Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 14:42:18 -0500 From: devries-AT-mail.utexas.edu (Joshua) Subject: Re: identity/culture/struggle Massimo, Right to be "indiginous", or a "docker", "miner", or whatnot. Hmmm. Personally I would have no interest in being a miner, but then I have no interest in playing the gaelic football for a living either. As for the comments from the fellow from Padova, it seems rather patronizing to slam the miners or any other workers because "their defence of jobs was reactionary". Mining or dock work has no more "capitalist character" than flipping burgers as McDonalds, but the first two are historically much better organized, hence the desire by capitalists to push those workers under the golden arches, right? Yes the capitalist organization of productive labor is downright crappy, but hemming on solidarity with folks because they are fighting for their immediate existence instead of "total revolution" ignores their needs, without which they cannot live. Yes, if you take this argument too far, you get tame trade unionism, but often under capitalism, they only thing worse than having a job is not having a job. Fighting to maintain your job is not inherently reactionary. I agree with your assessment of the what it means to be proud of being a docker, and I think it is quite similar to your previous post's piece about the indiginous culture in which the women refused to accept bridal kidnapping as part of the culture. Same deal here. Yes, for the last several hundred years, the nature of dockwork, mining, farming, trash hauling, etc, have been fundamentally capitalist. This does not mean they reactionary actions. As the indiginous women struggle in their community to make their culture a free one, so the miners struggle in their community to make it free. >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 --- --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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