Re: [PEN-L] excellent interview with Michael Lebowitz

[Waistline2]

>> I was studying economics with a focus on marketing research, so ended up in an electrical manufacturing corporation doing market research full-time. As I did this, I saw lots of contradictions. On the one hand, the company that my father worked for - which was anti-union - decided to move to the US south, where they could have non-union operations. This left him basically unemployed for the rest of his life, in and out of short-term jobs.<<   Comment   I enjoyed the "interview of Michael Lebowitz" very much for a complex of reasons, that boil down to turning 54 this year and attempting to be more honest with myself, especially in history recollection. I simply could not stop thinking about Michael's father as an individual and personifying the circumstances of many men of his generation. How did his dad react to being unemployed . . . in and out of short term jobs and the likes?   Michael's outline of his political evolution is fascinating and conforms to the general political history of the 1960s in my head. There is something out of kilter with the life Mike describes and then his assessment of how he understands the life he outlines and what he calls the left and the general approach to what he calls democracy and the left.   I am not sure at all if the left and Marxists and various Marxist groups can be accused of belittling or ignoring democracy and democratic struggle - no matter how one defines it, given the fact that the struggle of the African American peoples for democratic rights dominated all of the 1960s and 1970s. And also the whole antiwar movement and the impact of the environmentalist current.   I don't know . . . there is something out of kilter here. Throughout the pass forty years there has been a fairly consistent and sharp struggle around police violence that has periodically erupted into riots and street demonstrations from one end of the country to another. Not to even mention the various issues involving massive amounts of women. There are always eruptions over one thing or another on the campuses throughout the country.   Then this matter of Michael's dad and what he did and how he reacted to being unemployed will not fade form the front of my mind. The concept of the unity of the working class must be torn from its high ivory tower and maybe we need to look at things a bit more realistic. What did Mikes dad express as an individual and the "one" through whose eyes we can see many? Mikes outline of his political evolution reveals a breach or discontinuity in his family life, that needs no moral assessment, but rather . . . perhaps . . . the dry economic logic of the economists. Economic logic and the individuals economic interest as they perceive it might not be so dry after all, but provide the waters of understanding.   What of his dad?   See . . . the African American people, as a people composed of sharp classes and conflicting class interest has always been to enter American society as equals no matter what direction of the advocate. The struggle of the white workers has been for economic expansion and upward mobility and more modestly, a shot at a pension. Therefore our working class - if we are to use this class concept, has often moved in different and at time conflicting ways. Yet, these different "ways" are understood on one level or another as a struggle for democracy even if it was "economic rights" or what is in fact the struggle for a more equitable share of the social product and for expanded political liberties.   See . . . the problem and feeling that something is out of kilter I am having? The workers - if you will, as those most intimately interactive with production are bounded by a limitation that weds them to capital as production logic. When many workers express the sentiment that they do not want to be "reckless" and "destroy the goose that lays the golden egg," something more than "reformist logic" or "non-Marxist" logic is being expressed.  Especially if their actual life experience is of economic expansion.   We have not come to grips with the fact of the working class as it exists as a living unity with capital and perhaps expect something from "the working class" that it cannot deliver. I have pondered this for a lifetime as have most of us. The classes or two basic classes that constitutes the social and economic logic of a distinct system of production cannot overthrow the system of which they constitute. It is simply not possible. The struggle between the two basic class of a social system as a historical epoch is a struggle to reform the system in one another's favor.   Mikes description of what he calls a one sided struggle of the left and Marxists runs against my historical recollection and own particular brand of Marxism. And I think the proof is his dad . . . or my dad for that matter. It seems to me that the section of the working class with the least interactivity with production and the least ties to the system and loyalty to "the man" - (y'all, remember the man :-) . . . ) has been the sharpest edge of the social struggle.   Don't get me wrong or things twisted because the struggle for shorter working hours is real important to those consistently working. Heck . . . half of the working class is fighting for more hours given this stage of decay of our value producing system.   Something else is happening and has happened and was happening when we were not paying enough attention to the dry economic logic.   The two basic class of a society - a social system, or a class that is caught up within a social system and constitutes that which defines the social system, are part of what makes the system what it is and can never overthrow it. It is simply not possible.   The only thing the two basic classes of a social system can do is fight over the divisions of the social product and for political liberty. One or the other of the two basic classes of a social system, don't overthrow it because they can't - not because they do not want to, but because they can't. This is the dialectic of revolution. If you are part of the system that is a particular society, or one of the basic classes that makes a society what it is, you are not free to overthrow it: you cannot overthrow it!   The "reformism" is not something that is magically in ones head but also expresses a real material boundary we intuitively has known existed and tried every way possible to explain. And no Charles, the bourgeoisie and serf did not overthrow feudalism. Economic feudalism as a landed property relations was overthrown as a social system by 1). The changed in the form of wealth from land to gold - movable property and its consequence to the expansion of exchange and 2). the rising classes connected to the development of the new means of production - bourgeoisie and proletarians. The serfs fought and rebelled but this rebellion is what drove feudalism through its various quantitative boundaries of expansion. A new qualitative ingredient had to be introduced into history and all of Marx writings are about this.   Something else must take place as history change to make it possible to overthrow a society economic and social order. This something else is always a real revolution in the means of production. And I believe our working class has intuitively understood this in front of "the Marxists."     The feudal political order and the agrarian system it stood upon were overthrown by classes outside that which made the social system and society what it was . . . feudalism. The classes outside that which made the social system and society what it was . . . Feudalism, was of course the rising bourgeoisie and proletariat - modern working class. The rising bourgeoisie and proletariat - modern working class, were formed around the new means of production - industrial machinery.   The struggle between those that are most intimately interactive with the means of production - in the feudal period this was between the serf and the nobility, drove the qualitative stage of history called feudalism, along quantitatively. But neither could end this qualitative stage of history and neither did . . . because it is not possible. The serf and nobility did not begin or create the stage of history called feudalism and most certainly did not end this stage of history.     Why would and should our working class not conform to this general pattern of history?   Here is the problem: the stage of history all of us were born into -  over 50 years of age, is called capitalism but this is not descriptive enough. This stage of history is actually called the industrial epoch and this is obvious. All of Marx writings are about the industrial revolution and its impact or the industrial epoch as it evolved from the landed property relations and as this new industrial epoch reorganized society on the basis of the bourgeois property relations.   The part of Marx that needs to be completed is not the "proper" understanding of the subject wo/man as a democratic striving and thinking person but a clearer and more accurate understanding and concept of "the system" in which this subject acted out their daily lives.   Therefore it seems to me that we need to change how we understood our history development as individuals, classes and political activists.    Hey I have drifted a long way . . . but something was out of kilter with the interview, although I really enjoyed reading about peoples real life strivings and struggle.   Peace     Waistline .