Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 10:30:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Race Traitor (Post #1)


There is an historian named Noel Ignatiev who appeared on Marxism-1 briefly.
He is the author of "Race Traitor" and "How the Irish Became White" and
focuses on a number of the same questions as David Roediger and comes to a
similar conclusion, namely that the white working class in the United States
is a privileged layer vis a vis the black population. His analysis is rooted
in the sort of "white skin privilege" ideology of the New Left but is much
more scholarly as befits a Harvard professor.

This question of race, nationality and class is of vital importance. It
seems to throw a monkey wrench into the struggle for socialism everywhere
you go and at all times. It has presented itself in discussions we have had
on Kurdish nationalism, the Nation of Islam, Quebecois separatism on the
Marxism lists.

This might be an appropriate topic for our next cyberseminar. We could lead
off with a reading of Lenin vs Luxemburg on the nationality question,
proceed to Stalin's review of the topic (which apparently is one of his more
interesting theoretical contributions), how this thinking affected the
politics of the CPUSA and Trotskyism in the 1930s on the topic of the "black
belt" versus self-determination, the writings of CLR James, the
postcolonialism of Edward Said, etc. It would also be a way of allowing
political and theoretical cross-fertilization among subscribers near and far
since it is an issue that nearly all of us face.

Louis Proyect



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