Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 08:12:28 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: We need to be concrete


On Mon, 9 Dec 1996, Louis R Godena wrote:

> My point is that we need to cease speaking of the "working class" as some
> platonic,  pre-existing idea,  and begin treating it in a --if you will--
> Marxian fashion,  as a dynamic and continually evolving phenomenon whose
> real history and potential is only now beginning to be realized.
> 

Louis P: Actually, there are people who are treating the working-class in
"Marxian fashion" today. Among them is Doug Henwood, whose Left Business
Observer is about as close as you get to concrete Marxist analysis of
class relations in advanced capitalist countries as you can get. His reply
to Roger Burbach is typical of the type of effort he mounts each issue.

I also recommend Mike Davis and Kim Moody's books on the trade union
movement today, even though I haven't read Moody's book. His columns on
the working-class in "Against the Current" are top-notch.

I also would recommend a new book edited by Glen Perusek that I picked up
at Amherst. It is a collection of articles on recent changes in the
working-class and the trade unions, including something from the always
sharp Staughton Lynd.

Finally, returning to our cyberseminar from whence this preoccupation
originates. I am reading Gramsci's "Americanism and Fordism" and will file
some remarks on it. What a remarkable article. It looks at the US
working-class in the same sort of three-dimensional manner as Engels
looked at the English working-class of the 1840s. It even includes some
fascinating comments on psychoanalysis and sexuality! Leaving aside all
sorts of questions about the revolutionary potential of the working-class,
Gramsci is must reading for Marxists of any generation. You will never
find an *abstraction* in his writings. This is a model we should strive
for.



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