File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 372


Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 05:10:28 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: infernal combustion Marxists


Russell wrote:
>Sorry.
>I did wonder about your gender,  please accept my apologies for any offence.
>Yes, indeed it is sexist male behaviour, and as to your actions on the
>subway- good for you, they deserve all they get!

Apology accepted.

>In Britain poor people are either concentrated in inner city areas or in
>large suburban housing estates that keep them out of the way of richer
>types. Housing policy is ostensibly very politically correct, but in
>practice is racist to the core. The wealthy tend to live in more select
>suburbs, or increasingly likely, in the countryside where very small
>cottages can comand three times the amount of similar buildings in a less
>salubrious setting.

Are there any significant struggles about housing and racial segregation
going on in Britain now? If so, would you discuss them here?

>I tend to agree with James on the left and the state- this I believe is a
>failure of imagination since all it asks for is state money to fund state
>transport. I'd like to see transport truly revolutionised, though god knows
>what forms that might take.

I share your criticisms of social democracy (otherwise, I wouldn't be on a
list like this.) But that state-funded "reforms" have mixed effects on the
working class is not new knowledge.

>It's just that the idea of socialism somehow
>meaning more buses sticks in my gullet. As to benefitting transport
>workers, at the risk of being flippant I guess your knowledge of bus
>drivers is rather slim too. I've never met one who enjoyed driving a bus-
>it's a means to an end, is socially isolating and physically debilitating.
>For taxi drivers it's even worse- a limbo land between unemployment and
>work one described it to me as.

I think you are right, but a whole lot of jobs under capitalism are like
that. And any job under capitalism is a means to an end. So what's new?

Yoshie




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