Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 10:54:47 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-G: MIM reply to Proyect on U$ class structure


>MIM3 replies: True, MIM opposes this demand [higher wages] except for the
real workers
>here in the U$A, like the orange, strawberry and flower pickers getting
>paid a dollar an hour and the sweatshop workers typically referred to as
>"scabs" by the chauvinists like Proyect.

What a shocking anti-working class statement. No solidarity with $8 per
hour hospital workers who empty bed-pans, change soiled sheets and scrub
dying patients for a living. No solidarity with $15 per hour coal miners
who risk being buried alive or coming down with black-lung disease. No
solidarity with $18 per hour autoworkers who work on an assembly-line,
spray-painting cars in 100 degree temperatures, while inhaling toxic fumes.
All these workers are the enemy? No, it is MIM that is the enemy.
Fortunately, they are very tiny and have no impact on the radical movement.
This is progress. 37 years ago the SDS Weathermen were saying the same
exact thing and were much more popular than these dozen or so cranks. Who
says there is no progress.

>1. You tried to mislead people on this list and count journalists as
>workers. We showed the Marx quotes that demonstrate he did not count
>journalists as workers--thereby raising once again, why are you trying to
>smuggle bourgeois classes into the trade union movement? 

When the ruling class attacks more privileged layers of the working class
like airline controllers or reporters, the goal is to drive down the wages
and working conditions of the ENTIRE class. Reagan's victory over the
airline controllers helped to pave the way for wholesale destruction of the
trade union movement throughout the 1980s. The net effect of this was to
reduce wages and job safety for farmworkers, poultry workers, hospital
orderlies, and the all other more exploited and oppressed members of the
class. The bourgeoisie hates all unionized workers and tries to atomize
them. When workers don't have a union to defend them, they are forced into
accepting lower wages. When a boss forces his workers to accept lower
wages, it is a victory for our enemy. The only defense workers have is
their collective ability to withhold their labor through strikes. Without
unions, these strikes are much more difficult to win. By attacking unions,
MIM is on the boss's side. They, and not the workers who need unions, are
our enemy.

Louis Proyect



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