[Marxism] Waiting for Gobama

[Louis Proyect]

Joaquin Bustelo wrote:
> Basically the explanation is the tremendously privileged position of the
> U.S. working class and population generally in relation to that of working
> people in the Third World. 

It is not that simple. I don't think that American workers are that much 
more privileged than French workers but they are raising all kinds of 
hell and are backing the new anti-capitalist party massively.

I think that Joaquin is on the right track by looking at privilege, but 
there is not an unmediated relationship between wages and consciousness. 
In the 1970s 1980s, two of the most militant oppositions to neoliberal 
changes in the economy came from independent truck drivers and airline 
controllers, who were mostly white. The truck drivers recruited antiwar 
students from UCLA to form picket lines on their behalf while going out 
to snipe at scab trucks on the Interstate. Meanwhile, it was a common 
occurrence for the airline controllers to speak at Militant Labor 
Forums. I think that if a sane left existed in this period, we could 
have built something like the French anticapitalist party. But we were 
insane at the time. This time around, let's fight for sanity in the 
revolutionary movement.