At 22/08/01 15:00 -0400, you forwarded such an admirable analysis of the objective historical factors limiting the progressive consciousness of the working class in the USA that I thought it was going to be impossible to make any comment at all. As the volume of this list falls, IMO, the quality rises. I just hope people have the faith to continue submitting quality posts even if at less frequent intervals. But I would make a comment on the following: >However, this story may be at its end. Globalization, the transcendent >victory of US imperialism, is undermining the economic basis of privilege >for the imperialist working class. > >Now they will fight to maintain their privileges. That fight undoubtedly >will split them: one sector will side with the proimperialist petty >bourgeoisie in an effort to return to the past. Pat Buchanon. > >Another sector will ally with the oppressed, and more oppressed workers. >They will turn against imperialism. > >This was the split that emerged briefly in the 1960's and early 70's, that >will - in my opinion - become the demarcation line of the class struggle in >the USA in this new century. I doubt if the contradictions will lead to a neat split, or anything even recognisable as a split, which might help progressive people side with the more progressive social forces. Perhaps the article theoretically has a gap on the difficult question of how the working class in an imperialist country like the USA or Britain, benefit from its global position. That certainly is in danger, (for example concretely say for car producers). But my sense of the global balance of economic forces is that overall the workers of the imperialist countries will continue to benefit much more than those of the capital poor countries. I see instead a mixed collection of trends of struggle in a country like the USA that will increasingly take up global agendas and challenge their government, at first not very successfully, because it cannot easily make their demands sound popular. Of course on the environment Bush immediately taps into a lot of narrow self interest of US workers (linked to their small producer past) when he says that what comes first is the US economy. There will be theoretical struggles in which the USA finds it increasingly difficult to define a global leadership role in the era after the end of the Cold War and the politics of Jessie Helms. These will impact indirectly. There will be the legal challenges to corporate America which take individal rights to their logical limits, which actually have to become social rights. And we can now see that the militant demonstrations now focussed against global capitalism, are likely to continue, propelled by people who are not the core of the working class, but may be idealist church goers, or idealist lumpen proletariat, who are on the fringes of the capitalist system. That is scrappy, and obviously not with the benefit of direct experience of the USA. I think there is rightly a temptation to point to some positive way forward. I am sure it exists, but it is more complicated than this essay could cover. Chris Burford London _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
