Date:         Thu, 21 Jul 94 17:30:02 EDT
From: Adrian Kelly <3AMK6-AT-QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
Subject:      Re: class


Alex,
I found your comments interesting and accurate.   As I explained in my own
introduction of earlier today, I don't pretend an extensive knowledge of
Marxist theory, but from what I have read and thought about, I too suspect that
 it is next to impossible to speak (in the 'first world' anyway) of an
'industrial proletariat'.  For example, how does wage fit in with that
conception when, say, an individual on the assembly line at GM earns more
than a professor?  Regardless of that, your comments reminded me of
Marcuses's One Dimensional Man, in which he says that, even if there is a
'proletariat', its desires and aspirations no longer constitute a negation
of the esatablished bourgeois norm, but simply reflect them. (I remember
a local instance in which members of the local International Socialist
chapter rallied in support of striking postal workers and were jeered by
the workers  --part of a proletariat that is kind of hard to like, and
hard to talk to without sounding patronizing, paternalistic, etc).  If
a 'revolution'is still a distinct social possibility, I don't think that
it will come from the 'proletariat'-  perhaps we should look to who  Linda
Hutcheon calls the "ex-centric", ie ethinic minorities, women (there can
be no socialist revolution without a feminist revolution) et.al. I'm not
exactly burning academic barns here, but you touched on a subject which I
find very compelling, and I hope that other members of the list will
contribute to this discussion (I would personally like to hear more on
post-coloniality and socialist revolution, especially considering recent
events in South Africa --will/can decolonization be assisted/mediated by
socialist practice? Will we see the realization of the (sinister)
possibility introduced by Alex, ie the destructive effects of the creation of
a new proletariat?


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