From owner-marxism Mon Sep 11 17:22:37 1995
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 13:22:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@nyxfer.blythe.org>
Subject: Re: Unproductive labor: imperialist countries
On Sun, 10 Sep 1995 glevy@acnet.pratt.edu wrote:
> Dear mim3:
>
> In your last post, you seem to use the words "whites" and "white-collar
> workers" interchangeably. Was that a mistake?
MIM replies: Right, I was telescoping too much. Whites became a majority white collar workers in that same 1980 Census, so on a group level we mush the two things together.
When we speak of a country's working class, we make a generalization.
In the imperialist countries, the working class is a majority
or headed to a majority of parasites. Within the borders of
the United States, the Euro-Amerikan workers have such a small
proportion of productive laborers that it is not possible for
them to form a class. Rather we have scattered pockets of exploited
white workers who are on the whole influenced by the far more
numerous white-collar class.
Pat for the Maoist Internationalist Movement
From owner-marxism Mon Sep 11 17:43:54 1995
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 13:43:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@nyxfer.blythe.org>
Subject: Re: Unproductive labor: imperialist countries
On Mon, 11 Sep 1995, Louis N Proyect wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Sep 1995, Zodiac wrote:
> >
> > MIM employs tinker toy Marxism with an eye to encouraging a fundamental
> > rift in the international proletariat... (as if it needs help right now).
> > I suppose one shouldn't be surprised at this, since Maoists don't have
> > anything to do with the proletariat. They are peasantists. (And the
> > ultimate sectarians carrying the answer to the suffering of the masses in
> > their hip pocket.)
> >
> Louis: I think we're going to have a jolly time with our Maoist comrades.
> Ever since Leo Casey disappeared, things have gotten a bit dull around here.
>
>
> --- from list marxism@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
Maybe you should form alt.marxism.entertain or try applying
for editorial positions at George.
Pat for MIM
--- from list marxism@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
------------------
From owner-marxism Mon Sep 11 17:40:47 1995
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 13:40:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Unproductive labor: imperialist countries
On Mon, 11 Sep 1995, Maoist Internationalist Movement wrote:
>
> Maybe you should form alt.marxism.entertain or try applying
> for editorial positions at George.
>
> Pat for MIM
>
Louis: Hey, that message was supposed to be private to Zodiac and I
accidentally posted it to the list. I apologize, fellas. No hard feelings. Put it there.
By the way, there weren't any jokes in the NACLA piece on Sendero I just posted. Why don't you tell us where you stand on that?
Dr. Louis Proyect
Department of Hydrophonics,
Columbia University
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.J. Wodehouse: "You know, whatever you may say against old Jeeves--and
I, for one, have never wavered in my opinion that his views on shirts for evening wear are hidebound and reactionary to a degree--you've got to admit that the man can plan a campaign. Napoleon could have taken his correspondence course. When he sketches out a scheme, all you have to do is to follow it in every detail, and there you are."
--- from list marxism@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
From owner-marxism Tue Sep 12 00:41:44 1995
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 20:41:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@nyxfer.blythe.org>
Subject: Lenin on the future of the labor movement
Lenin--
"On the one hand, there is the tendency of the
bourgeoisie and the opportunists to convert
a handful of very rich and privileged nations
into 'eternal' parasites on the body of the rest
of mankind, to 'rest on the laurels' of the
exploitation of Negroes, Indians, etc., keeping
them in subjection with the aid of excellent
weapons of extermination provided by modern
militarism. On the other hand, there is the
tendency of the ITAL masses END, who are more
oppressed than before and who bear the whole
brunt of imperialist wars, to cast off this yoke
and to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It is in
the struggle between these tendencies that
the history of the labour movement will now inevitably
develop."
Lenin, "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism"
This quote will not appeal to those not claiming Lenin in
their tradition. For those who do, they should notice
some points above:
1) It was not Lenin or MIM that split the working class;
the imperialists did it.
2) Of the two tendencies above, the tendency of the
masses has lost out so far this century on the whole.
3) Lenin did not say the issue of the labor aristocracy
was one of ethnicity alone. In fact, it was an issue
for "the labour movement."
The course of class struggle this century does matter to
those claiming our Marxist-Leninist tradition. Had
revolutions ended capitalism in 1920 or 1930, things would
be different--without a split in the working class.
Pat for the Maoist Internationalist Movement
--- from list marxism@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
From owner-marxism Tue Sep 12 01:21:23 1995
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 21:21:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@nyxfer.blythe.org>
Subject: Re: Unproductive labor: imperialist countries
Again on the subject of imperialist country "labor,"
here we can raise a quote from the COMINTERN when Lenin
still attended meetings and Trotsky was still a member.
(I can hardly wait to see the Trots worm out of this.)
"Our Attitude to the Semi-Proletarian Strata"
"In Western Europe there is no class other than the proletariat
which is capable of playing the significant role in the
world revolution that, as a consequence of the war and the land
hnuger, the peasants did in Russia. But, even so, a section
of the Western-European peasantry and a considerable part of the
urban petty bourgeoisie and broad layers of the so-called
middle class, of office workers etc., are facing deteriorating
standards of living and, under the pressure of rising prices,
the housing problems and insecurity, are being shaken out of their
political apapthy and drawn into the struggle between revolution and
counterrevolution. . . It is also important to win the
sympathy of technicians, white-collar workers, the middle-
and lower-ranking civil servants and the intelligentsia,
who can assist the proletarian dictatorship in the period of
transition from capitalism to Communism by helping with the problems
of state and economic administration. If such layers
identify with the revolution, the enemy will be demoralized
and the popular view of the proletariat as
an isolated group will be discredited."
COMINTERN, 1921 "On Tactics"
Alan Adler, ed., ITAL Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of
the First Four Congresses of the Third International END
(London: Ink Links, 1980), pp. 293-4.
We don't like to argue from authority by quoting the great texts.
However, there are two things here. One is that there is
a call to purge MIM from the list. We would ask readers to
consider MIM's "credentials" by examining these last two
quotes of the Lenin era.
Secondly, the text is an interesting
historical point, in considering that "office workers" were
NOT considered proletarian when Marxism-Leninism first
considered the question. It raises the question, at what
point did imperialist country Marxists start to take it for
granted that white-collar workers were proletarian? It also
points toward the social-patriotic deviation of simplistic
faith in "our" workers.
Furthermore, (and I would advise re-reading the quote above),
without counting office-workers as part of the proletariat,
we cannot arrive at the "majority" of white workers being
proletarian within U.S. borders--as is so important to the
conscious social-democrats and others enamored of
bourgeois democracy's siren call.
Pat for the Maoist Internationalist Movement
P.S. Does anyone think I'm making headway toward
getting back to the original issue I wanted to handle
here on this list?
P.P.S. I hope the person who called us "peasantist"
will either act with great determination to separate
the office-workers from the proletariat or alternatively,
reject the COMINTERN tradition. In the quote above,
it is clear that office-workers are seen as lower
on the Marxist-Leninist totem-pole than peasants are.
--- from list marxism@lists.village.virginia.edu ---