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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