Nathan Newman wrote: > > > M. Sawicky wrote: > > A class appeal is the best (only?) way to overcome backward views > > on race. Otherwise you are reduced to moral preachments. You can > > try saying that race divides people to their disadvantage, but that > > presumes some larger concept that subsumes race: class. > > This is an impoverished definition of class that equates it simply with > economic inequality between groups. But what is crucial about class is > its specific relation to exploitation around the axis of the means of > production between owners of capital and workers. . . . This is mere rhetoric. What is crucial about class to real people is that a working-class status renders them incapable of realizing their justifiable expectations about living a full life made possible by fair compensation for their labors and by appropriate collective action to supply what they need which is not available in markets. I'm not even talking about inequality, which most people don't care about, unfortunately. We're looking at private ownership of most capital for the foreseeable future, so we might as well devote ourselves to making the best of the situation. > Racism is economic > exploitation organized around racial differentiation WITHIN the working > class where white workers collaborate with capital to assure their > privileged caste position. It's not obvious that white workers are 'collaborating' with capital to maintain a caste advantage these days, except insofar as they fail to support affirmative action and anti-discrimination measures. If I see you drowning and I fail to help you, I may be criticized for my apathy or cowardice, but I'm not exactly holding your head under water, though the result is the same. This makes a political difference because your formulation implies the levelling of accusations against workers. In labor and housing markets the active collaboration of white workers in discrimination is real but limited. Education is different because whites express racist sentiments in their political choices. Racism today is more a question of what elites and those in positions of authority are doing (employers, mortgage bankers, etc.). > There is no inconsistency between a class appeal to white workers that > fights for a larger slice of the wage/profit split while also supporting a > racial caste system that reserves the best high-paying jobs to while male > workers. In fact, if achieved, such a class appeal combined with racism > promises the best result for such white male workers. This was truer in years past than today. These days the last thing Capital wants is to forego a slice of profits for the sake of "buying off" white workers. They're screwing everybody. > In fact, this is exactly how white male workers have traditionally > organized in the United States, often successfully. The American > Federation of Labor was formed by nearly all-white craft unions who > withdrew from the declining Knights of Labor to institutionalize the > privileged position of their members. In the West, anti-Chinese > organizing was a key factor in supporting the growth of unions in the > West. George Frederickson argues in his book WHITE SUPREMACY that through > this anti-asian struggle, "unionism and working-class politics achieved > more legitimacy and influence in some of the industrial regions of the Far > West than in most other sections of the country." You are skipping over about sixty years of labor history here by characterizing the entire 20th century in pre-1935 terms. The early incarnations of feminism and abolitionism were pretty gamey by today's standards as well. > Which brings us to Buchanan: > > > One, an anti-corporate message is not enough, since that easily harbors a > > > "Buchanan" racist vote. Progressives have to link a clear anti-racism > > > message to its anti-corporate message. > > > > Bull. That presumes that Buchanan was really anti-corporate in any > > substantive way. He wasn't/isn't. > > Ignoring the honesty of his convictions (and given his families honest > worship of Mussolini I'll give him the benefit of the doubt), Buchanan's > words are as anti-corporate and class-based as a large chunk of union > rhetoric over the years in the US. Listen to a Buchanan speech denouncing > meatpacking companies who use immigrants to drive down wages in order to > increase profits. Listen to Buchanan denounce affirmative action as a plot > by elites to lower the living standards of white male workers. In all > those speeches, you hear the echoes of over a century of Jim Crow union > organizing in the United States. He may side with corporations against > many other workers, but then there is little difference there since many > of the AFL craft unions collaborated with employers in breaking > alternative industrial unions (notably the IWW) that tried to organize all > workers. You're confusing demagogy with substantive anti-corporate rhetoric and policies. Immigrants, minorities, and scabs have always been used to push down wages, and the pro-labor left has always taken note of this. The right wing has chosen to emphasize the immigrant/ minority dimension for obvious reasons. A more clever fascist would embrace unionism as well (as Coughlin did), but Buchanan to my knowledge has not had anything good to say about unionism or direct action by labor. You are giving more credence to his appeal than it deserves, even in terms of face value. Buchanan has some ways to go to effectively coopt labor into a true fascist movement. One reason may be that such a process mobilizes workers who become fair game for progressive appeals. > The problem with class appeals is that it can easily swell on > free-floating resentments against the rich that are easily redirected > against other, less powerful scapegoats. Just witness the career of > Father Coughlin or other racist, anti-semitic "class appeals." Or the > shifting of Communist votes in France to Le Pen's movement. Obviously there are good and bad class appeals. An organized movement with well-specified reform proposals would be difficult for the right to coopt. > The alternative tradition of progressive organizing in the US is not one > that tried to remain silent on the issue of race--that was the failed > strategy of the Knights of Labor and the Debsian Socialist Party--but that > confronted racism directly as a strategic and moral imperative in > building a class-based movement. It was the strategy of CIO unions > encouraged in this strategy by the Communist Party, A. Phillip Randolph, > and a range of other forces making anti-racism a key component of the > fight for justice I don't know that AP Randolph had much to do with organizing white workers through the adroit use of combined class/anti-racist appeals. He did organize black railroad workers who obviously didn't need to receive preachments against racism. My understanding of CIO/CP history in the 1930's is that the class issue was at the forefront, while anti-racism was an important but secondary theme at best. Here and below you seem to be romanticizing the CIO record on race. It was certainly an improvement over the AFL but it had a fair ways to go, and still does. > It was a movement that actively promoted equality of opportunity in the > workforces they organized and made sure that workers understood the moral > and strategic reasons why short-term advantages of white supremacy should > be sacrificed. It actively opened the doors of opportunity to all workers > and as World War II made the US a key employer and contracts, parts of the > labor movement made affirmative action employment a key demand. A. Really? What parts? > Phillip Randolf threatened a march on Washington unless Roosevelt > implemented such an affirmative action policy and left-led unions forced > such policies on employers. Union leaders like Harry Bridges of the ILWU > were so dedicated to affirmative action that when the war ended and some > workers needed to be laid off, he advocated abandoning seniority rules in > order to preserve racial diversity in the workplace. I'm not a labor history expert, but my suspicion is that Bridges was more an exception than typical of the industrial union leaders. > In the post-McCarthy period, we had a period of union consolidation where > preserving the privileges of the unionized class took precedence over the > broadest definitions of class, race and gender equality. This had the Here again you seem to be postulating a kind of "reconstruction" era in the labor movement which unduly elevates what came before. There was certainly a turn against socialism in labor leaderships and a purge of the left, but that's a different story. > short-term advantage of significantly raising wages for this privileged > class of workers but it also reinforced racial and gender exclusions in a > whole range of unions. As women entered the workplace in greater numbers, > they saw unions often not as an ally but more of a hindrance in gaining > equality. The same was true for many minority workers as well. > The result was the divergence of energy by those parts of the working > class away from unions and class organizing towards more particularistic > survival strategies (much as Booker T. Washington advocated against unions > and as blacks became strike breakers at the turn of the century in the age > of white craft unions). > > However, we are seeing the emergence of a new unionism and class movement > that sees anti-racism as a key component of building a stronger > progressive movement. The goal is not to "overcome" racism by masking it > with an overwhelming class appeal but to make anti-racism a key part of > building a class movement. In California, where white supremacy was the I haven't seen it yet. I do see more activity of the traditional sort, which is all to the good. And we see LP-type activity which has yet to bear fruit. I frankly have doubts that a movement which gives an anti-racist demand equal standing with, say, a demand for full employment will get very far. I hope I'm wrong. I do think a movement which enjoys some success in winning class-wide demands becomes situated to pursue explicit anti-racist politices. Even if it is not so situated, or if it fails to exercise initiative in this direction, the condition of minorities will still have improved by virtue of their predominance in the working class. > backbone of unionism in the 19th century, the unions lined up to publicly > oppose the anti-immigrant Prop 187 in 1994 and opposed Prop 209 in 1996. > The result of this new direct anti-racism stance is a wave of unionization > among low-wage, usually minority janitors, hotel workers, dry wall workers > and tortilla drivers. People of color, especially young people of color, > are more and more supporting unions and identifying with class politics. Obviously there is little or no political difficulty in organizing minority workers to oppose racism! The problem is how to get whites involved too. > Some white workers may resent the sacrifice of their special privileges in > the workplace but that just makes it incumbent on progressives to > forthrightly make the moral and strategic arguments for why all forms of > oppression need to be abolished in order for class organizing to be most > effective. This has to go beyond making a class-only appeal (since that I don't think moral arguments go very far because there is too much scope for alternative moral cases, such as the fundamental one that the moral thing to do is what is best for one's own family, which leaves everything to the individual's imagination. A "strategic" argument, as I said before, presupposes some unifying program/concept which is the object of said strategy, and that concept is class. > will lose the support of workers of color who lose out in our present > caste system of racism) to directly reaching white workers with the > arguments for affirmative action (and better yet, the tougher measures > needed to eradicate workplace discrimination) and the arguments against > anti-immigrant attitudes. Workers of color will probably support strategies which make them better off, even if they are limited to classwide measures which fail to put them at parity with white workers. They have in the past. After all, they don't have much in the way of alternatives. That is not to condone the indifference of whites to discrimination, but to recognize current and plausible realities. > That is a tall order of organizing but it the only one that can be > effective. Class-only organizing failed in the later 19th century and it > would fail today. Buchanism is going to find its ideological niche among What we had in the latter 19th century was craft organizing, hardly white class-only organizing. There was no serious all-white- worker movement. There was an urban, white labor movement dominated by the Irish, to the best of my knowledge. I don't know that it made much progress (as a labor movement) in non-urban, non- Catholic communities. The populists were a different matter, but there you did not have what could be called a class movement. > white workers who see their economic caste advantages slipping away under > pressure of multinational corporate restructuring. Shutting the door to > minority and female workers and shutting down immigration is going to > appeal to those workers. We need a full-throated education campaign to > confront those attitudes, not silence, to deal with the appeal of those > racist strategies. Some white male workers will just have to be written > off if such education campaigns fail but others can be brought around if > forthrightly make the case for racial equality as the key to achieving > class solidarity and a successful anti-corporate movement. Alternatively, you could say that class solidarity subsumes the concept of racial equality. A movement premised on the former is able to pursue the latter with its back covered, so to speak. > It was the failure of Nader to make those education efforts that I > and others condemn. Otherwise, the sowing of class resentment becomes a > freefloating anger that can, extremely easily as history shows, be aimed > at minorities and other scapegoats. Frustrated by the indifference of the white working class to its appeals, the New Left was ultimately exploded by factions -- 'Weatherpeople' and other assorted radicals -- whose fixation on everything but class led to a complete abandonment of the idea. Writing off "some white male workers" was a logical prelude to writing off the working class. A substantive orientation to the idea of class is inconsistent with a selective approach to groups depending on their orientation to race. Bottom line for me is that, yes it is appropriate to motivate the issue of race but to keep it in the context of class. How much and what kind of emphasis it should get we probably would disagree on. I'm less confident than you in what I would characterize as the approach that is more standard in what passes for the U.S. left, and I think I'm more optimistic about what the organized labor and economics-oriented movements are doing. MBS
