From: "commie00" <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why People Join Vanguard Organizations?
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:20:26 -0400


ho, sparring partner

hope all is well in chi-town... on to the match =P

> First, I know where you are going here (since by answering yes to that
> question, housewives would become middle class).

hee hee... sorry... didn't mean it to be some kinda intellectual trap... was
just really tired that night... but yeah...

> This is an ongoing debate
> between us on class.  I see no reason to think that being a student
> necessarily makes one middle class, though increasingly access to
> post-secondary education is restricted the the children of management and
> professionals (not to mention bourgeois).

this doesn't jive with the stats, tho.

the vast majority of colleges, with by far the largest population, are
either trade schools, commumity colleges or state universities. and it is
very difficult to argue that these school are populated by the children of
professionals and management (and remember that you job as a computer jocky
qualifies you as a "professional" within capitalist class analysis, and you
and i both know that yer working class). in fact, it is quite clear (when
spending any amount of time talking to people who go to these schools) that
these kids come from industrial, comercial or just plain poor working class
backgrounds. and they make up a very clear majority (i would guess 80%, if
not more).

and even the "elite" schools (liberal arts, "elite", ivy league, etc.),
which are a small minority of colleges, are populated with a sizeable chuck
of kids from industrial, comercial and poor working class backgrounds (i
would say, with this group of schools taken as a whole, this group
represents a majority -- tho a much smaller one, prolly more like 55-60%).

let alone the fact that the bulk of the rest of the kids at these schools
come from professional-working class backgrounds.

however, not a bit of this is important because students are working class,
regardless of their parents' class status, due to their position within the
(re)production of labor power (the most important commodity) and capitalist
ideology.

i would argue that this is true even with students in elementary school, and
that this class difference between parents and children (this extra
alienation) is part of the source of the higher instances of youthful
rebellion *against parents* in ruling class families.

does this solve the problem of priviledge? no. but the working class is kept
subservient, in part, thru priviledges given out within the class (wage
differentials, division based on race / sex / sexuality / nationality / age,
etc.).

> It did not matter to Spark if the person was floating by on
> family money with no need to work, etc or if that person had to work full
> time just to attend.

i don't think these things matter much either. they signify priviledge
within the working class, but not class differences.

interestingly, nearly everyone i know who "floats by on family money" comes
from industrial working class background... i.e. their parents were
well-paid factory workers, construction workers or some such. and most of
the rest of the peope i know who "float by on family money" also come from
solidly working class backgrounds, but inhereted the money or get social
security, due to a death in the family.

> Indeed, it is a rare group in that way.  However, the group does restrict
> the range of what one can do with those ideas by its restriction of what
is
> 'revolutionary' activity.

yeah, that's on par.

> You know, that's the funny thing.  I am re-reading his writings on
national
> self-determination right now and his whole emphasis is that the defense
(he
> emphatically separates this from the demand) of national
self-determination
> is a negative demand.  It is not the job of Marxists to call for, to
demand,
> national self-determination.  Rather, depending on one's social location,
> one has different tasks in a very specific situation.  When one nation
> oppresses another, when one country makes a colony of another nation, the
> workers and revolutionaries of the oppressor nation are obliged to defend,
> if the 'mass' of the population of the colonized country demand it, their
> right to separate.  Now, while Lenin may overemphasize the statist aspects
> of this, how can we not defend the right of oppressed peoples the right to
> determine their own course?

i've never argued against the "right" (tho the whole concept of "rights" is
questionable in my mind) to determine their own course, but i have argued
for my "right", as a comrade, to be critical of their decisions and not
participate if i think it is going the wrong direction.

i think a very serious and common mistake revolutionaries make is to think
that they can not criticize the ideas and actions of whatever group is
oppressed. i think this position is condecending and sometimes (in fact,
often) racist. i think, as fellow members of the working class and comrades
in struggle, we have an obligation to be honest.

in the case of nationalist struggles: to say "we don't understand their
situation" is a poor excuse (and is where that condecention comes in,
methinks), given that there are historical precedents which show that,
regardless of the specific situations, nationalist struggles (if
"successful") always end up proping up a new ruling class who re-inforce
capitalism. the situation of the oppressed does not ultimately change in any
meaningful way... there are just new, local masters (who then go on to do
things like confederate into empire and become part of the global ruling
class).

so, to me: autonomy, in part, means not interfering with the "right" of
people to struggle locally in the way they see fit just as we would not want
them to interfere with our local struggles; and solidarity, in part, means
being honest and critical in a comradely fashion.

> Secondly, to say as Harald did that the Algerians should not have
separated,
> but should have have made it a civil rights issue is exactly something
Lenin
> would have called bourgeois liberalism.  Why?  Because to call for that is
> to accept the nationalism of the oppressor nation, of the colonizer.

in much the same way: to uncritically (and sometimes even crticially)
support nationalist struggles is to support the nationlism of the local
ruling class.

and this is where i think class analysis is removed from lenin: to
uncrtically defend the "right" to the self-determination of the working
class within a given nation does two major things:

1) it reinforces nationalist divisions of the working class by accepting the
nation-state;

and 2) thus tacitly supports nationalism.

i think the implications of this, in spite of lenin's intensions, and
perhaps due to the inability to resolve the contradictions between support
class struggle and supporting nationalist struggle, have been a major
set-back for the working class world-wide thruout most of the 20th century.

> Finally, on this idesa of national self-determination.  Ultimately, it is
a
> question of how best to bring unity to the working class.

i agree. and i think the defense of "national self-determination" destroys
working class unity by mainaining the national aspect. by accepting the
nation state, and thus reifying the borders.

i'm interested in any unifying of the working class, even for the wrong
reasons, but i think its revolutionary suicide to not constantly and
consistantly reject any nationalist aspects of it that creep up. which
means: we have to reject that this unity *only* takes place within a given
area, while supporting this unification itself, esp when that area is
defined by the ruling class as part of an effort to keep us divided.

> And in this period, Lenin is calling for a
> revolutionary defeatist position, for the defeat of one's own bourgeoisie.

but i think this was a but backward then, given what i have already said...
and extremely backward now, given that the ruling class no longer has any
meaingful nationlist character.

not that national / local ruling classes do not exist, but that they are
federated together as a large global ruling class (with very few
exceptions... such as the taliban or hussein).

in light of this, to argue for the defeat of "one's own ruling class" is
like attacking a straw dummy. or a better analogy: its like trying to
destroy capitalism by shooting bill gates.

its meaningless because the ruling class will continue to exist without him,
just as the global ruling class would continue to exist without the u.s.
ruling class.

and this is why i think imperialist theory, as such, is a tactical dead end
now.

> Indeed, and there is a lot to critique in Lenin's formulations on this.
He
> takes a starting point which reifies 'the national', among other problems.
> However, this is Lenin's most lucid and valuable writing, IMO.

hrm... getting to this point, is suspect that we might not be disagreeing
that much after all. hee hee





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