Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 20:29:42 -0700
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist as risk-taker and supervisor
From: Sharon Vance <canito3-AT-earthlink.net>


> From: commie00 <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 00:19:15 -0400
> To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist as risk-taker and supervisor
> 
> but you must keep in mind that your petty shop owners
> where the original capitalists, leaders of national liberation movements and
> other such capitalist endevors, etc. so, historically, they have shown their
> place in the class relation.

My reply
I think we also need to be careful here too. You would need some empirical
data on that. And even if you had it you are talking about an aggregate. I
do not think that one can make a one to one correspondence in all cases
betwn one's class position and one's politics and consciousness. If this
were true Marx would have been a champion of the bourgeoisie, Kropotkin of
the aristocracy, ect. And politically this type of assumption can lead to
policies such as the Khmer Rouge. You yourself pointed out how often working
class people side with the ruling class. And people change jobs and
occupations all the time. They have to. So does their class position change
if they go from being a worker, to being a cop, to being a security guard to
being a prisoner? It probably does, but will their politics also change with
such suddenness and with in correlation to their change in jobs? I don't
think so. This is precisely were anti-Marxists have been able to nail
Marxism, in that assumption btwn perfect correlation btwn base and
superstructure and btwn people's politics and their occupations. And often
people have very little choice and control over what they need to do to
survive.
> And what about newsvendors, who were never recognized as
> employees, but were legally classified as "independent sub-constractors"?

"legal classification" is meaningless. they are wage-slaves.

So how would you distinguish btwn a newspaper vendor, a 'roach cart vendor'
or tamale vendor? Would it be based on whether anyone of them had someone
working for them? And in what capacity? What if it is someone who covers
your shift? What if it is someone who is a family member, or someone you had
an uneven profit sharing relation with or barter? (These later cases involve
a combination of capitalist and non-capitalist relations. And I suspect that
this was often the case in Morocco, and still is in many third world
countries today, and even in the US among immigrants and those at the
margins of the US economy. When you get into the details, things can become
VERY complicated.)

And am I a capitalist if I go see an eye doctor or hire a plumber to fix my
sink? Or a lawyer? 

On the other hand, I do like your strong sense of working class identity and
consciousness. I think that is the type of consciousness we need to try to
propagate among working class people. But I do think that we need to allow
for the inconsistencies and complexities of reality, and we need to practice
a politics of inclusion, of one big unionism, of developing, welcoming and
encouraging a working class unity and identity among all wage slaves AND
among everyone at the bottom and at the margins. Even those who might not
fit according to Marxist class definitions. Because more and more people are
being outsourced  and thrown out of work and being forced into push cart and
peddler occupations. And here is another thing to think about, if we only
accept the traditional wage slave definition of who is and who is not
working class, then we are surrendering our capacity to define ourselves and
to decide who 'our people' are, and who are the 'we' who belong and for whom
we are fighting, that is the working class, we are surrendering our ability
to define ourselves, to the capitalists, to our enemies. How can we become a
class for ourselves if we do that?
Sharon




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