Views in brief
Tech workers and class
IN RESPONSE to "Class, capitalism and the tech industry": David Judd and Zakiya Khabir's article was most welcome and informative, and I found most of it persuasive.
They're absolutely right to argue that most people in the U.S. are not "middle class," and that, as sociologist Michael Zweig (whom the article quotes) says, "income, wealth, or lifestyle" aren't key to what class is.
But Zweig's approach of using "power as the starting point" to understand class, which they put forward, has problems. For one thing, Zweig limits the working class to people with "little personal control" over their work "and without supervisory control over the work lives of others." This is too narrow an understanding of the working class.
What's crucial is where people fit in the whole system of social production. People who don't own or control means of producing goods and services and have to try to sell their ability to work to employers (or depend on people who do) make up the working class.
Higher-paid people who have a lot of autonomy on the job are part of what Marx called the "collective labourer," along with the many more people who have little or no control over their work and are paid low wages.
In the 1800s, some skilled craftworkers even "hired and fired their own helpers and paid the latter some fixed portion of their own earnings," as historian David Montgomery reminds us. Zweig's approach denies that these craftspeople were part of the working class.
Today some programmers have a lot of control over their work. As the article suggests (contradicting Zweig's framework it proposes at its outset), most of them are part of the working class, as were the skilled workers Montgomery writes about.
We should be consistent in recognizing that the working class is broader but at the same time more divided by workplace power hierarchies than many progressives think. This is one of many challenges facing those of us who want to help bring about the much-needed revival of working-class solidarity for which the article rightly argues.
David Camfield, Winnipeg, Canada
Free Ismail Shabazz
ISMAIL SHABAZZ lives in a small city in upstate New York called Kingston. Although small and 90 miles from New York City, it has similar problems as the big cities--gangs, racism and, most of all, a very corrupt police department.
Ismail did not like things that were happening in his neighborhood as a young man, and he joined the Black Panther Party. Fast-forward a few decades, and Ismail is (still) a role model in his community. He counsels young gang members, he started a chapter of the New Black Panther Party, and he is actively involved with shining a spotlight on the police whenever they are questioning a young Black youth--a full-time job.
I met Ismail a little over a year ago and have to say that he is very much needed in Kingston, but others do not feel that way. The FBI claims that he is a gun dealer and, as a result of this, he was arrested on numerous counts of selling guns. This whole story just seems so fishy that it is not funny. This is just another case of a Black Panther being silenced and thrown in jail. Just like we did for Lawrence Hayes, we need to step up the fight to free Ismail Shabazz.
Steven Gottlieb, from the Internet
Fighting racism on an individual level
IN RESPONSE to "Fighting racism and the limits of ally-ship": Excellent article. I don't disagree with what's said, but I find something missing that I want to discuss.
The authors write that it's not interpersonal conversations alone that change attitudes, but interpersonal conversations that are products of mass social struggle. I agree that mass social struggle starts conversations, but I'd like to examine why.
Among white people, those conversations start because the mass social struggle confronts their underdeveloped white identity (the disintegration stage). If they do not have a guide on how to abandon their individual racism, then they become even more entrenched in it. Beverly Daniel Tatum argues that it is at this stage that white people can help each other to develop a positive identity that leads to the recognition and opposition to institutional racism. Based on the authors' arguments in this piece on ally-ship, it seems that perhaps this step is something done "behind the scenes" that they do not fully acknowledge.
I feel that it is this work I can do among my fellow white Americans that allows me to be the most effective ally, given my location, physical abilities, age, etc. The authors do not say interpersonal conversations are invalid or unimportant, but they just didn't seem to fully acknowledge the array of what these might look like and how important they can be when done alongside other work.
Jenny Ruth, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania
Sanders can help advance socialism
I APPLAUD and support SocialistWorker.org and endorse its program. I suggest, however that we get behind the candidacy of Bernie Sanders--not because I'm under any illusion that he is a Marxist or that he will be elected and usher in sweeping and revolutionary reforms, but because it is time that the word "socialism" be brought out into the open, and that its merits be discussed in the public forum of national politics.
It has too often been the case that we have been talking to ourselves. Promoting a public discussion of the exploitation of the working class under capitalism and the socialist agenda to correct the contradictions of capitalist society in the context of Sander's campaign can only result in a broader acceptance of Marxist principles by employing phrases such as "the 1 Percent" and "the disparity of wealth and income."
Therefore, we should volunteer to work for Sanders and use it as an opportunity to advance our own program and ideals. In doing so, we should be discrete but uncompromising. I am well aware of Lenin's cautionary warning that with the politics of the bourgeoisie you should expect only bourgeoisie reforms. However, for the tree of socialism to bear fruit in the future, you must first plant the seed today.
Vaughn McClain, from the Internet
