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Author Topic: Bourgeois intellectuals: credit where credit is due
skdadl
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posted 09 January 2005 02:11 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There are a number of babble discussions running at the moment, in widely different areas, in which this issue has arisen.

So, ok: many of us have had reason suddenly to sniff at the "middle-class professionals" who have tended to take over leadership of progressive movements we have known, and who have troubled us as we have watched and wondered just how much and how easily they are co-opted by quick success in current power structures.

At the same time, I've been surprising myself by remembering and arguing how much certain key progressive battles have depended on the advocacy of those despised elites, much more than upon general democratic upswells.

Thoughts?


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Mush
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posted 09 January 2005 03:32 PM      Profile for Mush     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Not sure if this is on topic, but...
The "Power Resources" school of thought on the welfare state claims that the social-democratic welfare states in Northern Europe can be as progressive as they are only because the structure of the welfare state allies working- and middle-class interests. The Canadian health care system, IMHO, depends on this too: providing universal benefits at a high enough level that the middle class won't withdraw their support (tax money) in favour of the market.

I like this way of thinking.

(edited to reflect doubt about relevance)

[ 09 January 2005: Message edited by: Mush ]


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nonsuch
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posted 09 January 2005 06:08 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, but who else could, or would, ever change the way a society is structured?

The ruling elite always - obviously! - wants things to stay the same: with them on top.

The poor have always been too busy, just surviving, and too frightened, to rock the boat. They always lack leisure time and education, except when the middle class insists that they must have it*. Without education, it's hard to imagine a different world, or even to question the present state of affairs. Without free time to read, reflect and discuss, it's impossible to be politically active**.
*The first teachers come from the middle class; schools have to be built; books have to be printed and circulated; laws have to be passed to put and keep poor children in the schools.
**The first organizers come from the middle class, as do the first demands for a limit on working hours.

Why? Because when you have education, spare time and security, you begin to think of those things as necessities. Not born to the purple, you understand that there is nothing special about you; nothing to guarantee your continued comfort. Unless society is structured so that all its members are safe, well-nourished, literate, imbued with rights and availed of opportunities, you can find yourself at the bottom of the heap as easily as the next guy.
It takes time to reach this conclusion - maybe several generations. But we get there. At least, some of us do. Since no society can function without a middle class, we have the power to determine how a society functions.

And then... shit happens.
We grow older; we grow complacent. We think: that's done; everything will be all right now. We get caught up in technological and cultural pursuits; we stop paying attention.
Our children take their standard of living for granted and want more toys and fewer responsibilities.
A new ruling elite finds loopholes, blind-spots; invents better bribes, more subtle threats, more clever scams, fresh wars - different methods of controlling the economy and the population.

We slide, all unawares, back into some form of feudalism.
Then we have to start all over again.

[ 09 January 2005: Message edited by: nonesuch ]


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jeff house
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posted 09 January 2005 06:58 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In one instance with which I am familiar, pretty well the opposite happened to that set out in Skdadl's scenario.

After the coup in Chile, a diaspora of leftists was created. That diaspora included thousands of middle class professionals, as well as many working class militants.

Typically, the middle class people had become socialists during university, as a result of study. The working class people were mostly copper miners and such. Thyey became socialists because they were making $2.00 a day in horrible conditions.

Fast forward twenty years, and many of the miners had tasted the middle class life offered by the salaries that union work provides in this country. They had mostly left socialism behind.

The middle class professionals mostly "kept the faith".

So, I think that ANYONE can sell out; it sdoesn't depend upon class; it depends upon depth of conviction, along with the size of the bribe being offered.


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Michelle
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posted 09 January 2005 07:04 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
One solution: make education free for everyone, if that's the factor that keeps people sticking with socialism and fairness principles.
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James
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posted 09 January 2005 07:36 PM      Profile for James        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
One solution: make education free for everyone, if that's the factor that keeps people sticking with socialism and fairness principles.

Isn't it sort of "circular" to view that as a "solution" ? While it seems true that better and broader education produces a more progressive population, univeral free higher education would be one of the ultimate goals that progressives would hope to achieve. It's difficult for me to see how the "destination" can also be a "road map".

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Contrarian
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posted 09 January 2005 08:04 PM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Education would be a way develop a socially progressive population, but also to maintain it.
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N.Beltov
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posted 09 January 2005 08:33 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
To address skdadl’s initial question, it seems to me that, in general, even progressive victories are often obtained with the following price: that the role of social movements and their pressure is denied by the law-makers and these latter pat themselves on the back for victories earned by activists and working people in general. Defenders of bourgeois society are loath to accept that the mobilization of masses of people in well organized and led movements lead to progressive victories….for such acceptance might shake the foundations of their bourgeois fairy tale…that we live in the best of all
possible worlds (to paraphrase Voltaire). I would respectfully question the completeness of skdadl’s initial observation and suggest that many victories are but the foam on the wave, the tip of the iceberg as many activists in many movements will attest. The enemy lies well about these things because he has lots of practice.

If one were to study law, for example, one might assume that there are no mass movements, no social
movements, and certainly no social classes in society. The neutrality of the state in class conflict is a great example of a legal fiction, for example. There are a zillion others. Why would the official ideology of a society whose legal foundation rests on private property, i.e., that rests on the expropriation of the property of some people by other people and calls that “lawful” be any different?

The question of consciousness and awareness is the key question for any substantial social change, i.e., the battle of democracy is the key question. Naturally.

It is an interesting observation that there is more leniency shown to students who are being prepared for careers in the state bureaucracy or as intellectual workers for some private firm in regard to exploring socialist ideas and theory than to the sons and daughters of more obviously working class families in exploring the same ideas in virtually any setting. Class loyalty is given a lot of leeway to exercise freedom of thought. This would substantiate skdadl’s view.

I once had a poster that read: Class consciousness is knowing what side on the fence you are on. Class analysis is figuring out who is there with you. So objective class “location” (to use Erik Olin Wright’s approach) needs to be supplemented by subjective class understanding as well. I’m convinced that good class analysis is an essential part of any lasting progressive victories.

But “you all” knew that already about me.

What could be more obvious? Our society vociferously denies the reality that it is founded upon: that classes exist and that the conflict between these social groups acts as the "motor" or engine of social change, however disguised, and that (in the view of Marxists, anyway)this conflict must eventually lead to some new equilibrium of improved social organization ...or some new barbarism. Right now we have the barbarism of Pax Americana .


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periyar
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posted 10 January 2005 11:08 AM      Profile for periyar   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Obviously the people most affected by social, politcal and economic injustice are the first to identify these disparaties and then may organize and fight for change. And economic marginalizaiton is an important area of struggle.
But there are other areas of marginalization like sexism and racism which are present in all class segments. I'm not sure if this was skadl's point but yes the women's movement in the 1960's had a significant middle class component and they're actions probably reflected that, but the gains they made were of benefit to poor women as well. Issues like reproductive rights and pay equity are two examples, I know there are others. I just read in the Toronto Star today about Judy Rebick's new book about the history of the Canadian feminist movement and she discusses the clashes between middle class women,poor women, women of colour, lesbian women, women with disabilities and as difficult as it was to address and include so much diveristy, that is something the movement did.

Another example I can think of was the alliances formed between high castes and dalits in India during the struggle against the British colonists. There was Ambedkar, a dalit and Nehru, a brahmin. Of course I'm not suggesting that caste hierarchy and injustice was eliminated once the british left, but just illustrating that it's not always about class versus elite, there are complex realities and alliances produced because class is not a homogeneous category.


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nonsuch
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posted 10 January 2005 11:14 AM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
periyar:
quote:
Obviously the people most affected by social, politcal and economic injustice are the first to identify these disparaties...

Doesn't seem all that obvious to me!

quote:
the women's movement in the 1960's had a significant middle class component...

...as did the suffragette movement before them, this significant component being the entire vanguard.

N.Beltov - speaking of Marx and class...

[ 10 January 2005: Message edited by: nonesuch ]


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periyar
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posted 10 January 2005 11:24 AM      Profile for periyar   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well,I was thinking of the hardships people face due to being poor, non-white, gay/lesbian etc. and when they compare their circumstances to those who have membership and the privelleges that come with it in the dominant group. Many do figure this out pretty easily, I know I sure did. Some may cope with it through internalizing their oppression but I think it's safe to say most oppressed groups know on some level they are being exploited and screwed over.

And, yes I understood that n.beltov was talking about class and marx.

[ 10 January 2005: Message edited by: periyar ]


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periyar
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posted 10 January 2005 11:32 AM      Profile for periyar   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm srewing up my posts a bit, but I just wanted to add to the above- I don't limit my definition of awareness of injustice to utilizing marxist, feminists or other theoretical frameworks to understand the dynamics of oppression.

[ 10 January 2005: Message edited by: periyar ]


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skdadl
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posted 10 January 2005 11:52 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Both N.B.'s and periyar's readings of the variables seem valuable to me, especially as cautions when any of us, standing on any particular ground, tries forging ahead without remembering that there are always others to take with us who are standing somewhere else.

This I know to be a chilling truth:

quote:
It is an interesting observation that there is more leniency shown to students who are being prepared for careers in the state bureaucracy or as intellectual workers for some private firm in regard to exploring socialist ideas and theory than to the sons and daughters of more obviously working class families in exploring the same ideas in virtually any setting. Class loyalty is given a lot of leeway to exercise freedom of thought. This would substantiate skdadl’s view.

I've seen that happen in a Canadian courtroom -- university students who'd been supporting strikers and got caught assaulting an auto body, eg, let off with conditional sentences, the strikers themselves slapped with judgements and fines. That was thirty years ago, mind. Maybe it still happens?


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skdadl
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posted 10 January 2005 11:56 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
PS: Really exciting to me to hear that Judes's history of the Canadian women's movement is about to appear. Was there a pub date given, periyar?
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periyar
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posted 10 January 2005 12:06 PM      Profile for periyar   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
skadal,
no actual date on the book,
'Both sides of the story- the amazing solidarity and the destructive incivility are told with equal honesty in a soon-to-be-released book entitled Ten Thousand Roses.
Carol Goar from the Star.
I'm definetly looking forward to reading this too. She has interviewed and included the views of 82 different women, she calls it a 'collective memoir'.

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skdadl
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posted 10 January 2005 12:09 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Groovy. I can hardly wait.
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rasmus
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posted 10 January 2005 12:37 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
February 8:

http://www.womensbookstore.com/

quote:
Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution, by Judy Rebick. Ten Thousand Roses is a rich tapestry of stories told by over a hundred feminists from across Canada who organized, discussed, protested and struggled for change. Judy Rebick, feminist activist, weaves together an insightful and stirring oral history full of four decades of struggle, defeat and triumph, as well as honest and insightful discussions of the differences that simultaneously divided and strengthened the women's movement in its efforts to remake a male-oriented culture. These stories define the Canadian women's movement as one of the most successful on the planet and open a treasure chest of knowledge for anyone wanting to make a better world. Pre-orders are being taken now for this book! We will charge you when the book will be shipped. Publication date: February 8th, 2005. Penguin Books, $25.00.

Carol Goar's piece

[ 10 January 2005: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]


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jeff house
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posted 10 January 2005 02:15 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was excited to read Goar's article, and look forward to reading the book. I have pre-ordered it on the handy Women's Bookstore page, as I expect to initiate a Babble thread on it. Actually, no one who does not read it will be able to participate on my thread.

Audra said so.


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skdadl
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posted 10 January 2005 02:47 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Actually, no one who does not read it will be able to participate on my thread.

Male imperialist!


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nonsuch
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posted 10 January 2005 04:19 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by periyar:
Well,I was thinking of the hardships people face due to being poor ... and when they compare their circumstances to those who have membership and the privelleges that come with it in the dominant group. Many do figure this out pretty easily, I know I sure did. Some may cope with it through internalizing their oppression but I think it's safe to say most oppressed groups know on some level they are being exploited and screwed over.

Of course they know, but they generally lie down and take it, until some hedge-priest or tinsmith riles them up.
I took out [non-white, gay/lesbian etc.] because those are not classes. It wasn't the slaves who rose up against slavery; nor were their supporters poor white - look to the middle class again. As, too, with gay liberation.
quote:
And, yes I understood that n.beltov was talking about class and marx.

That was a gentle reminder to N.Beltov that Marx himself wasn't a factory-worker.

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periyar
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posted 10 January 2005 04:58 PM      Profile for periyar   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
nonesuch,
Thanks for the clarificaiton about the marx comment.
About the role of the middle class, yes they are often involved in political struggles in leaderships roles, in the work of producing theoretical knwoledge etc- and i understand what you meant about leisure time allowing one to turn their attention to such pursuits- but are there not movements out there that have been lead and directed by and large by those most marginalized?

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skdadl
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posted 10 January 2005 05:13 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
periyar, this is a tiny bit of the territory that you're asking about, however:

The lefty-liberal-arts community in this city received a few hard, if eventually beneficial (I think) shocks in the late eighties when some of the icons of sixties/seventies-style liberation were confronted in public, sometimes insulted in public, by members of marginalized communities.

Publishers took it on the chin (and needed to); social organizers took it on the chin as well, women like June Callwood, eg, whose long and immense contribution to progressive politics simply cannot be doubted ... and yet.

A lot of this is still shaking out, although there's no question that the first responses from the (usually white) liberal elites were (predictably) clumsy. They sort of came down to: "How can you accuse ME of being prejudiced? I've devoted my life to human liberation. And I've got an Order of Canada to prove it."

In a way, what I just wrote is mean. But a lot of complacent liberals really needed the shock of having their own privilege held up to them.

I feel compelled to add: I used June Callwood above as an example, partly because I truly do think that her record is unassailable. She is herself a child of a marginalized community -- First Nations -- and she has, over decades, demonstrated more strength of character than any ten other people I've ever known. So I suspect that she would not want her part in this history to be lost, not the bad parts any more than the good.


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periyar
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posted 10 January 2005 05:17 PM      Profile for periyar   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
yes, I remember the whole thing with june callwood, was it a women's shelter and issues surrounding race and acces to decision making? I know the press was largely favourable to Callwood, and perhaps it was warranted, but I guess as a woman of colour myself who has been involved in activism with white women and on two occasions had my work appropriated, I wondered what really went down.
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jeff house
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posted 10 January 2005 06:10 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The person confronting Callwood was Marlene Nourbese Philip, a Trinidadian-born Canadian writer and lawyer.

Generally, she is terrific on most things. However, I feel the obligation to report that she can sometimes say something in a burst of anger, something she later regrets.

I believe the Callwood moment was one of those.


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skdadl
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posted 10 January 2005 06:27 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
she can sometimes say something in a burst of anger, something she later regrets.

Well. Can't we all?

Ok, ok, me worst of all. But it takes a sinner to forgive a sinner.

periyar, I don't know the details. It was a hard thing to do to people who had been so dedicated for so long, and yet I think it made a lot of us think harder. The world was changing enough that it had to be done.

I should have mentioned above, when I was talking about publishing, the poet Dionne Brand. She isn't the only marginalized poet to have battered down liberal complacency by sheer force of will, but she sure has done that.

I also think it should be noted that June Callwood has cancer that she has decided not to fight, a decision interesting in itself since she almost single-handedly founded the hospice movement in this city. I've watched the way that system worked for a friend who died ten years ago, cared for by a group who used Callwood's book as a bible. For me, everyone's privacy is supreme when these moments come, but I am hoping that Callwood leaves us a record of how her mind moved on after she first thought about helping others to die.


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nonsuch
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posted 11 January 2005 03:43 AM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've been gone a while; things have moved along, so this is a bit stale, but would be rude not to respond when one is addressed directly.

quote:
Originally posted by periyar:
nonesuch,
... but are there not movements out there that have been lead and directed by and large by those most marginalized?

There probably are - i just can't think of any.

If it's a racial struggle, look for leadership among writers, teachers, lawyers and ministers of colour: people who were either born in the middle class or have risen to it by their own effort (and could lead quite comfortable lives, if they didn't care about those of their people who are worse off, more unjustly treated, than they are themselves). I didn't want to get into race at all; it's too complicated.

Note: I never said the middle classes (there are at least three) as a whole are praiseworthy; only that they generate a significant few movers and disturbers.

If the working class acted in its own best interest, there could be no BushCo. Indeed, there could never have been any dictators, ever. Where would they get armies and riot police?


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