall