File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9707, message 2


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
>
>
>
>
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