raghu wrote: > re: "class trumps race". Yes it certainly does. In the theoretical > world of Marxists.
<< Class doesn't "trump" race for all types of self-identified Marxists. There are a lot of "third worldists." (I don't think it's worth arguing about who's a "true" Marxist and who isn't.) >> Comment It is a good thing that a new generation, my children (son 35, daughters 30 and 26) have a different sensibility and did not grow up in the Jim Crow cage. Discrimination based on color has not vanished from America and feelings (emotions), ideas and behavior rooted in Southern slave relations (blacks as slaves and whites as non-slaves and masters) and Mr. Crow, still persists amongst an increasingly tiny part of a dying population (colonialism).The younger generation is not going to swallow concepts and ideas that run counter to how they understand their real life activity and material relations. The color factor in world history, and then the slow emergence of white supremacy as a material power, predates the formation and consolidation of the capitalist mode of production; is rooted in a slavery that formed the pivot for capital accumulation (the primitive accumulation of capital); which gave impetus to navigation, weapons development, the expansion of science or the slow incremental transition from light and simple manufacture (made by hand) to heavy manufacture as (in mass ship building, steels works, mass production of nails, etc.,); and finally develops as a rationale for the genocidal clearing of Indians from America. What is color discrimination a rationale for today? Or have we sufficiently distant ourselves from an old economic/ideological relations and Jim Crow to look at things different than as in say the 1960's? The moment one strips the old concept of race from their intellectual index, a different complex of shapes and events becomes visible. The idea that "Europeans" are a race, whose distinctive color, eye, skin color and hair texture, is proof of their race, is down right ridiculous. Who invented the concept that class trumps differences of characteristic of a biological root within Marxism and American Marxism? If the statement, "class trumps race" is not taken at face value but examined, another question arises; "what is class abstractly" and as a real material relations in America and why is class important in the here and now? Or for the past 80 or 150 years. What is the validity of class if one never speaks of the actual relations and intersection of class as a material force in the life of our country? Lastly, how does the American people understand class as behavior. Americans have never witnessed - behaved, as if there is basically two great classes in America outlined in Marx Communists Manifesto. I understand class in the general Marx sense of its meaning, but find it's more intellectual challenging to unravel the flowing and changing way in which the American people, and especially our working class understand and acts out it "classness." Obama has energized not just me but millions as these millions energized his campaign and made fun, for me to once again shift through American history and openly speak of the Third American Revolution: The Proletarian Revolution. These are exciting - but dangerous times. Class trumps race seems to be a slogan rather than an attempt to come to grips with why the voting sections of our working class entered into a complex unity of class and merging of identity with various layers within classes, repudiating the last 8 years of capital rule as Bush W. And this alignment - intersection of class, over ran quantitative distinctions and real inequality voiced as sex, gender, disability or challenge; skin color and hair texture. Obama hit the American working class like a Mack truck and energized a pool of hate from the far left to the far right. Rather than material concepts and terms like skin color and hair texture, or the color factor, the terms race is re-energized to hide the obvious. Whites are not a race. Does class in fact trump, have an intrinsic higher value - importance, than skin color and hair texture or the color factor in history? The question makes no sense. Does class trump have an intrinsic higher value, than Jim Crow, or institutional racism or discrimination? Does class trump the persistence of color discrimination? These question make no-sense because the underlying concepts make no sense to a large mass of people. One thing is clear to me. The Marxists, like some economists of the past, have a devil of a time ridding themselves of old concepts that have revealed themselves to be inaccurate and useless. If only these Marxists were as revolutionary as our productive capital in the shape of real commodities, which must shift and change; complete its cycle of conversion; continuously reproduce itself and expand in the face of real world change or die a horrible death in the market place. Marxist tend to pay no price - literally, for mistaken propositions. Race. I cannot prove to any one that whites are not a race, an "evil race," if they have already proven to themselves that whites are in fact a biologically ace. Its funny how the extreme left collapses into the extreme right and on this basis intersect with the race Marxists. But then against the concept of class and real American history are virtually never applied and articulated as a living index by the race Marxists. The race concept Marxists remind me of Neo in the movie the Matrix. Even after Neo agreed to swallow the Marx pill of freedom and then was bodily freed from bondage by Marxists, he still had to be freed of his Jim Crow, or rather mental chains to realize he was "the One." Being "the one" did not mean he could free humanity, but that he had an important role amongst the other "ones." The race Marxists as a group, remind me of those slaves who refused to flee to the North or the Northern army lines during the Civil War. Many of these slaves were fearless, but refused to flee because they did not know they were slaves. They earnestly thought slave was just another name like mechanic or blacksmith. U a slave Neo. WL. **************From Wall Street to Main Street and everywhere in between, stay up-to-date with the latest news. (http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000023)
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