Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 09:37:11 +0100 (MET)
Subject: Re: M-G: The Problem of Limited Solidarity


>Sally:
>
>The study you cite is interesting, but it only points to another problem.
>If the study is right about the US manual workers' attitudes--I am not sure
>that it is,  because a sociologist can usually find the attitudes he is
>looking for in his subjects--the question to be asked is: why are so many
>workers' concepts of solidarity limited by the boundaries of gender, race,
>sexual orientation, and nationality? Why haven't marxists been able to make
>a more expansive concept of solidarity hegemonic? Why can't straight
>workers include GLB workers in the circle of solidarity? Why can't more
>white workers see workers of color as simply "fellow workers"? What should
>we be doing to change the current sorry state of affairs?
>
>yoshie

I think that answers to a lot of this stuff can be found in Trotsky's 
"Problems of Everyday life". Anyhow here is the short version! Bougeois 
ideology infests the workers movement in the matters of just about 
everything including sex. So if society has certain bougeois norms well 
naturally the working class has them also. Thus to break the chain of events 
is going to take a very long time.

The pre-equistite for real change is naturally the dictatorship of the 
proletariat under the leadership of a Leninist Party which understands that 
liberation of the working class not only economically, but culturally, 
sexually and spiritually is not something that comes about over night. One 
does not throw of the chains of bougeois and medival values on the family 
for example overnight. Nor anything else for that matter. Thus the 
neccessity of the dictatorship which in fact is nothing more then a 
transitional society where the class that has the Social power to really 
change things applies its dictatorship over the rest of the classes in society.

But if the leadership does not have a revolutionary view on the sex question 
or like Stalin capitulates to the backwardness of the working class and 
peasantry those who do not have those determined values are in deep shit 
without a paddle.

So Rolf and others who are arguing in fact the sexual line of at best 
conservative working class and peasant elements and at worst are calling for 
the lynching of sexual deviates (Klaspberry) are in fact actually not new. 
Pappa Stalin was into this shit a long time ago.

On the other side of the stick their was some big problems after the October 
revolution. Because breaking up the family in fact meant that men usually 
deserted women for the revolution!

So it will take a serious Leninist leadership on this stuff in order to 
create a balance act between the old society-during the transitional 
epoch-and over to the future Communist society.

In fact this question is a litmus test for anybody claiming to be a 
Communist revolutionary.

Warm Regards
Bob Malecki





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