Date: 07 Apr 97 09:52:44 EDT
From: jonathan flanders <72763.2240-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: In the time of Stalin, Nation, Race and Class


 >>  The rather unique positon of the American party with respect to the
struggle for social security, unemployment insurance and trade union
rights -- the US lagged behind prewar Europe in all three -- coupled with
the special condition of American blacks as an oppressed "nation" within
a nation,   proved propitious in building a genuinely native "American"
Left-wing movement <<Louis Godena

  Jon Flanders:

  I am now in the middle of reading Steven Fraser's "Labor will Rule", 
a biography of Sidney Hillman. This reading follows the biography of 
Charles Steinmetz that I posted on several weeks ago.

  It strikes me that both the SP and the CP in their respective hey days 
became unwitting? agents of capitalist restructuring from the 
laissez-faire 19th century model to the welfare state in which our 
generation grew up. Eventually the Democratic Party co-opted the CP and 
SP into the liberal-labor coalition. As the imperatives of capital demand 
the destruction of "capitalism with a human face", the possibility of a 
new radicalization of labor and the oppressed appears.

  The way I see it,  a different dynamic will be at work. The trajectory 
of rising leaders of labor like Hillman carried them into the highest 
circles of capitalist decision making. This was due to a split between 
the "progressive" wing of capital concerned with under consumption, and 
the old-line union-busting productionists. Today the consumptionist 
capitalists produce in the third world. They have no interest in an 
alliance with labor leaders like Hillman. Any resistance from the working
class now drives a wedge between the nominal labor leaders and their
former "friends" in Washington and industry.

  This leaves bribery and intimidation as the only glue for the 
liberal-labor coalition. How long can this hold it together?

  Jon Flanders, using OzWin 2.12.1



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