File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2004/anarchy-list.0402, message 106


From: "Dave Coull" <coull2-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: RE: FAQ a post-left document?
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 00:17:37 -0000




Aragorn (who has sent a couple of posts to the list and has 
yet to say anything original, or even midly interesting) wrote


>> Idealizing stuff, like workers or natives, isn't right. 


and Iain responds


> who idealises workers? 


I first met the mother of my children, well, she wasn't
the mother of my children then, at an anarchist party 
in London in 1970. I can only vaguely remember talking
to her at that party, but she tells me that she clearly
remembers exactly what I said to her. "Don't idealise 
the working class". She was from a New York Jewish upper
middle class background, her father was a Marxist economist 
and academic. No, I don't mean my wife Keri, that was much 
later, I met her on the anarchy list, some folks here will 
remember that, I am talking about Kathy, not Keri. The other
American anarchist Virgo I was involved with. Anyway, the point
of this ramble is that, I am considerably more workerist than
Iain, and I was considerably more workerist than Iain in 1970, 
and yet thirty four years ago I was telling some woman I'd just 
met "don't idealise the workers". And yet we get Johnny-Come-Latelys
like Aragorn telling us that we shouldn't idealise the workers,
as if this is some new revelation which had never occurred
to us. Aragorn, o foolish one, it is those from more privileged
backgrounds who feel that they must either idealise the working
class or look down upon the workers. Those of us who were born 
and raised in the working class, on the other hand, those of
us who have spent every day of our lives in the working class, 
neither idealise our class, nor dismiss it. Our class is simply 
the environment within which we exist, an environment with 
many ugly features, but also with considerable potential.  

Dave C


   

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