[Marxism] Trumka on race and the elections

[S. Artesian]

Yeah, I know a little bit about DRUM and LRBW having worked in Detroit for 
awhile, including at Cadillac Fleetwood.  Saw "Finally Got The News" when it 
was first made, before general release.

But you fail to answer the question--where is this outcry by workers for 
restoring their portion of the empire?

Your statements do more than imply that any time any workers take any action 
for higher wages, job preservation, better working conditions, they are 
really just demanding a bigger part of the "loot."   So opposing outsourcing 
is what?  Reactionary?  Opposing NAFTA and CAFTA is what, isolationism? 
And opposing the war in Iraq isn't what?  sincere enough? because it takes 
place after the US has not been able to achieve control of the battlefield?

How do you expect class consciousness to evolve?  Is it supposed to spring 
full blown from the forehead of Marx?  Pristine and unmarked by the terms of 
its very origin?

Doesn't happen that way.  Didn't happen that way in Russia.  In 1914 when 
the Bolsheviks agitated against Russian participation in WW 1, they were 
chased out of the factories by Russian workers, and if caught, beaten, and 
sometimes to death.

If this, however, is your perspective, then there is very little difference 
between your "position" and that of the old/new left Weatherman (and 
ultimately Black Panther) position, that discards the working class 
completely as anything but a counterrevolutionary artifact.

(LRBW had a certain, and big, problem with the Panthers, who were posturing 
about "bombing factories" since the LRBW actually worked in those factories. 
I remember one discussion with the Panthers who were arguing that black 
workers were "privileged" and part of the imperialist network of oppression. 
That was a hoot, all right.  Think that was around  the same time as the Ca. 
Panthers were urging everyone to vote for Dellums, who of course isn't an 
agent for the imperialist network).

If you think that US "super-exploitation" of less developed, imperialized, 
countries "make[s] their (our) high levels of material consumption 
possible," then you have a big task ahead of you-- namely showing exactly 
how that exploitation abroad gets transformed into wages, benefits, etc for 
domestic workers; showing that that exploitation abroad underpins the entrie 
structure of US capitalism; showing that that exploitation is in fact 
super-exploitation, creating profits at a mass and rate above those 
available in the US or for US investments in other advanced countries; and 
showing why in fact, with the greater penetration of US capital into less 
advanced countries since the 1970s, material standards of wages, benefits, 
numbers employed in industry, poverty levels have deteriorated.

Joaquin, in the discussion about the DP,  argued that we really have to come 
to grips with Lenin's formulations in Imperialism and how that has affected 
the entire class.  I think he, Joaquin is right, so I would hope those who 
think Imperialism has bribed an entire class would do some work to help 
those of us who think Lenin was wrong.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Aarons" <aaron at mylists.fastmail.fm>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 9:04 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Trumka on race and the elections


> At 01:40 -0700 2008/09/02, I wrote:
>>For a white, give-us-back-our-share-of-the-spoils-of-empire, AmeriKKKan 
>>worker, the most usual reason for not supporting Obama probably IS racism, 
>>although some such white workers might vote for Nader, or just not vote, 
>>because they (rightly) don't expect the Democrats to give them their share 
>>of the loot.
>
> At 09:27 -0400 2008/09/02, S. Artesian wrote:
>>Could you be more specific in identifying this section of the working
>>class-- not that I doubt it exists--  KKK and like organizations had
>>partisans inside the auto and steel plants in Detroit-- but they quite
>>consciously acted and articulated their racism.
>
> White racism in the auto plants went far beyond those who were conscious, 
> open racists. If you look at the history of the League of Revolutionary 
> Black Workers and the Revolutionary Union Movements in various 
> Detroit-area auto plants in the late 1960's and early 1970's, it was the 
> nominally anti-racist UAW that violently defended white supremacy in 
> alliance with the police. (The documentary about those struggles, "Finally 
> Got The News", is available as a bittorrent download or as an overpriced 
> DVD. Also, the book "Detroit I Do Mind Dying" has, I think, been 
> republished.)
>
> Also, about 20 years later there was a pandemic of anti-Japanese racism 
> among auto workers because the Japanese were producing better cars than 
> the USians.
>
>>So these imperialist parasite workers-- where are they saying "give me 
>>back
>>my part of the empire"?  When they oppose NAFTA, CAFTA, outsourcing?  When
>>the strike against the war at the maritime terminals?
>
> Any time they fight (or, more likely, beg) for the restoration of "the 
> American Dream", they're doing it. And opposition to NAFTA, CAFTA, and 
> outsourcing are clearly based far more on wanting to protect USian jobs 
> from competiton from "foreigners" than on any desire to improve the 
> standard of living of non-U.S. workers. (There is, of course, the 
> contradiction that some U.S. workers lose their jobs as a result of the 
> process that supplies the U.S. population, including the working class, 
> with the cheap commodities and services that make their (our) high levels 
> of material consumption possible.)
>
> How many strikes, or even demonstrations, by U.S. workers have taken place 
> in support of struggles by workers in other countries. Over the last 25 
> years or so, there have been a few actions by the ILWU, especially in the 
> S.F. Bay Area, that were genuine acts of solidarity. (I was personally on 
> several of the non-member pickets that were integral to a number of these 
> actions.) But the ILWU has a unique history as a left union and many of 
> its members were left activists before becoming longshoremen. Also, the 
> majority of its members (at least in the Bay Area) are Black. Even then, 
> it took a major effort by respected union activists like Jack Heyman and 
> Clarence Thomas to get the whole union to call for a coastwide shutdown on 
> May 1. And I believe it was Jack who said (I'm loosely paraphrasing from 
> memory) that it only got passed because a number of right-wingers in the 
> union had stopped supporting the Iraq war because it was a disaster for 
> the U.S.. In other words, it was an an
> ti-imperialist action for some and a dissident pro-imperialist action for 
> others.
>
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