Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
The dialectic of capital-wage labor is indeed what makes capitalism what it is, and it is therefore the primary contradiction at the level of theory, but that theory does not imply that people can or must organize themselves in practice along the line of the primary contradiction which is an abstraction. In reality, all social movements under capitalism -- including successful revolutionary ones -- have been cross-class movements, with more or less eclectic sources of influence (from religion to feminism), and they always will be and should be. Theoretical tools developed in the Marxist tradition can merely help us understand and participate in social movements better than without them. In short, the tools are not meant for purifying cross-class movements into a movement of, by, and for "the proletariat" in the abstract.
So, Stan is right to reject the "doctrine" in question, except that I do not think that's a doctrine inherent in the Marxist tradition, though indeed it probably is the one that governs Marxist-Leninist organizations in the USA, none of which I have ever joined.
Gulick writes: This is precisely my reaction to what Stan wrote -- except your formulation is much more pithy and powerful than what I composed, so I won't even bother posting it. Frankly, I am very surprised that someone of Stan's intellectual acumen in effect conflates Marxist theory and M-L sects, and is prone to dismissing the former because of the irrelevance of the latter. I guess this is what happens when one's education in Marxist theory is closely associated with (if not directly derived from) one's involvement with M-L sects and one takes the notion of praxis too literally: the baby is in perpetual danger of being tossed out with the bathwater. Stan has written passionately and compellingly about the ecocidal impulses of capitalism. Environmental Marxism must have been a vital analytic tool in arriving at this conclusion. One cannot understand the accumulation imperative's drive toward exhausting resources and overflowing sinks without understanding the capital-wage labor relation. But to claim that the capital-wage labor relation is the determinative factor behind planetary crisis is not to say that the advanced industrial working class does or will play a privileged role in rectifying this crisis. Far from it! Who among Marxists except the most pathetically retrograde M-L sectarians would make such a claim? And what kind of brainlock has seized Stan such that he cheapens Marxist theory by narrowly confining it to self-proclaimed "M-L" organizations? He has always warned against deviously constructing straw men. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander apparently... John Gulick Akita, Japan John Gulick Assistant Professor Basic Education/Social Science Faculty of International Liberal Arts Akita International University 193-2 Okutsubakidai, Yuwa-Tsubakigawa Akita-city, Akita 010-1211 Japan 81-018-886-5969 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ Talk now to your Hotmail contacts with Windows Live Messenger. http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
