20 August 2002 21:08 UTC.
YOSHIE: "At 03:47 PM 08/20/2002 -0400, you wrote: >About 66% of high
school graduates get "some college education," but not everyone
graduates from high school. Counting the high school dropout >rate,
it's about 57% of young Americans who get "some college education."
JOANNA: "Big numbers can tell big lies. In Oakland California, the
high-school drop
out rate is 50%."
HARI:
Thx to both.
1) Question: What is known statistically of the ultimate 'work-fate' of
these college graduates? By the way purely anecdotally, (& probably not
worth much... but.....) most European émigrés I know (& that is a lot
actually - you know the trouble with emigres that they always hang out
with their own kind.....) say that school standards are very much lower
for their children than either the children themselves or they as
parents were used to in Europe (meaning: UK/Germany/Scandinavia/).
2) What I am implying of course, & I think elsewhere several (including
I) have already said - is that objective class relations are what
matters. [Recently someone railed against me for the use of that word -
but I believe it is extremely & often very helpful].
NOT what either you think of yourself - or what education you had:
" The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honoured and looked up
to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer,
the priest, the poet, the man
of science, into its paid wage-labourers."
"Communist Manifesto" http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/CM47.html
3) This brings me to Yoshie's summation of his data into an answer to
the question "Who make(s) the revolution?" Answer="a cross-class
alliance".
That is another short hand for a United Front. No sweat - agree with
that for CERTAIN demands, for certain steps at certain times. In fact
doesn't it abut onto the discussion re Stiglitz for instance? Yeah sure
- decent chap & decent proposals like screw the World bank agendas of
today - but, to what extent and how far will he travel on the road to
any sort of Mecca? [Yes I know - I deliberately choose a religious
metaphor to allow folks to lay an attack out there in the open, if you
will. Also I remind people of the somewhat tarnished & discredited word
'fellow-traveller'].
Problem is - how far will the 'cross-class' alliance go & for how
long?
And what stipulations do communists (let us use that term very
loosely since this is far from an acceptable term for very many on this
list - should we substitute "progressives"?] make of such a United
Front? Surely not the crass capitulationist "United Front at all cost?"
(Read Popular Front of France] etc].
I get off the soap box quickly, but I am concerned, Yoshie, about
what that "cross-class" alliance means & is PRACTICALLY implemented.
Cheers, Hari
