Re: Neo-conservatism and workers

The problem I have with this interpretation is that it obscures the internal
heterogeneity
of the working class in terms of different levels of reward and power.
Workers in the primary and secondary sectors within a core economy, or
workers in core and peripheral countries may share a common theoretical
location, based on non-ownership of means of production and selling of
labor, within the mode of production, but that commonality  has little
significance for the concrete task of  identifying and mobilizing the
practical forces for radical politics.  What are the practical class
interests of a doctor or a highly paid architect  in the
United States that would lead them into a class alliance with the
peasants-workers in Bangladesh in the struggle for global socialism?  Long
ago, Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin, in somewhat different conceptual planes,
addressed the same problem of internal fragmentation of the working class.

Manjur Karim


----- Original Message -----
From: <wwagar@binghamton.edu>
To: Alan Spector <spectors@netnitco.net>
Cc: g kohler <gkohler@accglobal.net>; George Pennefather
<poseidon@eircom.net>; <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2000 8:43 PM
Subject: Re: Neo-conservatism and workers


>
> This post was interrupted last week by a technical glitch.
>
> I think it is of the utmost importance to maintain a distinction
> between those who are workers and those who are owners of workers.
> Contemporary capitalism makes this difficult, with its co-optation of
> workers through "profit-sharing" and "stock option" tactics.  But the fact
> remains:  the world is divided into those who work for a living, i.e.,
> who derive most of their income from their labor, in the form of wages,
> salaries, commissions, royalties, or fees;  and those who derive most of
> their income from their ownership of "securities."  I exempt retirees who
> derive most of their income from securities acquired as an additional
> reward for their labor.  A great and impassable gulf separates the two
> categories.  A composer of music, an architect, a medical doctor, a
> university professor, or a store manager belongs to the working class, as
> surely as a plumber, construction laborer, salesclerk, nurse, or
> stenographer.  All are subject to the vagaries and vicissitudes of the
> market place.  All work for their livelihood.
>
> Under socialism, as often said before, the distinction between
> manual and brain labor vanishes.  So let us, conceptually at least, forget
> about the difference between peasant and proletarian and petty bourgeois.
> We're all in the same blasted boat!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Warren
>