[Marxism] Trumka on race and the elections

[S. Artesian]

Aaron,

What I am trying to get at is an examination and determination if in fact it 
exists, of the mechanisms by which "super-exploitation" of "colonized" or 
"less developed countries" becomes "super-profits" which are then recycled 
as higher wages, bribery, etc. of significant sectors, if not the entirety 
of the (white) working class in the US.

My investigations have failed to find any profits accumulating in mass or 
rate at levels above those accumulated by advanced capitalist corporations 
in advanced capitalist countries.

In reference to your comments-- when workers defend their jobs, or oppose 
NAFTA, they are not acting to preserve AMERICAN jobs-- that is the ideology 
applied to cover, redirect, turn that simple and profound act of defense, 
into a prop for bureaucrats, politicians, and the further accumulation of 
capital.

Developing the  "impulse" of the workers to defend their, collectively, 
jobs-- bringing that defense to a class conscious level, or to allowing it 
to be diverted, is "our" "responsibility."

What constitutes the "middle" and "upper" strata of the working class, that 
would make their protests reactionary.  Wages?  Employment by industry? 
Race?  And if we are applying a classification, a caste, within the class, 
then we should be able to see directly the transfer of profits from poorer 
to middle and upper strata of the class.

For example, in Memphis for years, before and during Boss Crump, 
African-Americans were denied employment in the "heavy" industries, in 
manufacturing.  And when given employment, initially were confined to the 
"service" areas of custodial work, janitor, etc.  Certainly their wages, 
individually and collectively, were much less than the wage rates afforded 
to the white workers in engaged in production.  But the fact of the matter 
is that the work, and the lower wage rates, of the African-American workers 
in those job categories did NOT create surplus value for the capitalists; in 
fact those service categories involve an expense, a deduction to be met from 
surplus value, and so there is no mechanism by which that super-exploitation 
translates into super-profits that are then recycled into higher wages for 
the white workers.

As for the wage-benefit to white workers, it was/is clearly the case that 
wages, benefits, and the general social "developmental indicators" in 
Memphis, and the South, for white workers lagged far behind those in the 
North. In fact, it is with the penetration of the industrial unions into 
Memphis, which broke through some, and just some, of the racial 
restrictions, some of the wage inequities, that wages and benefits for the 
white workers improve in tandem with improved wages, access to production 
jobs improves for the African-American workers.

If you're argument is that "salaried" workers do not form part of the 
proletariat, then we need to examine who, where, what those salaried workers 
are.  Actually we need a much better understanding of who where what the 
wage workers are.

Are women health care workers salaried?  Most of them are not.  Production 
workers, of both gender and any race, are not salaried.  Even the highly 
compensated (perhaps most highly compensated workers in the US) railroad 
locomotive engineers and conductors are not salaried.  These are wage 
workers, as conservative as many of them are.

Those working in food processing, garment production, electronics assembly 
are not salaried.

Are the women working in the chicken processing factories "privileged," not 
part of the world proletariat.  The men?

I don't think I caricatured the views of the Weathermen or the Panthers. I 
think the Panthers' "bomb the factories" line was well publicized at the 
time.  Can't find mention of it in I Do Mind Dying, but I think it's in an 
interview with General Baker-- maybe in the League's papers at Wayne State 
University.

As for the Weathermen-- I knew Ayers, Dohrn, Oughton, Mellon etc. intimately 
in Ann Arbor.  It is almost impossible to caricature the Weatherman position 
since it itself is nothing but a caricature.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Aarons" <aaron at mylists.fastmail.fm>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 8:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Trumka on race and the elections


>