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Richard Seymore: >>Tony Cliff argued that imperialism is central to the strength of reformist political attitudes... With regard to sections within the working class, Cliff's simple argument was that these tended to be more pronounced the weaker the working class is, but are reduced when the workers' standards of living go up... As for myself, I would not use the language of 'privilege', but I would agree with you on the relevance of 'feelings of superiority', or chauvinism. I am the last to deny or 'downplay' the relevant political effects of, say, white supremacy on working class cohesion and strength, which is certainly at the heart of long-term difficulties faced by the US working class for example. It's just not clear to me how theories of 'embourgoisement' or 'labour aristocracy' help with this.<< Ok, Cliff was and you are very aware of and very against imperialism and chauvinism, but... is there no relation between differentiation in the working class, and opportunism and chauvinism? Haven’t some relations of differentiation been quite stable, for many decades, such as the relative privilege of white workers in the US, Australia and South Africa, defended both by law for a long time as well as exclusivist union practices? Wasn’t the White Australia Policy part of the Laborist mainstream from the 1890s to the 1960s? Wasn’t this mainstream formed in the early 1890s-1900s, shaped not only by the concurrent formation of monopolising capitals and Pacific colonialism, but by the fact that it was largely based on craft unions (as well as farmer and middle class elements), keen to keep women and Chinese out of their trades as well as fight the bosses and use arbitration and protectionism to defend what they understood as their interests? Aren’t the cadres of labo(u)r and social democratic parties and union apparatuses today largely drawn from highly skilled and educated layers of the working class? (For my PhD I conducted focus groups with three Labor branches totaling 25 people, which included one blue collar union organiser, one blue collar worker, and the rest from such layers Large scale surveys of ALP members have shown the same). I’m happy to reject the embourgeoisment concept, as it implies a qualitative transformation of class. But the concept of labour aristocracy, understood in the careful way I’ve put it, can help us discuss these questions. But I repeat I don’t want too be too determinate about it, and that one political expression of skilled, white collar labour in Australia today is the rise of the Greens as a particular type of left social democratic formation, a progressive, if of course partial alternative to the ALP (Greens branches I also interviewed were sociologically quite similar to the Labor branches, and the "labour aristocratic"/social democratic nature of the Greens is discussed empirically in the brief article I previously linked to as well as an academic article I’m hopefully publishing soon). Also one important material basis I think not just of union decline but also of anti-refugee, anti-Indigenous chauvinism in the last 20 years in Australia was a neoliberal fuelled process of *actual* petty-bourgeoisification of hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers from the early 90s (when Laborist neoliberalism accelerated), due to their jobs being forcibly transformed into self-employed contract relations and the fact that large numbers made redundant through restructuring had little choice but to use their severance to buy a van and tools and set up a business. Cut off from the solidarity of work and union membership they first (on the whole) helped vote Labor out in 1996 and were then prey to the petty-minded suburban-reactionary outlook of John Winston Howard. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
