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On 6/7/2010 6:10 PM, S. Artesian wrote:
> It's interesting that Joaquin would use this example of 1963-1965--
> interesting because rather than look for the source of the civil rights
> movement and the concession of the bourgeoisie in the relations between
> capital and wage-labor, in capital's need for wage-labor, Joaquin looks to
> the consensus of the bourgeoisie as being the critical element in its own
> right. It's all about the bourgeoisie's mind set, all the time, for Joaquin,
> whether it's the bourgeoisie in Brazil struggling with "semi-colonialism,"
> or the bourgeoisie in the US, whether it's Lula or Obama.
S Artesian took the time a couple of weeks ago to reply in some detail
to my objections to his position. Due to my work schedule and various
personal circumstances only now am I getting to complete the response.
It isn't really meant to restart or continue the debate -- unless my
friend S Artesian wants to-- but to acknowledge his seriousness by
providing in a summary way my take on our differences. It may also be of
interest to the layer of subscribers who might have taken an interest in
these matters.
That way, when some new event once again counterposes different
appreciations, for example, S Artesian's views and mine, although it
doesn't at all necessarily have to be the two of us, the clarity in the
discussion might be able to spiral a little higher for the benefit of
all sides.
* * *
S Artesian argues that the civil rights movement was a result of the
mechanization of agriculture in the South and the resulting migration
of Blacks to the North and their proletarianization.
There is no doubt that this is part of the backdrop to the civil rights
movement and the elimination of Jim Crow -- but only part, even if a
major one. But in my mind Sartesian did not respond to my question,
which was why the prohibition against Jim Crow discrimination came in
1963-1965, not five or ten years before or after. He says that for me,
"it's all about the bourgeoisie's mind set," counterposing any such
understanding to the structural changes in the economic role of the
Black population. I think he misconstrues empowering structural changes
which push, so to speak, in a certain direction, with mechanistic
determination.
Thus, S. Artesian leaves aside any number of other extremely important
"superstructural" influences, from the participation of Blacks in WWII,
the outcome of that war including the anti-colonial revolution, the cold
war, and the ideological stance and propaganda needs of the United
States in the worldwide "cold war" conflict, to the assassination of
president Kennedy how this affected the balance in domestic U.S.
politics over the next couple of years. And of course S Artesian leaves
out what --from a POLITICAL point of view-- was most central, the Black
movement.
[A footnote on my use of "political": I view political activity as
relating to and trying to influence social forces and layers, especially
those that are in evident motion or evolution. It DOES NOT mean "taking
positions" nor "intervening" nor anything else that comes down to
writing articles, preaching, or shouting correct slogans at the masses
as they march by.]
The idea that structural changes in the Black population and its
insertion into the U.S. economy "caused" the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and Voting Rights Act of 1965 is vulgar, mechanistic economic
determinism. Yes, they were, absolutely, part of the underlying material
shifts that cleared the way for political changes in a certain
direction, but not, in and of themselves alone, or
overwhelmingly/primarily, the content or the driving force in those changes.
They were not the content but the context (part of it) in which the
Black population fought to take control of its own destiny, but this
context did not determine automatically that there would be such a
struggle, nor its immediate demands and long term goals, nor the degree
to which it would be successful and the degree to which it left much
still to be done.
Thus in my view these sorts of structural economic "explanation" in and
of themselves explain very little, for those changes in the Black
population had started at least a half century earlier (not just in
1940), so the claim would have to be that there was a "tipping point," a
point of inflection or "dialectical qualitative change" where the
accumulating quantitative changes in where Blacks lived and how they
made a living "forced" the change in their social and political status.
Good luck trying to make an argument of such precise determinism.
If the response is that wartime demands for labor and the mechanization
of Southern Agriculture made the difference, it would be necessary to
explain why THAT magnitude of change, and not some other, drove the
changes, and why it took two decades AFTER the end of the war, not one
decade or three, for the change to take place.
Also, one would THEN need to explain WHY the change of labor status of
Mexican peasants (due to NAFTA hyper-subsidized corn imports into Mexico
which ruined a large part of the farming population) and the subsequent
emigration of large numbers of Mexicans to the United States in the last
decade and a half does not lead TODAY to a legalization of that
population, but instead increasingly to a Jim Crow-type apartheid
system, which in reality is a return to Dred Scott.
Arizona is already making it a misdemeanor for undocumented persons to
simply *be* in the state (trespass, and it become a felony upon multiple
convictions), and the Supreme Court a few years ago said that
undocumented immigrants had no standing to sue for labor law violations.
The "comprehensive immigration reform" bills being considered by
Congress would establish a Jim Crow-like second class residency status
for undocumented immigrants, including many, many years of waiting and
restrictive literacy/educational tests ("English only") for getting REAL
"permanent resident" status leading to citizenship and with it the right
to vote.
Waiting in the wings are bills to deny citizenship by birth to children
of undocumented immigrants. Next thong you know you'll need to be a
deputized federal immigration cop to be an obstetrician or a midwife.
And of course it would be a decisive step in furthering the Dred
Scott-ization of undocumented status (The Dred Scott decision by the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 declared Blacks were not part of the
political community of the United States and thus could never be
citizens or have legal standing in the courts, resulting in the famous
dictum that Blacks were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether
unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political
relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white
man was bound to respect."
The decision's author, "Chief Justice" (how's that for unwitting
sarcasm!) Taney, further explained why if was necessary to deny Blacks
citizenship: "It would give to persons of the negro race, ...the right
to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...the full liberty of
speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own
citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs,
and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."
And the 14th Amendment, codifying and extending to Blacks the by then
long-standing common-law doctrine of birthright citizenship, is aimed
precisely at nullifying the Dred Scott decision. The attempt at a
back-door repeal of the 14Th Amendment for Latinos is precisely a
reinstatement of Dred Scott, but not for Blacks --at least not yet-- but
for Latinos.
My point in relation to S Artesian is, IF the economic reductionist
explanation be gives for the change in the status of Blacks in the
United States in the 1960s is correct (the migration of Blacks to cities
and their proletarianization), why does it NOT work the same for
Mexicans migrating to U.S. cities to become proletarians there?
And also, why in the 1980's under Reagan the Democrats and Republicans
agreed to give full permanent resident status to undocumented immigrants
while now there is virtually unanimous consensus (except for a handful
of Latinos) in Congress to DENY them that status (even though there is
no agreement on HOW to do it)?
In my view, the explanation is NOT to be found in profound changes in
the underlying economic structure of U.S. capitalism but instead in the
social and political superstructure, and have to do centrally with the
need of American Imperialism to cohere the core population of its
"nation" around the country's imperialist status, its "legal"
population's privileges and therefore also its wars.
The current anti-immigrant offensive is a byproduct of the xenophobic
hysteria the ruling class *consciously* unleashed in the wake of 9/11. I
say byproduct because I do not believe that the ruling class or its
politicians intended to make the status of undocumented immigrants and
unauthorized immigration in general a central political issue or a focus
of the xenophobia.
But it is a rule of politics that when you try to set controlled forces
into motion, you also set uncontrolled forces into motion.
This ties in with Sartesians denial that there is such a thing as
"semi-colonialism," at least not in what I would consider the major
semicolonial countries in this hemisphere (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico).
But in my view Sartesian's politics are such that it matters little
should he concede these (or some others) really are semicolonial. He
would oppose the national movement of any country whatever its colonial
or semicolonial status.
This I infer from his position that although the Black movement of the
1950's and 1960's "appears ... as an opposition to the oppression of a
whole people," in reality it was not that, but rather, "at core, it is a
struggle for the emancipation of black labor."
This then leads him to conclude that the movement was largely unsuccessful:
"The stalemating of that struggle, and the reversal of some of the gains
of that struggle, has everything to do with the bourgeoisie going on the
offensive against labor starting around 1973."
I believe, on the contrary, that the Black struggle scored enormous
successes even though it did not resolve the Black national question in
the United States once and for all, much less the class question
(because "Black labor" cannot be emancipated without the emancipation of
the entire working class).
But most of all I disagree that the Black movement or any other national
movement can be reduced to a "core" or essence of "a struggle for the
emancipation of ... labor." I believe the opposite, that in oppressed
nations "a struggle for the emancipation of labor" cannot be pursued
outside of and in counterposition to the social and political framework
of a national movement, even though national movements are, by their
very character as NATIONAL movements, multiclass socio-political
movements (which is WHY you can't simply liquidate the national movement
by dismissing it as merely an empty form which simply clothes the naked
class interests of the working class).
* * *
I also suspect I disagree, at least in part, with what SArtesian
describes as "the bourgeoisie going on the offensive against labor
starting around 1973."
I agree in this sense: around 1970 or 1971 it became clear that the
ruling class had brought to a close the post-WWII period of
extraordinary concessions to the U.S. working class and its allies,
which were, yes, a product of pressure from working and oppressed
people, but from a ruling class view were clearly intended to cohere the
U.S. working class around the new "American" national project/identity
as the world's pre-eminent imperialist power.
This involved REVERSING the long-standing de-facto status of the Irish,
Jews, Italians and so on as (to speak in today's terms) "not fully
white." The "fully American" layer previously were the WASPs (White
Anglo-Saxon Protestants). That is why there wasn't an Irish-descended or
Papist POTUS until Kennedy in the 1960's. And I believe the issue of
Kennedy's Catholicism (and it was an issue) was really a proxy for
Kennedy being of Irish descent.
I say I only agree in part because it has become common on the left to
posit a ruthless, desperate, no-holds-barred ruling class offensive
against the rights and standard of living of working people in the U.S.
since 1970 or so.
I believe this narrative is false. The "ruling class offensive" has been
carefully calibrated and while it is clear in some senses it has
increased exploitation (the best measure I know of is the overall
distribution of national income and the share going to wages, pensions
and so on), it has not lowered the average standard of living of working
people in the United States. That is clear from myriad statistics about
size and equipment of houses, number of possessions (everything from
color TV sets to cars) and their quality, the diminishing portion of
income dedicated to necessities like food and clothing, etc.
I DON'T remember where S. Artesian stands on this, if he has said, but
his statement would be read a certain way by most of U.S. socialists or
Marxists. I want to make clear I do not agree with those who talk about
US workers being driven to the wall, etc. Also, to be perfectly clear,
this is not a statement about the current economic conjuncture, I'm not
talking about this month's or this year's conditions, but rather the
overall tendency over several years and decades.
It cannot be ruled out --in fact, it seems more and more likely, at
least insofar as politicians can influence these things-- that the
economy will resume its downward spiral after a year or year and a half
uptick thanks to the massive injection of liquidity through the bank, GM
and other "rescues" and the economic stimulus bill.
But IF the politicians don't succeed in sinking the capitalist economy
on a world scale, then the likeliest course, in my opinion, is that the
ruling class will continue with essentially the same policy they have
had since 1970 or so of keeping wages roughly stable in purchasing power
and taking all increases in productivity for themselves. But, again,
that is ONLY IF the politicians, central bankers et. al. don't succeed
in driving the economy over the cliff.
Otherwise, I believe we will be in a new period and the character and
impact of the ruling class policies that began around 1970 or shortly
thereafter will become a historical question.
Joaquín
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