Who are the Proletariat?

[Andrei_X]

Alright, it's time that we started a thread to get to the bottom of this question...

Is there a proletariat in the U.S.?

Are white people in the U.S. part of the international proletariat? Are they exploited?

What relationship do they have in the international imperialist process?

In my opinion, there is a difference between the superexploitation of people in oppressed nations and the way proletarians in imperialist countries live- and that the those "First-World" proletarians benefit in some way from their superiors' imperialism in other nations. But that doesn't change the fact that they are still receive less than what they make... and just because they are nonrevolutionary at this point doesn't mean that they will always be... Mind you, the Russian masses before Bloody Sunday were waving Russian tricolor flags and singing "God Save the Tsar", but upon that day the 1905 Revolution began... and 12 years later the 1917 Revolution happened and created the U.S.S.R....

something to think about.

[honky tonk]

I agree this is a useful and important topic.

But part of me asks why call it "The "White Proletariat Thread"

Why use and repeat and promote the lingo of backward (and even counterrevolutionary) political trends (like Sakai and MIM) that way?

Would we call a thread on the Black national question the "Are Black people Stupid Thread" ? No, we wouldn't.

Just a thought.

[Deleted]

Andrei_X said:

Alright, it's time that we started a thread to get to the bottom of this question...

Is there a proletariat in the U.S.?

Yes.

Are white people in the U.S. part of the international proletariat? Are they exploited?

Yes and yes.

What relationship do they have in the international imperialist process?

The only real difference I see is that in the US there are white's who don't realize that they are oppressed and relate to the ruling class based on their "common whiteness." While they may at times benefit from their "whiteness" I believe that they are ultimately just as exploited and we are going to need them to fight with the rest of us when the time comes.

[honky tonk]

let me put it another way:

There is a lot of hatred among white middle class forces (and frankly among significant Black middle class forces too!) toward white workers. they think white workers are just a bunch of stupid, racist, beer-guzzling, philistine shit-bags. They hate and fear white working people -- and paint them all as if they were "one thing."

Put it one way: They think the Springsteen types are all fascist assholes.

And while they know the relatively privileged white petty bourgeoisie produces progressive trends -- some middle class political trends (both white "left" and Black nationalist) are very very willing to assume that ALL white workers are hopelessly corrupt (cuz they have a minimum wage, or a car, or whatever.)

This is wrong on many levels. And a great deal of it actually reflects the "fear and loathing" that the middle classes are trained to have toward "less educated" people.

So lets expose it. Let's pick it apart. Let's expose this counterrevolutionary bigotry toward working people FOR WHAT IT IS.

And, while we do it, let's not tail it.

Imperialism fucks up the world. It does corrupt the air we breathe. It does fuel and fund the divisions between nationalities. It does enable backward people (including in the working class) to think the system serves them etc.

There are many true things to analyze.

But let's not let all this take us to the defeatist, people-hating, infantile, know-nothing dissing of working people (including the many millions of quite oppressed people in the proletariat whose nationality is Euro-American.)

[honky tonk]

btw: I wish someone would post here (or online somewhere) Avakian's great essay "What's wrong with white people?"

It raises the real and challenging question of "how do we overcome the backwardnesses of white sectons of the masses?" -- without falling into the counterevolutionary "writing off" of the MIMskateers.

[Andrei_X]

This is a question that I honestly struggle with, and I have been nearly won over from the RCP position at times by MIM.

The thing is, you see all these proletarian people with nice Nikes, dvd players, big-screen tv's, vcr's, nice-ass trucks, and all these "rednecks" waving their American flags and sayin' "Kill then ragheads! Nuke Baghdad! Yeeeeehaw!!!"... seeing that as the majority of white proletarians really makes it hard for me to see their revolutionary potential. So, yeah... that's why MIM's line and Sakai's thesis really seems to make sense to me... I don't WANT to believe it, but to me it really makes sense (as well as the fact that MIM has tons of facts, figures, statistics, and a lot of convincing quotes by Lenin and Mao to back them up)...

[RosaRL]

Guest-honky said:

btw: I wish someone would post here (or online somewhere) Avakian's great essay "What's wrong with white people?"

It raises the real and challenging question of "how do we overcome the backwardnesses of white sectons of the masses?" -- without falling into the counterevolutionary "writing off" of the MIMskateers.

here ya go - www.geocities.com/rosaharris76/what.htm

[redstar2000]

honky tonk wrote: ...they think white workers are just a bunch of stupid, racist, beer-guzzling, philistine shit-bags. They hate and fear white working people -- and paint them all as if they were "one thing."

Put it one way: They think the Springsteen types are all fascist assholes.

I wonder how much of this image is directly due to the ruling class media? Are they likely to show white workers marching in solidarity with people of color against globalization, for example?

If they can find some "rednecks" willing to scream "nuke Baghdad" in front of a camera...aren't those the guys you'll see on the evening news?

I recall the major coverage of an incident back in the 1960s when some construction workers attacked and beat up some anti-war protesters. This unique incident was publicized and re-publicized to show how "far apart" the "workers" and the "hippies" were.

The facts were quite different. I recall going to a local meeting of the Communications Workers of America--looking around the large room, I could have been at an SDS convention--a mostly young white crowd, very casually dressed, quite a few beards and long hair, etc. (it was like an SDS convention in another way as well: the membership was most upset at the last minute cancellation of a planned strike and the leadership was relentlessly heckled throughout the meeting).

Many leftists in America, from an academic background, have little or no direct contact with ordinary working people. Naturally, they unconsciously accept a media stereo-type.

I'm reasonably certain it is probably the same for people of color; the only white "workers" they are likely to come into contact with are cops...the most overtly racist element in society.

One curious thing I've noticed about some white working people. They will repeat the stupid clichés about people of color...and yet try to be courteous and even helpful to people of color when they interact with them.

It is as if they somehow sense that racist behavior toward people of color is "wrong"...though racist "ideas" and mindless clichés are "ok". It's possible they might be reacting to the media's portrayal of their class: "I'm not a dumb Joe Six-Pack and I refuse to act like one".

My experience is that white workers are far more "multi-dimensional" (for want of a better word) in their thinking than they are given credit for. Like all of us, they have a mixture of progressive and reactionary ideas in their heads...but the contradictions are much sharper. Some of them can be very progressive and very reactionary at the same time.

For white revolutionaries, of course, there is little choice in the matter. "Giving up" on white workers means the end, pretty much, of any constructive political activity. You may as well move to Europe...or take up "theory-spinning". If you stay in America, all there is for you to do is start "fan clubs" for foreign revolutionaries.

Not very inviting.

Is there some way, that no one has yet discovered, to attack racist/nationalist/religious ideology among white workers? That is, some way that will really work?

Or is it a matter of "plugging away" at what we've always done? Doing our best to organize whites in protest of racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, etc.

Or perhaps objective conditions will change in such a way as to sharply reduce the appeal of these reactionary ideologies in an unexpectedly rapid fashion.

I think a lot of working people were very skeptical of Bush's imperial adventure in Iraq...and as the occupation drags on, that skepticism seems to be growing.

So we'll see.

[roman meal]

Well, although I have differences with MIM, I agree with something like their 3rd cardinal principle that the “white working class" is not a revolutionary working class, but that their membership in an oppressor settler and imperial nation negates their revolutionary potential.

When talking about this stuff it is important to keep in mind we are ultimately talking about settlerism, not skin color - although they can be confused. The Irish became white, etc. A point a MIM supporter made on another forum that although unlikely it is conceivable that even blacks could increasingly enter the labor aristocracy and become part of the white settler nation. So, we aren't simply talking about skin color or some biological determinism or race.

Another thing that both Gilbert and probably Sakai have made is that this doesn't mean that white people can't be revolutionary. This just means that working class status isn't going to be the decisive thing with the revolutionary whites. Gilbert points with optimism to the new social movements and white mass movements - saying that points of connection should be made with white movements but not on the basis of class. After all, the settler working class has advanced itself historically on the backs of other peoples; its politics tend toward fascism. It is also worth pointing out that Sakai in other interviews laments the fact that people, even blacks, misuse his work to justify reactionary politics that rejects all contacts with revolutionary whites.

Just so people know, this is a topic that we have covered in two or three other threads on this forum. If you need background on Gilbert and Sakai:
awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=theory&action=display&thread=1073960945

awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=theory&action=display&thread=1074011760

awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=theory&action=display&thread=1073392670

There is also a MIM-supporter on another forum( 2changetheworld.info )- do a search for “aftersorrowcomesjoy” and the threads containing read her/his posts.

Again, I have differences with the MIM line, so I would rather not pretend to represent it. If someone knows an articulate MIM supporter, maybe someone could invite them to this forum.

Some General Practical points:

Whites need to really reject imperialist borders. The USA is not "one nation under God" and all that bullshit. This is also a rejection of the "multi-national proletariat" line. The USA is a settler nation that occupies many captive nations and neocolonies.

Whites need to support the national liberation of captive nations, not simply national minority or autonomy line.

Whites need to recognize people of color, captive nation, leadership.

Whites need to recognize multiple vanguards within US borders.

Whites need to support struggles of captive nations, especially their land struggles.

Whites need to support the revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle.

Whites need to make the fight against white supremacy primary, especially in white mass movements - the anti-globalization movement comes to mind. Elements of the anti-globalization movement have courted Buchanan types and their fascist anti-Mexican agenda.

[RosaRL]

One curious thing I've noticed about some white working people. They will repeat the stupid clichés about people of color...and yet try to be courteous and even helpful to people of color when they interact with them.

It is as if they somehow sense that racist behavior toward people of color is "wrong"...though racist "ideas" and mindless clichés are "ok". It's possible they might be reacting to the media's portrayal of their class: "I'm not a dumb Joe Six-Pack and I refuse to act like one".

It might not be very helpful to this discussion, however I recall what you are talking about. At least with the people that I grew up around (many of which were poor white working class folks) there was a past-time of collecting and re-telling jokes -- often jokes about oneself if you could find them! (fat man might collet fat jokes - drunk might have his drunk jokes - ex-military dude with his list of military jokes and on and on) That, I still belive, is why the whole 'you might be a red-neck' thing hit so big.

I might be wrong but it seems to me that there is a lot of self hate caught up in this - and demorilization. In fact I used to engage in this quite a bit -- I had a whole list of blond jokes. It was easier to crack on myself - as a woman - than to wait and let someone else do it for me. There was a sense of protection if i was saying these things -- from which of course I spared no time to going strait to cracking on men.

Of course, if you are down on yourself its not a huge leap to tell rather racist jokes. (and i have known people who I knew to not be racist by their actions that told such jokes and defending telling them on the basis that the words dont hurt people - actions do) It just become a fest in kicking everyone (including yourself) around a few times over beer. And, at the time I was into that (i greatly disagree with it now)it seemed somewhat oddly 'thereputic' -- for reasons I dont understand myself.

Another thing about poor white people - you have to understand - not only is their the way the media represents them, but they dont have the education like the middle class to KNOW that Black people dont have a problem with being violent - after all seeing is believing and they watch COPS and the eveing news! (not to mention just the weight of tradition - the way they learned things 'at home' and so on) So they may mean well and still say something like 'but Black people need to get ahold to themselves and stop breaking the law'. In fact they might even be trying to struggle with the ideas and STILL come up with something like that because they dont have any other experience outside the one they are coming from. You cant just asume they are racist cause they pup up with really fucked up shit.

For example I knew this one white man I thought was racist as hell but seemed progressive on some issues. I knew him for years. He'd always pop up talking about his day at work and say something like 'me an this other *igger so-and-so' and finally he passed away -- he was in his 60's at the time -- and I went to the funeral -- more out of a sense of duty than anything only to discover that his widow and children were Black and after all he'd faught alongside the Black people in the struggles in Albany, Georgia!

[hopeful]

this is all very interesting.

i'm not really sure about the whole white proletariat. because, if it's proletariat, does it really have a color?
i mean we are all protrayed how everyone thinks we are, even though we are far different from what they think we are.

white people are rich and proper
black people are poor and gangster
mexican people are drug dealers
asian people are stupid
and so on and soforth.....

it's all just sterotypes that we have to get rid of.

[RosaRL]

hopeful said: i'm not really sure about the whole white proletariat. because, if it's proletariat, does it really have a color?

I do not think that there is a seperate 'white prol' but rather one international and multinational proletariat.

However, the proletariat is not homogenous - there are very real differences - contradictions within the class.

I think one of the questions being raised here was if poor whites, who have been known historically especially in the south for being reactionary, are capable of being revolutionary - not just a handful - but more broadly.

I believe that they are capable of this.

[redstar2000]

I liked your post, Chiang Ching, a lot!

It speaks to the real complexity of social reality...and the falseness of the one-sided "racist white working class" generalizations that come so glibly to the lips of some leftists.

It reminded me of an on-the-job incident that took place a long time ago in the deep south...when I was younger and bolder than I am now. I stood up to a racist boss in front of half-a-dozen older white workers (and skilled craftsmen at that). Only one of the other workers sided with the boss...and one of them also vocally sided with me. (!) While the others were initially non-committal, there was no hostility directed against me afterwards--my co-workers were just as friendly as before (except for the asshole, of course). And, mind you, all of these guys dropped "n's" all the time.

The boss was not a popular guy and there may have been some class solidarity involved there that I was not really conscious of.

But I do remember being kind of pleasantly surprised at the way the whole thing went.

Those who disagree with us about the future of the "white proletariat" will, I'm sure, remind us that the plural of anecdote is not data.

Which is fair enough, I suppose. They will argue that white workers materially "benefit" from racism and imperialism and will therefore support those things...indefinitely.

What they overlook, in my opinion, is that racism and imperialism are not "permanent" and "unchanging" social relationships. "Successful" racism has a different impact on white workers than "unsuccessful racism". "Successful" imperialism has a different impact on white workers than "unsuccessful imperialism". When people of color in struggle defeat some particular manifestation of racism, like it or not, that weakens racism as an ideology; and the same is true whenever imperialism suffers a military or political defeat abroad.

I think when "Joe Six-Pack" finds that racism and imperialism no longer "pay off", he will look for alternatives and, hopefully, revolutionary communist alternatives...if such are present and accessible.

But we shall see.

[eat the world]

I think we should take our time, and really unravel this issue.

I would like to start with a methodological question:

how can we determine the revolutionary potential of a particular group of people?

Without digging into that approach, we can run around in circles -- churning out lots of discussions and points (both good or bad), but without really reaching a correct, penetrating understanding.

let me suggest some thoughts as a start on this issue:

a) First, we are talking about revolutionary potential, not current revolutionary stance.

This is important. If we judged potential by what exists -- we would always have a pessimistic and defeatist sense of what is possible.

Lenin (in Collapse of Second International) talked about the great dangers of thinking "What is possible is what exists. And it is not the job of marxists to fight for the impossible."

So it is cheap and easy, to point to backward elements among the masses (in the current situation) and to extrapolate (in a metaphysical and anti-people way) that the masses are all shitbags who deserve what they get (and who need to be suppressed and dictated to, as MIM insists!!)

b) Similarly we are not saying "what will white workers do in any fugure crisis?"

We will not know in advance, who will side with the revolution. In some cirisis the upheaval will be broad, and in other scenarios it will not. The broader the better the chance of success.

but (as Lenin says), we can understand the class interests of classes -- but we can't decide or know ahead of time who will align how in any particular FUTURE situation.

To say that white workers are part of the multinational proletariat, to say that socialism is in their interest (which it is!), etc. is not to say that it is inevitable that they will align with the revolution.

In fact, I think we can assume that people will allign in many different ways. Revolutin in a country like the U.S. is in content "the overthrow of the bourgeoisie," but it is (inevitably) in form "struggle between two sections of the people."

Our point is not to know (before hand) how many will fall where. Our point is to do the work to get as many as possible when the time comes. (This is why the pessimistic, apriori and unmaterialist assumptions aobut all white workers is really a rejection of the some of the very tasks we need to take up and succeed at!)

c)Connected to this, it is not helpful to approach this (or any serious question of analysis) from an empirical or anecdotal approach.

Andrei (sitting in a very very backward part of the U.S.) says that many white workers run around saying "nuke iraq."

Well, everyone knows that some male white guys in that part of the world are pretty fucking backward. So what?

Is that now representative of all white workers? In the whole U.S.?

Are the vocal ones now a sign that there are no white workers (even in buttfuck georgia) who disagree with them? I don't believe it. There is no place in the world, or in our class, that does not have the advanced as well as backward.

And then (out of the best motives) Redstar gives counter-anecdotes. he says he personally saw incidents where white workers took an anti-racist stand, and were sypmathetic to the upsurge of the 60s.

This illustrates several points: first, that the class is far more complex than any one thing. Frankly the idea that "all white workers are backward assholes and racists" is not even true in the deep south. It is never true, and has never been true. The scene is always contradictory -- even if the most backward are encouraged and promoted, and used to intimidate the most advanced. The second point that Redstar's stories illustrate is that "when revolution has its way, the people see things a different way."

Howeever, what can we really settle with anecdotes? This is not a scientific method. Especially when the issue is "revolutionary potential."

The counterrevolutionary line (Mim and Sakai) simply twists anything you say: If you point out that white workers engaged in heroic class struggle (Republic Steel, or as Abolitionists during the Civil war), they just say (in a moral and subjective way) "These settlers fight for their own interests, but that is not revolutionary."
etc.

If you say "I knew white workers who were heroically anti-racists" -- then the counterrevolutionaries just say "they were an exception" or "their anti-racism is not revolutionary potential." or whatever.

You can't solve this through empiricism.

So let's start with a methodological question:

How do we determine the MLM approach to this question? How do we see what the class interests of various classes and segments of classes are?

When we break that down -- we can see (methodologically) how the little shell game of the counterrevolutionaries is set up. And how bullshit their anti-people arguments are.

But (much more important) we can also start to answer the important questions:

"Who are our friends? Who are our enemies?"

[eat the world]

let's put it another way:

The RCP says that there is a 90/10 ratio.

I.e. that socialism is in the interests of 90 percent of humanity.

The RCP says that there are two[/i/ 90/10s -- because the ratio on a world scale involves different groupings than in the U.S. (and there is a contradiction between the interests of the broad masses in the U.S., and the larger dynamics on an international scale.)

This is a subtle and complex analysis. And it is worth digging into how that is based.

By contrast, MIM creates a mechanical rule that any strata who "benefit" from the dominance of imperialism therefore have a class interest in imperialism.

They can pile statistics that "prove" this benefit -- but it is in service to a false, bourgeois logic.

No one denies that virtually everyone in the U.S. is influenced by the U.S. dominance in the world -- but does that mean that no one is overall-and-mainly opporessed by this society, or that few would benefit from a new society?

Or MIM makes a rather bizarre (and silly) argument about surplus value (based on the factually wrong analysis that workers in the U.S. don't produce surplus value of any significance and therefore supposedly live of the rest of the world as parasites.) Every element of this is wrong -- theoretically and factually.

Then there is a historical argument the counterrevolutionaries make:

Let me make an analogy. I will list every shitty thing Andrei ever did (and ignore every thoughtful, lofty, uplifting thing he has done.) I can paint a picture (out of completely true facts) that make you look at andrei and barf. But does that get at truth?

We need dialectics not metaphysics.

We need to proceed from reality, not from apriori hatred of sections of the masses.

We need to identify trends and underlying dynamics, not start from the surface of current events.