From mim3@mim.org Fri Dec 5 20:25:10 1997
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 20:25:08 -0500 (EST)
From:
Hugh Rodwell said November 24, 1997:
In all the incredibly scholastic and static discussion on the revolutionary position of workers in the imperialist metropolises, in which it is generally assumed that the whole of the working class in imperialist countries is one great labour aristocratic mass despite the obvious evidence to the contrary provided by such struggles as the Liverpool Dockers, etc,MIM3 replies:
Hugh, from this and other comments about the dockers you have made in the "Marxism Space," it is obvious to me that you make a good syndicalist. What is less clear to me is how good your Marxism is.
More than other people on this list, I have noticed that Hugh engages the issues of Marxism when it comes to the issue of the labor aristocracy. However, it seems to me rather like Hugh is aware there is a huge abyss, goes to the edge of it sometimes, and stares at it from afar, but cannot commit himself to determining which side of the abyss we must jump to. So in effect, he acknowledges the question of the abyss and then rejects answering it.
Hugh, I wish you would address how you differ from a syndicalist and whether or not you think surplus-value extraction and imperialist exploitation are central to Marxism. The dockers here in the U$A are the internationalist exceptions, the one finger against the nine as Mao would say about those subjectivist empiricists who refuse to generalize. Perhaps your Liverpool dockers have a long list of internationalist achievements in solidarity with the real international proletariat also. However, I submit that you are a spirited petty-bourgeois syndicalist, with some internationalist ideas, but none thoroughgoing enough to force you into an internationalist class analysis.
Relative to the Detroit news strike, the dockers' strike I can say is at least in the productive sector. Our critics on this list were not honest enough to ever acknowledge that the Detroit news strike is about paper- shufflers (not truckers as some people tried to make out when worming out of the confrontation of their non-Marxism). But if the dockers are net appropriators of labor, they are petty-bourgeoisie. For all your cheerleading, nothing can change that the dockers' strike is a petty-bourgeois strike, and your syndicalism is as yet petty-bourgeois syndicalism--from the point of view of Marxism. You see, syndicalism is NOT the same thing as Marxism.
The same goes to Proyect, Henwood and others who attack MIM with emotional references to alleged worker struggles. If you would like to criticize us from the point of view of syndicalism, you have made your point. If you must continue to claim you are Marxist, then you must answer the questions we have posed to Henwood, Olaechea etc. Far from "assuming" as you say, "the whole of the working class in imperialist countries is one great labour aristocratic mass," MIM has proved it several different ways. The question of whether or not these imperialist country workers are petty-bourgeoisie or exploited is not even close. Hence, I offer you our same magazine deal that I offered Henwood. Alternatively, I offer you the same formula I offered Henwood to collect your own information on:
Surplus-value extracted from imperialist country workers by imperialists each year =
Total new wealth/profits gained by the imperialists each year MINUS discrimination profits MINUS repatriated profits MINUS transfer of surplus-value from the Third World productive sector to the imperialist country unproductive sector
The answer to this formula is not even CLOSE to being positive; hence the imperialist country workers are petty-bourgeoisie. If you are not interested in rebutting our factual analysis, let me suggest to you that you are not really interested in Marxism. The International Workers of the World (IWW) or the like might be your best bet.
"The professional Cabinet Ministers and parliamentarians, the traitors to the proletariat and the "practical" socialists of our day, have left all criticism of parliamentarism to the anarchists, and, on this wonderfully reasonable ground, they denounce all criticism of parliamentarism as "anarchism"!! It is not surprising that the proletariat of the "advanced" parliamentary countries, disgusted with such "socialists" as the Scheidemanns, Davids, Legiens, Sembats, Renaudels, Hendersons, Vanderveldes, Staunings, Brantings, Bissolatis, and Co., has been with increasing frequency giving its sympathies to anarcho-syndicalism, in spite of the fact that the latter is merely the twin brother of opportunism." (Lenin, "The State and Revolution")