File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9706, message 215


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  




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