Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 09:10:58 +0000
From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: The Struggle at Wounded Knee


Carrol is right, and what is interesting about the relative 'weakness' of the
US proletariat is its relative 'strength'. From its first beginnings the
working class enjoyed the benefits of an immense interior and an open
frontier. Thus it was always impossible to corral workers and keep down the
cost of labour-power. The US wage seems to have been about 25% higher than the
wage in Britain thru most of its history (and the British w/c also benefited
relative to other countries by virtue of the ease of emigration).
The whole mythology of freedom of choice and the American Dream is wrapped up
in the Frontier mentality, which is also the essence of US w/c solidarity: the
existence of Indians as folk-devils made frontier communities real and
egalitarian.
Yet none of these 'assets' have helped to produce a working class for-itself
with a sense of a separate destiny. The frontier was always also therefore the
primary mechanism for co-optation of workers within the horizons of US
capitalism, producing today the world's most socially backward proletariat,
perhaps.

Moonshots are a poor substitute for a real frontier. I wonder if that social
synthesis can survive the endless malign gnawing-away of US w/c living
standards, since the mid-60s anyway, into the next century, unless
colonisation of the planets becomes real? I also completely agree with what
Carrol says about the freedom to manouevre of parties. The 'leninist' party can
only exist as either a marginal sect in placid times, or a revolutionary wave
at others. As ruling parties history shows that withjout constant purges and
cultural revolutions it becomes stagnant and corrupt.



Mark

Carrol Cox wrote:

> The weakness of the working class and the strength of the capitalist class
> are not wholly to be seen as mutually determining: both can be weak or
> both strong (and I think history bears this out empirically).



     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---