Greetings Economists, A great interview indeed. As well as a slice of my thinking history what with the creation of the SDS when I was young to really become acquainted with radical thought.
Since Michael is here to perhaps answer questions I'll take a moment to find some quotes and ask a few questions. ML writes, From my experience of working with student movements and other campaigns, I saw the basic truth that people transform themselves through their struggles. That idea became the central concern of my political world view - how do you put people into motion; how do you develop their capacity to self-transform? Doyle, Which mirrors my experience in the left. And more so amongst disabled people. ML writes, ...there was a missing side in Capital and that the book on wage-labour needed to be written. Doyle, Here I would pose the great divide that disabled people must raise, suppose you can't 'labor'? How does a Marxist think about this? And certainly also that Marx did not see himself as a 'Marxist'. Rather that labor and a working class are the basis for a different sort of society than capitalism. The value to me so far in ML's interview in my view is the emphasis on the wholeness of a movement. That then means to me where does disability fit in? Or how do the problems in capitalism, like sexism, racism, etc relate to each other in the whole not as 'identity politics' but as some grand view of labor that unites all workers. Now some self identified 'liberals' like Martha Nussbaum have taken on 'justice' in terms of disabled rights and she influenced by Amartya Sen applies some sort of 'capabilities' view upon this aspect of class struggle (or so it seems to me anyway though not to a liberal) which extends the Locke/Hume nation state to include disabled people. While this focuses upon individual rights like liberals do, the concept of wholeness in the working class is often an abstraction so that a Marxist does not know what to do with a blind deaf person. They being so super isolated from able bodied labor they appear as living abstractions. Though a certain sort of brain work like hand signs does bring them into the whole of capitalism where bias and bigotry against disabled people rules. This language work tends to be the framework of a work or labor that unifies the working class in Marxist terms rather than say liberal human rights. But neither Marx nor Engels were in a position to comment upon the work of language as we might see it now with automated computing solutions to various disabled persons problems. ML writes, What you say about the importance of mass self-transformation, the role of the subject in history, must surely have implications for the type of political organisations we create, as well as for their programmes? Doyle, That grid computing meaning getting social resources for language like work to everyone, and that everyone then feels their connection to everyone by the work process. So taking ML's point about wholeness, for Marxist they would see these tools as a means of creating the totalilty of society where a kind of work, language like is the foundation for the wholeness of society. If one runs around looking for a resource to include a deaf person in a meeting of all workers then one feels the need for a whole tool structure that includes everyone at once. If one looks at a web site that blind people can't access then one sees that a socialist global system would have long since dealt with that as the bloody capitalist diddle away with their half assed liberal solutions. Or at least some socialist would see the need for this because we all are influenced by traditions chains as well and fail to understand what the 'whole' can mean. Now today I will meet with other disabled activists to discuss physical access at KPFA radio in B erkeley. Which is a great organizing options amongst disabled people because able bodied people often are ignorant if good intentioned. In fact too leftist can be both more supportive and more ignorant because the concept of the 'whole' is not quite grasped. ML in my view is a 'hero' of the U.S. socialist movement. Hoorah for ML. Especially that he is now in a revolution in progress in Venezuela. thanks, Doyle Saylor
