File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9709, message 523


From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-I: Jim Blaut on proletarians (fwd from moderator)
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 22:47:07 -0500 (CDT)


Jim Blaut writes:
 
> I reply: Do you *really* expect a worker who is highly exploited in the
> classical sense but has a house wiith the mortgage paid, a newish car, two
> children in college, a good life insurance policy, and maybe a few thousand
> dollars in the bank -- to be out there making a revolution? Get real!

Jim, how many workers in the U.S. fit this rather specialized slot?
(Not a guess or an estimate: some reasonably dependable figures.) There
were a scattering of such children in my classes at ISU over the years,
and they were not getting any support from their parents, all of whose
extra resources were devoted to supporting, somehow or other, *their*
surviving parent(s). In other words, even among just college students,
the majority of their parents have a lower standard of living than
you describe.

I'm extremely bothered by your emphasis on the necessity of "suffering"
for revolution, because I've respected your posts highly, and this
attitude (essentially a moral rather than a marxist one) so often
leads first to ultra-leftism and then out of the movement entirely.

Carrol



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