From owner-marxism Sat Sep 16 15:40:21 1995
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 11:40:21 -0400
From: dhenwood@panix.com (Doug Henwood)
Subject: homeownership
This homeownership thing isn't as straightforward as the MIM would have it.
The European country with the highest rate of homeownership is Ireland; the
lowest, Switzerland. The US state with the highest was, last time I
checked, West Virginia; California and New York were among the lowest. Does
this tell us anything about the respective politics of the countries?
MIM seems to be taking a lot of ideology at face value - i.e., the
embourgeoising nature of homeownership. It what Marxian sense is a "home" a
capital asset? It throws off no income, and may not even appreciate
significantly in value. What homeowner could liquidate his or her asset and
turn it into a real capital asset, one that generates some M'? People
either live in their owned crib, or if they sell it, immediately sink the
proceeds into another.
Doug
--
Doug Henwood
[dhenwood@panix.com]
Left Business Observer
250 W 85 St
New York NY 10024-3217
USA
+1-212-874-4020 voice
+1-212-874-3137 fax
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From owner-marxism Sat Sep 16 16:30:45 1995
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 12:30:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement
Subject: Re: "Workers' Lib"
On Fri, 15 Sep 1995, Lisa Rogers wrote:
> I enjoyed Tom Condit's piece on the "working class".
>
> All this quibbling about who's a worker vs. prole, who's productive
> by what standard, etc. is a bit puzzling to me.
>
> MIM's approach sounds rather moralistic and exclusionary, as anyone
> who is not "productive" is a parasite who benefits from the system.
> By productive I think MIM is not referring to production of surplus
> value, but to production of physical items which meet some human
> need. But what about the rest of us poor slobs?
MIM replies: Lisa Rogers asks why separate workers from proletarians?
So perhaps MIM is correct that Marx talked about this in
Capital, and the COMINTERN didn't originally include white-collar
workers as proletarians, what does that do for the price of beans?
Partly, Lisa Rogers answers herself by noting the issue
of economic priorities and calling it MIM's moralizing.
When we get to socialism, how will priorities be re-arranged?
And how do we answer the question of reparations to the Third
World? These questions are answered by our approach. We also believe
that such an ideology is what will mobilize the required forces
to bring down imperialism.
It is true that MIM has an ideological vision of internationalism
and a world without classes, gender oppression or nations. And
science is useful to us toward that end.
However, there are numerous strategic implications of the
division between workers and proletarians.
1. Waste of time.
If you organize for a class's demands that
really can't lead forward, you waste your time, and provide
an opening to fascism. Such was the case in Germany in the early 1930s.
(We have a forthcoming article on that in MT.)
2. Dialectical responses to your action of organizing
a. Look for shreds of oppression in the white working class.
I notice Scott Marshall grappling with white collar de-skilling
and he adopts nearly entirely the Monthly Review line. But if
you go back and read those posts from Scott, he also points out
pressures from Indian competitors and internal competitors and
how some workers have called for restricting immigration.
What Scott doesn't do is tell us what the implications are.
When you organize for a labor aristocracy demand within imperialism,
the dialectical response of those workers is going to be to call
for closing borders to people who really have nothing to
lose but their chains--proletarians. If we are always
playing on the fears of the white working class of
degradation, the Le Pens of the world will capitalize on it.
And Le Pen seems much more immediate to the labor aristocracy
than the beautiful world of communism without borders and with
great economic cooperation.
b. Another dialectical response is the Amerika-first
response of Perot and Buchanan. If you play on the fact
that workers here are losing their jobs to companies that
move abroad, look again who benefits!
We have organized several showings of "Controlling Interest"--
a video--but when we go to audience participation we sometimes
get swamped with responses on how international trade should
be cut back, immigration curtailed and Japan dealt with more toughly.
The video has a good side in talking about Chile and the
imperialist state, but because it shows white workers losing
their jobs to the Third World and organizing to stop it,
many go home with conclusions that we unleash by showing the
video. Ultimately the incorrect line of the makers of
"Controlling Interest" causes this problem that needs to
be struggled against.
3. Compass for yourself.
Lenin and Zinoviev came up with this distinction between workers
and proletarians also to guide leadership. When World War I
started, the social-patriots scolded Lenin and other good communists
by saying look, the vast majority of workers support the war.
What class do you represent Mr. Lenin, the social-patriots asked.
Others called Lenin ultraleft for getting so far ahead of the workers
by opposing the inter-imperialist war. So Lenin and Zinoviev
came back with a definition of proletarian and how it is a curse
at that time to be too popular--even in the midst of a huge
crisis like World War I.
Similar questions arise when talking about "working class governments"
and the united front. What kind of government represents a step
forward and why? Would a British Labour Party government be
a real step forward? Whose interests lead the united front?
The Progressive Labor Party does not cut MIM any slack on this
issue either because they favor the multiracial, integrationist
approach and believe racism lowers white worker wages. At the same
time, I will credit their Central Committee for saying that if
we were correct it would have far-reaching implications.
4. Dictatorship of the proletariat.
Finally, our approach points toward the social
composition of a strong dictatorship of the proletariat.
It leads to the conclusion that since there is no
white proletariat, there will have to be a joint
dictatorship of oppressed nations proletarians over imperialist
remnants.
We still have the job of utilizing contradictions within the
imperialist nations, especially between young and old, but
ultimately, a dictatorship of the proletariat cannot come
from within the imperialist nations.
The international proletariat must ally itself with peasants
and utilize whatever enlightened semi-proletarians it can find
to exercise dictatorship over the imperialists and the allies
that the imperialists mobilize.
Pat for MIM
P.S. Lisa Rogers asks if she was not the type of
worker ready for socialism or was it wrong to organize
for higher teacher wages. We don't care that much,
but doubt that wages have much to do with teachers'
interest in Marxism. Basically such a wage struggle means organizing to
appropriate more surplus labor from the Third World.
The type of work
she is talking about is intellectual. Mao said
intellectuals always go on revolutionary stage first.
The workers go on stage last, but they are obviously
the ones to complete the drama.
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From owner-marxism Sat Sep 16 16:50:04 1995
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 12:50:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement
Subject: Re: homeownership
On Sat, 16 Sep 1995, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> MIM seems to be taking a lot of ideology at face value - i.e., the
> embourgeoising nature of homeownership. It what Marxian sense is a "home" a
> capital asset? It throws off no income, and may not even appreciate
> significantly in value. What homeowner could liquidate his or her asset and
> turn it into a real capital asset, one that generates some M'? People
> either live in their owned crib, or if they sell it, immediately sink the
> proceeds into another.
>
> Doug Henwood
> Left Business Observer
MIM replies: Thank you Doug. This post shows how struggle leads to
advance, because I forgot to raise what you did so crisply.
I left out appreciation/speculation. Have you noticed what has
happened in California? Ordinary people who bought houses in
California a generation ago, many are now millionaires or well
on their way. When you think about how much income $150,000 in
assets generates, you can see the potential.
Now just because a capitalist sells an investment and
immediately proceeds to sink the money into another investment
doesn't mean there was no M', does it Doug? It would be
vulgar Marxism to say there is only M' when the capitalist
diverts some of the M' to other forms consumption.
The same goes for homeowners. Ordinary Californians can now
sell their homes and choose to live elsewhere and take in
a huge M'-M gain. Only by defining it as necessary for
Californians to live in their luxury estates does it become
possible to avoid that, which is why MIM focusses in
on what is truly necessary to reproduce the white worker?
How many Guatemalan workers or peasants can just sit in their
houses and walk away with a $100,000 or $500,000 gain?
People from California and other places with real estate
speculation, like the coasts of Florida, know what I am talking
about from experience. I challenge Doug to back up what
he is saying with numbers. Show us that the average settler
gains nothing from real estate speculation.
Pat for MIM
From owner-marxism Sun Sep 17 18:06:33 1995
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 14:06:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement
Subject: Re: homeownership
On Sun, 17 Sep 1995, Jj Plant wrote:
> In-Reply-To:
> In the UK home ownership has become an economic (and sometimes physical)
> deathtrap for a lot of people, through the fall of their value of their
> property below what they have borrowed on it - "negative equity" is
> affecting maybe as many as a quarter million families. Repossessions by
MIM replies: Even a quarter of a million is not a large portion of
England. We would never deny such pockets of difficulty. In fact,
here in imperialist North America, about half of poverty or more
is thrust into the internal colonies. The question of the
proportion/percentage is relevant in the ability to form a class.
How swamped are these quarter of a million by impressions from
people outside their group?
I find what you say interesting and would like to know more about
the details and statistics. It is our thesis that England is the
same situation as imperialist North America on the question of
the proletariat.
Being greedy we'd also like to hear what you have to say about the
origin of profits and interest (as a return to capital) in England.
We would contend the surplus-value relevant is too small to be
accounted for by anything other than exploitation and
super-exploitation of Third World and national minority
labor.
Pat for MIM
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From owner-marxism Sun Sep 17 18:44:52 1995
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 14:44:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement
Subject: Re: homeownership and Black Panthers
On Fri, 15 Sep 1995, jones/bhandari wrote:
> 1. The US Census data shows how difficult it is to differentiate the
> 'races' by home ownership. More than thirty percent of 'white' households
> don't own their domicile, and almost 50 percent of Black households do.
> The great racial divide seems not be established here. Of course 30 percent
> of the white population is many times in absolute size half the Black
> population, so it seems by MIM's own standards they now have a sufficiently
> sizable group of settlers who could be potentially revolutionary.
MIM replies: The gap between Blacks and whites in homeownership and
equity is large enough to remind one how whites have no proletariat.
However, our argument does not stem from a relative comparison.
We fully believe there is also a Black labor aristocracy, just not
as obvious as the white one.
The comparison of two groups within the imperialist beast cannot
determine anything about the transfer of surplus labor from outside
imperialism's own borders into the United Snakes and other imperialist
societies. The fact that more than half the white work force can
sit around in office work, shuffle paper and work tepidly toward
technical and scientific progress is all an indication that they
can survive on the necessities of life provided by Third World
proletarians repressed by U.S.-backed military regimes. Meanwhile,
various Protestants impressed with their own work ethic and all
revisionists of Marxism who uphold a vision of class/nation-neutral,
property-less technical advance believe they "made it themselves" and
deserve their own living standard from their own individual
achievements. They forgot that Marx said people are the greatest
productive force and that technical advance never occurs outside
a class structure, in this case a system of class relations
involving superexploitation. (That's to agree with Condit on class
as not just a thing, but to agree in a way that Condit did not
intend.)
As for that 30 percent, it is young people who expect not as a matter
of ideology, but reality, that they will own houses some day.
It is also the elderly who can't take it with them and some
scattered yuppies who like to move around a lot and live the high
life. The percentage of whites that is hard-core renters again
is not sufficient to form a class.
>
> 5. MIM points to the Black Panther Party. Its isolation and defeat--in the
> absence of mass-based class conscious action--seems not have to taught MIM
> anything. But perhaps they are preparing again this sort of suicidal
MIM replies: This is more idealism. First they blame
the Black Panther Party's relative lack of support from white workers
as the Black Panther's fault instead of the labor aristocracy's fault.
Notice which of us has a materialist theory that explains that fact.
Second they talk about the BPP defeat when there has been no greater success in communist movements this century in imperialist North America. The Communist Party reached its height, not right after 1917, but later in the Stalin era. It went down the tubes in the post-Stalin
period, contrary to those who constantly tell us to water down our politics.
Even at its height, the CPUSA never accomplished the breadth of support
that the Black Panthers had. Nonetheless we are proud of both and
point to them against the Trotskyists and social-democrats who
have their differing view of success.
Pat for MIM
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