From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why People Join Vanguard Organizations?
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 00:28:31 -0500


Hey there!  Back in the dip...

> > 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.).

Ok, got me.  Let me rephrase: access to universities has decreased for most
working class people since the 1960's and 1970's.  If nothing else, the
attack in affirmative action has seriously reduced the number and percentage
of working class pople of color and women.  Also, the number of industrial
workers who can afford current university rates has dropped massively as
university has escalated in cost.  I am not here including technical school
and community colleges, which almost never have bachelor's and higher level
accredidation and which are designed to churn out skilled workers.  I mean
universities.  DePaul, where I went, was $5,500 15 years ago and is now
$14,000, but no one I know makes nearly three times what they made 15 years
ago.  Many make less.

I actually wrote about this and even thought many working class people do go
to university still, it is not like 25 years ago.  The class divide between
university and technical/community college institutions has widened
considerably since the 1970's.  Even the Dept. of Ed statisstics reflect
this quite clearly.

> > 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.

The majority of students I knew in Chicago going to college were floating by
on money provided by management jobs, stockbrokers, etc.  Most of those who
had to work were from working class families.  BTW, my partner Kris was from
the group in your example, but she could not have done that now because her
mother and father could not have afforded it at today's tuition.
> > 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.

Lenin NEVER disagrees with this.  In fact he is emphatically in agreement
that defending the right is not even the same as actually demanding
practical separation and that even while defending the right, ruthless
criticism of all nationalism HAS to happen.  You have no argument with Lenin
here.

> 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.

Not only do I agree, but I was having this conversation tonight.  There is
not a lot of difference between being uncritical and being colonial.  But
there is a big difference between these and recognizing the position being
in a dominant country puts one in, especially in the colonial situation.
The first task is to break with one's own nationalism, national chauvinism.
I think Lenin is right to say that we have to consider a position from the
point of view of all of the classes involved.  To oppose the RIGHT of a
nation to self-determination puts one in the same position as a colonial
power.  Do you think it makes sense to have the same political position as
the colonialists?  At the same time, the RIGHT is not the same thing as
demanding independence.  Hopefully, our struggle to defend the RIGHT
indicates to the workers and peasants of the oppressed country our
opposition to to the colonialists and our real unity with them and their
right to decide.  Lenin has a very instructive discussion of THE RIGHT (the
principled position) vs. 'being practical' in relation to his debate with
Rosa Luxemburg.  i happen to think that his position is far superior.

> 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).

This is where two issues arise.  First, Lenin never grapples with national
self-determination in terms of capital as a capital-labor relation.  He
reifies class and capital.  In so doing, he never grapples with the idea
that the real vs. formal subsumption may play a role here.  IMO, colonialism
is uprooted by class struggles which lead to the introduction of the real
subsumption of labor by capital as the old 'raw material
extraction/agriculture' realtions begin to be seriously replaced by industry
and manufacturing, which gets transferred to the poorer countries also in
response to the struggles within that class composition.  It is this
transfer of the old class composition downward (or outward from center to
periphery) that marks the constant reimposition of inequality between
nations, between a center and a periphery (and rings within the periphery
from Asian Tigers and Latin American tigers to Africa and Afghanistan).  The
inability to support colonialism forced the creation of a class composition
involving the real subsumption of labor in more of the periphery, while
agriculture and raw material extraction get pushed elsewhere (see the move
from Middle East oil to Central Asian oil being planned right now and
executed through this war, which represents the shift in class composition
in that region and in energy production.)

Second, Lenin poses the question in a way that assumes that the introduction
of capitalist social relations is 'progressive'.  This is simply not always
true.  But he has a relaible basis for this opinion in Marx who does not
break with this idea until the 1870's, beginning with the French edition of
Capital and extending to his work on Russia and the peasant communal
relations.  From there we can see that pre-capitalist social relations may
in fact be open to bypassing capital if they develop in a revolutionary way
in conjunction with communist revolution in places where capital is the
totally dominant social relation.  This is an extreme weakness in Lenin, but
the same assumption appeared among Luxemburg and the council communists, but
read in a different and in some cases worse way.  National
self-determination in this situation has vastly different possible meanings
and is not always valid even under Lenin's thining because his core
assumption is invalid.  However, this also means that pre-capitalist social
formations, to the extent that they still exist, could also be a basis for
the kind of openings autonomism should be, well, open to.

> 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.

Nothing in Lenin would contradict that.  This is the wrong target with Lenin
and this is why the ultra-left has always made a poor case in relation to
Lenin on this question.

> > 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.

Again, Lenin never did this.  He supported the RIGHT, in principle, as one
would never ever think to tell African Americans that they do not have the
RIGHT to their own organizations.  Lenin also said we should argue that
unity is always best, but unity has to be built on trust, and trust requires
breaking down the intra-class hierarchies, of which national chauvinism is
one.

> 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.

You may have some room on the first point.  Remember, Lenin assumes that
capitalism is necessarily progressive against pre-capitalist social
relations, something Marx drops at the end of his life and quite rightly so.
However, if you agree with Lenin that capitalism is relatively progressive
historically, then his position is solid enough.  And Lenin never
uncritically defends the right.  There is no critically or uncritically
defending the RIGHT.  You do or you don't.  it is a principled question.
However, you NEVER uncritically defend an actual move towards separation.
That would be fetishising national self-determination, which I do not think
Lenin does as much as people want to believe.

Lenin does tacitly support nationalism, BUT only in so far as he sees the
nationa state as the vehicle, NOT because he ever explicitly defends
nationalism as politics.  His state-capitalism and his nation-centric notion
of capitalist development, his statism, is the central problem here, not a
capitulation to nationalism as ideology.  I hope that is clear.  Lenin
clearly critiques nationalism as capitalist and reactionary, but he has a
weird kind of mythological support of 'democracy' and 'democratic states'.
I think this relates to his failure to really understand alienation and
fetishization, so that it is not the social relations that become the basis
of a new society, but institutions.  Lenin is really a structuralist or
objectivist, but with a kind of voluntarist political practice.

> 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.

I would not blame Lenin for supporting nationalism, rather for laying a
theoretical foundation which collapsed upon itself in the face of
nationalist revolutions, which I think Lenin was ill-prepared for
theoretically.

> > 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.

To renege on the RIGHT to national self-determination in a colonial
situation is equivalent to defending colonialism and imperialism.  it is to
succumb to one's own great-power chauvinism.

> 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.

Again, Lenin addresses this quite clearly and not poorly.  You are not
saying anything Lenin does not address.

> > 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.

Aye, well I think empire-theory is a crock.  It rests on confusing the
capital-labor relation as thoroughly globalized with its manifestation in
ruling classes.  The capitalist class in fact has many aspects.  To be a
global ruling class assumes global integration.  For one reason or another,
mostly related to uneven development, nations have continued ot be the
predominant form of state.  The major international bodies all exist through
nations.  The WTO only take complaints from nations, not corporations.  The
US has increased its hegemonic position in most of these institutions,
staffing the bulk of the IMF and World Bank, a large part of the WTO, etc.
One loss to Venezuela does not make the WTO the great equalizer.  Look at
who dominates the WTO: the US and Europe.  And they will continue to do so
for the forseeable future.  in fact, this war indicates the incredible
unilateral action of the United States.

I think imperialism, for the moment, is the most useful way to think this
through, but imperialism in crisis.  The biggest battles around class
composition are coming and this whole war reflects a major crisis.

Anyway, be time.

Cya!
Chris



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