Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 08:40:50 +0100 (MET)
Subject: M-G: Re: Academic Marxism?


>[G'day Bob,
>I'd been away a couple of days and not yet signed off from the list, so I
>got to read your taxonomy of listers (I don't know whether to be upset I
>didn't quite make your list, or pleased that I shall at least not be the
>first with my back to the wall when the revolution comes).

Hi Rob,

Well nobody has made it to the wall YET! But perhaps some hard work in a 
coal mine somewhere would be appropriate for a few. Fuck I used up my posts 
today so I will send this only to you and M.G. No some of this stuff is 
important so i will wait to send my answer to you until tomorrow! By the way 
I have a question before we start. I put a question mark after the original 
header and you changed it back by taking the question mark away. Was this 
intentional or just a sort of gut reaction? Well, I put it back again!  
>
>A couple of points I thought might be worth making in this connection:]

>[From my experience, now that adhering to marxism has begun to require
>'professional courage' amongst academics, the technical bunch have gone
>over to the economic rationalists and the humanities people have gone over
>to the pomos.  I can't see any old-fashioned fascism there - even if to be
>an ecorat is to be for the plutocracy (which is close enough to fascism to
>scare me).  'Smarties' in this regard are much the same as all the other
>workers I know.]

Well, perhaps! We are only at the beginning of a new cycle and the real 
pressure is yet to come. But the Ebonics debate shows some tendencies of a 
bit of desperation from the intelligensia here at M-I. And the intellectuals 
in general never make the move till the fight is usually over. So the 
majority of them will only jump to the right or the left when they know for 
sure which way the wind is blowing. It is only a small element that will 
stay loyal always to the proletarian cause. And far less in its 
revolutionary wing!

>[You also mention the rapid growth of the education sector, followed now by
>as quick a decline.  That rapid growth meant that people from social strata
>not traditionally associated with the academy got work there for the first
>time.  I'm sure it is these very people (among whom I am numbered) who now
>face structural problems.  The established types are still there - believe
>me.

Actually you have a point here. I see another aspect from my little part of 
the world that reflects this aspect. It is called, for no better name 
"Inter-Class marriages" which during the 60ties,70ties and glad 80ties were 
on the rise. This was connected to the relative class peace and that quite 
numerous layers of the working class got them self educated in the 
imperialist countries.  However with the down turn these marriages are 
breaking up both because of incompatibility and that real wages are being 
driven down. Thus the middle class is once again being down-sized! But those 
that THINK they are middle class are trying desperately to be part of the 
fucking facade. And this facade has both a material, social, cultural, and 
certain rules in order to be a part of it. 
>
>We also earn less than labour mandarins, and have more bosses (unless you
>are naive enough to believe a mandarin has bosses in the rank and file). 
>Allowing for inflation, I earned as much as a builder's labourer and a
>clerk (although admittedly with less job security) as I do now. 
>Furthermore, those of us not born to an inheritance will never have access
>to the means of production.  We are not capitalists, most of us do not come
>from the capitalist class, most of us did not go on to academe stright from
>school (because we could not afford to), and I doubt we are any more
>right-wing than the rest of the non-property-owning class.

This is also true. That is why I keep saying that the decisive issue here is 
not when You or Joshi point this shit out. But what I said in my original 
letter. I said;

"But what Yoshie and others leave out despite their plight is the bougeois 
world of thoughts, values and ideals that are served to them on a silver 
spoon from birth. It creates a constant pressure to capitulate to these 
forces and in this case under the cover of being "Marxists".

And if the above I believe goes for "Marxists" on this list it goes even 
more for those who try to hold up the facade of the middle-class which is 
not only the above but allso a general living and consumtion standard which 
is higher then the poor and working class population in general. Thus we are 
seeing tendencies of a bougeoisifying of certain elements in the work force 
at least here in Sweden. The nurses for example are doing everything to beat 
on the lower ranked hospital attendents and cleaning personal. The drive is 
to have a professional high paid corps of nurses who run the hospitals. The 
price is driving out the lower ranks and taking their jobs. In industry we 
are seeing the robots take over etc. Naturally the price is growing 
lumpenisation of the most backward members of the class. This is also 
connected to throwing high labor intensive industries into the third world 
and the former eastern block contries!

In speaking about the third world Boddi is waving the poor little third 
world stick very high. This is partially true but we should not bow to a 
marxist version of back to the stone ages on one side and protectionism on 
the other. But coming from our little third world professor and his ideas on 
market socialism i do see the link between the "peasabnt economy" and his 
love of "freedom of choice". But this is not marxian economics but a 
glorification of peasant economy by our little third world professor. 
Completely bankrupt by the way Boddi. But you might be able to unite with 
the Greens on this shit. They will love it! 

So their is both a general shifting of whole industries leaving thousands on 
the dole while to the east here we are seeing new slave like production 
units developing in production of textiles in Poland for example by a 
grateful but sometimes complaining working class of these former Stalinist 
satelite countries. Now the general atomosphere is sort of a time of 
capitalist wild west accumilation and exploitation of the former eastern 
block countries at the expense of down sizing in the west!

I am getting a bit off thread here. But perhaps some of our geniuses can add 
something on this thread. It's actually important.. 
>
>What we are, I think, is (on the whole) a fashion-conscious bunch of
>gutless wonders.  Western society has got sick very quickly; and this is at
>least as much our fault (as a whole) as anybody else.  Twenty years ago,
>you couldn't walk down a corridor without running into a leftie, or at
>least a communitarian liberal.  Nowadays you wouldn't find one in a month. 
>Academics could certainly have done more while the world was going to
>pieces - that'll be something many people won't forget in a hurry.  Gary
>reckons he's the only proud leftie at QUT - as far as I know, I'm the only
>one here (unless, of course, I don't count because of my menshevik
>tendencies) - although I do detect a gratifying increase in the amount of
>undergraduates who express sympathy with left-wing politics (sympathy is
>usually as far as it gets because the poor buggers have never been exposed
>to coherent political debate outside the 'free-market' Mont Pelerin
>propaganda agenda).

I think that this is connected to the above that I am talking about. But 
also that there is a general yellow streak in everybody when the capitalists 
after the fall of the Soviet Union went to the counter attack all across the 
board. It also has to do with the collaspe of Stalinism and the desertion of 
large parts of the Intellectual elite in the Social Democracy deserting the 
working class. 

This stuff poses rthe question that Zeynep partially took up back on the old 
M1 list.

The urban poor and the general structural changes going on connected to 
technical advances and a whole new part of the world which is poor and anti 
Communist to the core because of Stalinism. Must be a god sent gift to 
imperialism. The only exception is Germany! Because I think their goal is a 
unified and strong new Germany being the present goal of German Imperialism. 
Although they are certainly having their problems..

Actually I was quite surprised that the last elections in the United States 
still was politically directed at the middle class. The big stick was 
Clinton turning on the welfare people as a clear indication to the middle 
class that you will be the last we desert! I wonder sometimes if you 
smarties in America are really so bad off. It appears that both the dems and 
Pubs are pampering the middle class and making conditions for the broad 
urban poor and lower layers of the Proletariat even more horrible then it 
was during the heydays of the post war boom. And the return to patriotism 
and waging foreign imperialist war being fairly accepted once again in the 
United states. Makes me wonder where all those lefty intellectuals running 
around back in the good old days went. One of them is Bill Clinton by the 
way and even this fucking guy coming from Arkansa was attracted to the 
anti-war movement. Well look at him today! Not to mention all of those who 
dropped their berets for a piece of middle-class security! By the way this 
happened in sweden allso. I don,t want people to think it is just the 
Americans on this stuff. So as of yet it appears that the heyday for the 
middle class is not over at least politically. So I do not really understand 
the whining. On the one hand the pressure has certainly put the middle class 
in and uneasy position. But politically nothing as of yet has changed. Most 
politics appears still connected to appeasing the middle class at least in 
America and sweden. And in Britain the Labor Party appears to be going the 
same way! So what is all the fuss and "woe is me" complaining going on here. 
I don,t really get it Rob and even you admit the students are still coming 
and you got a job.
>
>As for academics not speaking in the language of the worker.  Well, that is
>largely true.  But, on this list people are working out what their stance
>is - in that process, jargon has a tenable purpose - it can save space and
>time (you actually use it a lot too - it just doesn't seem like it because
>you've been a committed leftie for so long, it comes naturally to you). 
>Jargon becomes a negative when it's used to exclude people.  I don't think
>that's a fair charge against most of the listers you criticise.  I don't
>think jargon is the distinction you're after - it seems to me that the
>listers you like have politics closer to yours than those you don't like,
>anyway.

Well Sorry! But take it for what it is! I do not think that some people 
relate to the poor and working class in the way they carry themselves. In 
fact women, not in the least the feminists, see this question very clearly 
when it comes to men. So why can't workers have and opinion on who appeals 
to them or not. In fact this is going on all the time. Tale a look at the 
media, press Tv film whatever there is quite a difference in how things are 
understood by workers vis a vis the middle class. 

 And I certainly have not asked for the exclusion of our smarties. And as 
far as those you claim are close to me on politics I do not think that i 
leave them out, although it does make me a bit softer on them. But niether 
Adam, nor Aldolfo can exactly be called being near me politically. In fact 
Aldolfo is at the other side of the universe! And Adam is a state cap which 
Trotsky and others called at best a petty bougeois trend in the workers 
movement. And i praise them for having a way of writting that workers can 
understand. So I think i have been fairly subjective in describing the 
present human material on the list although I certainly do not consider my 
opinions as being those of and expert on the social behavior of the smarties...
>
>Me, I like all of 'em.  My general rule of thumb is that most lefties are
>more decent, more interesting and more worthy of respect than most
>right-wingers.  Bolshies might not be able to stand menshies - but menshies
>realise bolshies are at least lefties in a western world too short on
>lefties.  At least, that's what I reckon.

Well the above is honest Rob. a good hearted Menshevik. But unfortunately a 
lot of this stuff when push comes to shove actually means that millions of 
skulles are going to roll one way or the other. Usually the skulles of poor 
and working class people. So it is not just this cozy corner of cyberspace 
where everybody can just be nice to each other. What is discussed here as 
consequences in real time. For example popular front politics, stage 
therories of revolution, the women's question, the national question, or the 
question of Ebonics or whatever. Because behind all of these questions are 
millions upon millions of poor and working class people who will either gain 
or lose perhaps even their skulles because of stuff just like this.

Bob Malecki

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