Joaquin addresses some fundamentals in the second half of this essay. Charles
What's behind the heated exchanges on the cost of being Black? Joaquin Bustelo http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-March/026012.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Lause writes: <<A discussion of the "white skin privilege" and "whiteness" doesn't just have to do with a recognition of race, but with the prescription for change that comes with this very specific "theory." That is, that change requires white people to repudiate their whiteness.>> Frankly, I think this is a dodge. I never said a damn thing about white folks "repudiating their whiteness," whatever THAT might mean. I cited a column about an interesting study showing how white people in this country haven't got a clue about the depth, breadth and amount of their privileged situation in comparison to Blacks, with this one group involved in the study assigning a Net Present Value at birth to white privilege of $5000. (They were asked to imagine if right before birth, they were given the choice of being born Black instead of white, how much they would require to choose to be Black. $5000 was the average.) Mark says that as a "materialist" he doesn't see "'white skin privilege' as residing in attitudes but in institutions and channels of power." That is, "as a materialist" Mark doesn't see white supremacist ATTITUDES despite "institutions and channels of power" being IN FACT white supremacist. So "as a materialist," he believes that the consciousness of (at least) white people is INDEPENDENT of their social existence. It seems to me this materialism is not even skin deep. My understanding of materialism leads me to conclude that this society is both structurally ("institutions and channels of power") and ideologically ("attitudes") white supremacist. And a big part of the ideology is that "white/American" is an unchallengeable norm by which everyone/everything else is judged. Unchallengeable because it isn't even recognized as a norm. It is a profoundly ingrained part of U.S. white supremacist attitudes. Take, for example, Carrol's comment: "If someone is beating the hell out of you, you do not explain it by saying that people not being beaten are privileged." Downward deviation from the social and economic status of "white" in the U.S. is here presented as "someone is beating the hell out of you," whereas as whiteness is simply normalcy, the absence of the action of any external influences, things in their natural, neutral state. Concepts like white, male and imperialist country privilege are important precisely because they combat the unstated, unrecognized, unconscious assumption that "whiteness" as it is lived and experienced in the United States simply is "normal." It highlights that race, national and gender relations are hierarchical social constructs in which there are those who win and those who lose, those with power and those without. As Malcolm X explained, in the United States "white means boss." * * * I was, frankly, surprised and taken aback by both Carrol and Mark's reactions to what I posted. What follows is perhaps speculative, but is my attempt at understanding this very sharp reaction to what I viewed as an innocuous posting. I will confess that, from time to time, I've quite consciously written some things to provoke a sharp exchange. But this wasn't one of those times. I think what this has to do with is a broader discussion of questions like "do white workers benefit from racism" and "do U.S. workers benefit from imperialism," and Marx and Engels's theory that the privileged status of British workers in the second half of the 1800's explained their lack of class consciousness and especially class political organization, and contemporary analysis that seeks to base itself on this kind of reasoning. And to be strictly factual about it, at different times Marx and Engels in the brief comments they make on this in letters and a couple of more formal writings seem to present two slightly different theories: One, that (in England's case at the peak of the Victorian era) a significant (but nevertheless minority) labor aristocracy had been constituted by bribing some workers with relatively better wages and conditions which the British ruling class could afford thanks to their manufacturing monopoly, dominance in international trade, extensive colonial holdings and so on. And two, that taken as a whole pretty much the entire English working class had been so bribed. I actually don't think these are two different theories, but rather, two different emphasis at different points in time when analyzing the class dynamics involved. For it is true, I think, that, taken as a whole, the English working class of those years was relatively privileged in comparison with the working classes of other countries, and most of all in comparison to Britain's colonial subjects. But it was also true that within the British working class there were layers that were quite destitute --by the British standards of the time-- and this drove those layers especially to fight to improve their conditions. And these struggles sharpened greatly as England's "absolute" dominance, so to speak, declined and the ruling class sought to compensate by making fewer concessions. This analysis of Marx and Engels was later picked up by Lenin, who viewed Victorian England as having foreshadowed in many ways the situation that would develop with the emergence of imperialism as a distinct stage of capitalism at the dawn of the 20th Century. Lenin developed this view as a result of the First World War, and in particular in trying to understand the collapse of the Second International and especially German Social Democracy and most especially the broad mainstream/left wing of the German Party identified with Kautsky. That at the beginning of WWI Lenin had no such understanding is clear from his reaction to receiving the first reports about German social-democratic deputies having voted for war credits: he thought the reports were police fabrications meant to demoralize the social-democratic parties in the other countries. It was not until late in 1916 that Lenin presented his more-or-less complete analysis of the question, including the central idea that what I would call imperialist privilege is the material basis for the opportunism (today many of us would say "reformism") of social democracy, basing himself squarely on the analysis of the English workers movement developed by Marx and Engels from the 1850's on. Lenin's article is called "Imperialism and the split in Socialism" and it is here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm The article begins, "Is there any connection between imperialism and the monstrous and disgusting victory opportunism (in the form of social-chauvinism) has gained over the labour movement in Europe? "This is the fundamental question of modern socialism. And having in our Party literature fully established, first, the imperialist character of our era and of the present war, and, second, the inseparable historical connection between social-chauvinism and opportunism, as well as the intrinsic similarity of their political ideology, we can and must proceed to analyse this fundamental question." In case you missed it, let me repeat the opinion Lenin expresses in the second sentence of the article: "This is the fundamental question of modern socialism." The connection that Lenin presents is that colonial tribute and monopoly superprofits allows the imperialist bourgeoisie to more or less permanently "bribe" the upper strata of the working people, and even temporarily (in the case of England at the peak of its power) pretty much the entire working class, and that this is the material basis for opportunism, for what Engels called "the bourgeois labour party," referring not at that time to an actual organization, but rather the dominant trend in the English labor movement. "[T]he exploitation of oppressed nations-which is inseparably connected with annexations-and especially the exploitation of colonies by a handful of 'Great' Powers, increasingly transforms the 'civilised' world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations. The Roman proletarian lived at the expense of society. Modern society lives at the expense of the modern proletarian. Marx specially stressed this profound observation of Sismondi.[7] Imperialism somewhat changes the situation. A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations." Curiously, I was a member of a "Leninist" Party --the U.S. Socialist Workers Party-- for a decade and a half, until the mid-1980's. In that time I functioned as a writer, speaker, member of the affiliated youth group's leadership, and eventually the editor of the party's Spanish language organ and a member of the National Committee and Political Committee. Yet I'd never studied or learned to understand the split BETWEEN the Second International (pre-WWI social democracy) and what became the Third International (Lenin and those who thought like him after 1917) in THIS way. Overwhelmingly, what I learned was the POLITICS of the split (with certain distortions) BUT NOT Lenin's analysis of the MATERIALIST basis for the POLITICAL DIVERGENCE. Insofar as there was a MATERIALIST basis for social-democratic reformism, it was exclusively "the bureaucracy" of the parties and especially the unions, the stratum of functionaries that, having achieved a fairly high and stable standard of living, had become intermediaries seeking to dampen and rationalize "the class struggle" (meaning really NOT the class struggle as Marx thought of it, the political struggle, but the much narrower economic struggle between workers and bosses). That's what I learned and what I understood. Despite Lenin's own statement this was "the fundamental question of modern socialism," I don't believe I ever read this article or had it recommended to me in all my years in the SWP. It was not until years after leaving the party that I came across it. And there is a further "chapter," so to speak in this one-sidedness to my education. One thing I did study in the SWP was Lenin's theses on the national and colonial question and his "report" (speech on them) for the Second Congress of the Comintern. But I never looked at the supplementary theses written by NM Roy at Lenin's suggestion as a result of Roy's discussions with Lenin on the draft theses, supplementary theses which were fully supported and endorsed by Lenin and presented by him as a package with his own from a special commission at that congress. Those supplementary theses deal precisely with the question that Lenin had focused on in his 1916 article: "2. European capitalism draws its strength in the main not so much from the industrial countries of Europe as from its colonial possessions. Its existence depends on control of extensive colonial markets and a broad field of opportunities for exploitation. England, the bulwark of imperialism, has already suffered from overproduction for a century. Without the extensive colonial possessions that are essential for the sale of her goods and at the same time form the source of her raw materials, the capitalist order in England would long since have collapsed under its own weight. At the same time that British imperialism makes hundreds of millions of the inhabitants of Asia and Africa into slaves, it also keeps the British proletariat under the domination of the bourgeoisie. "3. The super-profits made in the colonies form one of the main sources of the resources of contemporary capitalism. The European working class will only succeed in overthrowing the capitalist order once this source has finally been stopped up. The capitalist countries try, not indeed without success, to restore their shaky position by extensive and intensive exploitation of human labour and the natural wealth of the colonies. As a result of the exploitation of the colonial population European imperialism is in a position to grant the labour aristocracy in Europe a whole range of concessions. While on the one hand European imperialism tries to force down the absolute minimum level necessary to keep the proletariat alive by the import of goods produced by the cheaper labour power of the workers of the colonial countries, it is on the other hand prepared to sacrifice the increased profits it could make in the home country in order to receive the super-profits it can obtain by exploitation in the colonies. "4. The loss of the colonies and the proletarian revolution in the mother countries will bring the downfall of the capitalist order in Europe." * * * The central idea --that revolution in Western Europe would be POSSIBLE *only if* the capitalist ruling classes of those countries were deprived of imperialist super-profits-- has been borne out by history, at least thus far. [As an aside, it seems anomalous at first that the U.S. is not lumped in with the Euro-imperialist powers in this sweeping statement. My guess as to why the U.S. was left out are in the first two contributions to the discussion on the theses, essentially reports on the Black question and the immigrant question in the U.S. These highlight the extremely violent character of class and social struggles in the U.S., and highlight that the MAJORITY of the U.S. proletariat at the time weren't "white" in the sense of members of the dominant nationality. ["The terrible suppression of strikes and of the revolutionary movement in general is in no way a result of the war," said American delegate Louis Fraina in the second of the two contributions. "It is much more a more forceful political expression of the earlier attitude towards the unorganised and unskilled workers. These workers’ strikes are suppressed violently. Why? Because these workers are in the main foreigners (they form 60 per cent of the industrial proletariat), who are in fact in the same position as a colonial population." [I believe this is why the U.S. wasn't included -- because the working and exploited classes were overwhelmingly not of the dominant nationality, but rather treated as quasi-colonial populations.] The general idea that a successful revolution against an imperialist bourgeoisie is only possible IF it has been deprived of imperialist super-profits, quite simply, this was NEVER a theses that the SWP held to, despite its professed "Leninism" and EXPLICIT claim to stand on the political basis of the first four congresses of the Comintern. The importance and centrality of the SUPER-exploitation of oppressed and colonial peoples to revolutionary perspectives in the U.S. WAS, however, an important debate on the U.S. Left from the 1960's onward. I have not gone back and studied it in detail, and I certainly did not at the time. The SWP's position, and generally the position of most groups descended from the Trotskyist tradition (including those that might not consider themselves Trotskyist as such) was that white, male U.S. workers do not profit [benefit] from the super-exploitation of Blacks, women or the Third World. I say specifically "profit" because --as I best remember it-- that is very much the way at least the SWP cast the argument. I can't really say how OTHERS cast the argument because I didn't read them, or if I did, it would only have been to pick out one or another quotation that I imagined was especially vulnerable to a polemic. It's one of the things that's problematic about joining the one-and-only Truly Revolutionary Party. Since your party is the sole legitimate representative and continuator of Absolute Revolutionary Truth, it follows that everyone ELSE on the left represents error. You no more read their tracts with an open mind than a medieval crusader picked up the teachings of Mohammed with any intention other than to throw it into a bonfire. At any rate, once the SWP cast the argument as "do white workers profit" then you move from a broad, general meaning of profit (=benefit) to a narrow strict definition as Marx lays out in Capital, volume I. And you show that workers do not get profit, they get paid the price of the commodity "capacity to work" measured in units of time. And then you shift back to the broader meaning of profit, and demonstrate that if ALL the workers, Black and white, men and women, stuck and struck together, they would certainly get a better union contract than by being divided against each other. QED. This argument was part of a mindset that the U.S., just as it was, was rotten-ripe for social revolution and all it would take was something like a 1929 crash to make it happen. That there were profound impediments to social revolution in the U.S. inherent in the very structure of capitalism as a world system --as the Second Congress's supplementary theses on the national and colonial question, and most of a century of experience since then suggest-- is a thought that didn't cross our minds, at least not mine. That is a thought, however, that is VERY MUCH on my mind now. And from very many different angles. It seems to me that, if calling the U.S. or Britain, France, Germany and so on "imperialist countries" means anything, it means that AS COUNTRIES they benefit from the super-exploitation of the peoples of the Third World. It does not mean simply "nation states within which happen to live people that own bank accounts into which super-profits flow," or something like that. It is not just "our" bourgeoisie that is imperialist; it is THEIR COUNTRY [and it is THEIR country, not ours] that is imperialist. But "we" --working and oppressed people in the U.S.-- are part of THEIR imperialist country. And if you compare the general level of socio-economic development, transportation and communications infrastructure; TV sets, computers, and vehicles per 1000 people; size and characteristics of housing units; size, mobility and firepower of armed forces; and so on, you come to the conclusion that there is a tremendous DISPARITY between a COUNTRY like the United States, Japan or France, on the one hand, and even a Mexico, Brazil or Argentina, on the other, not to mention Nicaragua, Black Africa or the Palestinians. As millions of Mexicans and other Latin Americans have shown by voting with their feet, there is even a tremendous disparity between being a member of the most persecuted, pariah layer of the working class in the U.S. as an imperialist country, and being simply one more worker or farmer in a semi-colonial country, even a relatively "advanced" one like Mexico. There is a relative privilege that attaches to being a resident --even an "illegal" one-- of the world's dominant imperialist country in comparison with the masses of working people in Mexico or the Third World generally. I do not believe that it can be said with a straight face that workers in the United States do not BENEFIT from the imperialist exploitation of the Third World. And I think that from this it ALSO follows that relatively more privileged workers BENEFIT from being white, and especially white males. Those that hesitate at such a statement might say, all that workers in the U.S. have done is secure for themselves a higher price for their labor commensurate with the country's overall economic standing. Precisely. But that leads inescapably and inevitably to the question of where does the accumulated wealth of the U.S. come from? Well, in part, from nature, which when you think about it, isn't so "natural" because the land was stolen from the indigenous peoples that were driven off or killed off to make room for the United States. In part from the "normal" exploitation of its own workers. In part from the super-exploitation of Blacks, Latinos, immigrants and women, and not just today but throughout its history. And in part from imperialist exploitation of the third world. I believe that the reaction to my rather innocent post and my use of a phrase like "white privilege" was about the continuing denial on the part of much of the Left that workers in general in the U.S. DO BENEFIT from being part of an imperialist country, and white working people DO BENEFIT from being part of a white supremacist society, and male workers DO BENEFIT from being part of a male supremacist society. Now some comrades will argue that this isn't true because in the last analysis, whatever seeming immediate "benefit" goes to the more privileged parts of the working class (whether looked at in the national context or the international) is paid for many times over by the weakening of the working class's struggle against capitalism, in other words, by the perpetuation of the status of ALL workers as workers, as "wage slaves." I agree completely with this argument, but the problem with it is that for working people to understand it, a very high degree of class-political consciousness is required, and that degree of consciousness as a mass phenomenon can only emerge from the struggle of the workers as a class. But the hell of it is that privilege has undercut the capacity of the workers to cohere as a class. Marx and Engels's appeal in the Communist Manifesto for the workers of the world to unite, which then through a series of economic and political struggles would lead to the working class seizing political power, was predicated on this: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." THAT IS NO LONGER TRUE OF ALL WORKERS, not in any immediate sense. Some workers have something MORE than chains to lose, they have their relative privileges. And it is these relative privileges that keep them firmly wedded in the United States first and foremost to American patriotism, and then to various manifestation of supremacist ideology (like the idea that Blacks aren't really worse off). * * * Imperialist privilege, and specifically American imperialist privilege, has now reached the point where it is quite clearly beyond the capacity of the world to sustain. With four percent of the world's population, the U.S. now consumes about a fourth of the world's petroleum production, and similarly disproportionate shares of just about everything else. In the case of petroleum, in broad, historic terms, that production is now peaking --whether the absolute peak is now or in a few years or even in a couple of decades-- and the U.S. is simply and flatly unprepared to do anything other than consume ever-greater quantities of liquid fuel. Imperialist privilege is about to crash against the brick wall of geologic reality. Even looked at just materially, economically, "whiteness" -- the normal U.S. life-style and standard of living -- and especially its compulsive consumption, the burning NEED to replace your half-empty 20-gig Ipod with the new 40-gig model that will be three-quarters empty, to buy new clothes because the ones you've barely worn from the year before are "out of fashion," to dump your 4-ton hummer because someone has come out with a civilian version of the Abrams tank -- has become unsustainable. In the article from Lenin I highlight above, he stresses that imperialism is a capitalism that has a tendency to become increasingly parasitic. That was then. Because a hallmark of a truly successful parasite is that it does not kill its host. Today capitalism, and specifically U.S. capitalism, is not parasitic: it is cancerous. This means a radical reconsideration of the stance of revolutionaries in the United States. To give just one example, I do not believe slogans like "schools not bombs" are sound as a general proposition. I think most Americans inherently understand that the economic wealth of the country is in large part due to its domination of the globe and the world economy, and the Pentagon is essential to that domination. Abolition of the Pentagon is very unlikely to yield a sufficient "peace dividend" to compensate for what the U.S. as a country would lose in terms of its exploitation of the Third World. The only possible socialist revolution in the advanced imperialist countries, and most of all in the United States, is one that offers working people a materially LOWER standard of living. If our vision of socialism is a McMansion for every family with two humvees in the garage (three if there is a teen 16 or over in the family), that cannot possibly happen, the ONLY kind of country that can aspire to that on THIS planet TODAY is an imperialist country. Consumerism, and especially American consumerism is a social disease that drives its victims to compulsive consumption, to seeking psychological satisfaction from having the latest, the largest, the greatest, the most expensive whatever in an unending rat race which only millionaires can win. By and large the left has promoted a vision of socialism that says it is freedom from want, a society where everyone will live like a millionaire. Instead, we have to figure out how to promote a revolution based on freedom from WANTING, based on freeing people from compulsive consumerism. Whether such a thing is even possible I do not know; it may well be that the revolution in the U.S. will come about quite "classically," as the world struggle against imperialism advances, reducing and eventually eliminating imperialist privilege and driving countries like the U.S. into a prolonged downward economic slide, the burden of which the ruling class will place on working people, leading them to revolt. But that could take a very long time. Joaquín _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
