From: Massimo De Angelis <M.Deangelis-AT-uel.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:21:21 GMT Subject: identity/culture/struggle Not only the indigenous people, also the liverpool dockers (as the miners strikers in 1984 here) talk about identity: "I have been a docker all my life". Yet, as to be indigenous is not defined by living in the jungle and wear fancy hats, to be a docker is not defined by working on the dock and drinking many pints of beers. To take poride in being a docker is to take pride of being a unionised docker, a struggling docker, a docker who refuse toxic cargos, etc.. To claim the right to be a docker vis a vis dismissal and casualization then, is to claim the right to engage in struggles on the dock. Who in the "left" can tell the dockers that hey have not this right? I remember a comrade from Padova few years ago, talking in an assembly in Rome about some struggling miners in Sardegna. His position was that ok, they have our solidarity, but their defence of jobs was reactionary, because who wants to be a miner anyway, because working in the mines stinks (as it surely does).This Padova's comrades was rejecting the faireness in the miners sense of identity, yet he was right in pointing out the capitalist character of working in the mines. Ever since a question buzzed in my mind. How to reconcile workers' demand based on their sense of identity (without rejecting this fair claim) with the overall need to go beyond work, beyond capitalist accumulation, and all that? Does anybody think this is a legitimate question? Does anybody think that the "right to be a docker" put forward by the dockers (or miners etc.) is from our persepctive a fair claim? What is the difference between this claim and the "right to be indigenous"? Please, share your thoughts about this. massimo --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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