File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-09.204, message 114


From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: M-I: Some issues raised by the Pomo Wars
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 12:33:21 -0600 (CST)


    I haven't had time the last few weeks to contribute to this list,
but I would like to refer now to one posting I did make: I predicted
that m-i was off to a bad start because of the failure of list
members to respond to caruso's (mostly accidental) sexist vocabulary--
that only a woman had responded, and she had received no support
>from other list members. (I don't know whether she is still on the
list or not, but we have heard no more from her.)

    Now I assume that, eventually, only a socialist struggle grounded
in marxism will be an effective struggle against sexism and racism--
I really can't think of any other set of principles that can effectively
organize that struggle. Class is first and last central both
analytically and in struggle.

    But the socialist movement has, empirically, had a very bad
record on issues of women and race, and the nearly all-male compo-
sition of this list is probably one minor manifestation of that
200 year old record.

    Pseudo-progressive foes of marxism can and repeatedly do make
effective use of that "unfortunate" record--and when marxists get
careless in their language or (in meetings and conversations, even
tone of voice or volume of foot shuffling), those tiny (?) failings
are vicious because they evoke a long history of real racism and
sexism inside the socialist and workers movements. Such slips
are nearly the equivalent of putting limburger cheese in the
ventilation system at a conference: they drown everything else out.

    During the pomo wars the defenders of even the worse aspects
of postmodern and related theoretical/political tendencies were
too easily able to wrap their horseshit in cries of sexism, homo-
phobia; one result was that some of the most serious issues raised
were never really discussed at all. At the purely pragmatic level
the battle went to the pomos; think of that huge list of addresses
that Paul Amar sent his stupid posting to; most of the names on
that list were probably hardened academic pomos--but some of them
might be people (grad students? others) whose direction is up
for grabs--and we may have given them the excuse they needed
to forget about Marxism and socialism and the workers' struggle.

    On another sub-point. If one encounters Aronwitz in many contexts
(forums on subjects that don't directly confront the core of his
politics with marxist politics), and if one has not read his work
on identity politics or the jobless future, his ideas can be attractive.
(He has been at several of the annual conferences of Midwest activists
and radical scholars in Chicago.) This, in fact, is true of most
ex-marxists for at least awhile after they leave marxism--a little
marxism can go a long way within restricted contexts.

    And finally, Aronwitz is not the only fat person in the United
States (or UK, Australia, etc)--my younger daughter is extremely
overweight, and after she lost her first longtime job as a computer
analyst because the effects of undiagnosed depression had snuck up
on her, she was unemployed for nearly four years, mostly I suspect
because of employer's more or less conscious prejudice against fat
people. So in the future let's try to lay off the merely physical
(or personal, as in depression or anxiety disorder) "defects" of
our enemies.
        Carrol




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