sakaisettlersocr
sakaisettlersocr
sakaisettlersocr
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
XIII. "KLASS, KULTURE &<br />
KOMMUNITY' '<br />
"A UE international officer said, in November<br />
1968, to a group of shop stewards and local union officers:<br />
'For the past two years, as you know, we have<br />
been having widespread discussion in our union on the<br />
general feeling of rebellion, cynicism and disgust among<br />
young workers. Let's examine, now, why these young<br />
workers coming into the shops today feel and act as they<br />
do.<br />
'When this young guy starts getting his weekly<br />
paycheck it looks pretty good, but not for long. Soon he<br />
buys a house with a thirty-year mortgage. He puts some<br />
furniture in the house. He buys a car, a refrigerator,<br />
washer and dryer. A TV - likely a color TV. On top of all<br />
that, his young wife is pregnant again.<br />
'As the monthly bills start piling up, his pay<br />
envelope looks ridiculous. He sees no reason at all why<br />
America, the richest country in the world, can't give him a<br />
job that will provide him with all of the necessities and<br />
some of the luxuries of life - and what's wrong with that?<br />
He is frustrated, he is mad, he is ready to fight the<br />
Establishment that fails to give him what he needs."<br />
Matles & Higgins, Them and Us.<br />
" 'I'd like to tell you why we are troubled ... First,<br />
we are tired of being politically courted and then legally extorted.<br />
Second, we are sick and tired of institutions, both<br />
public and private, not being responsive ... Third, we feel<br />
powerless in our dealings with these monoIiths. Fourth, we<br />
do not like being blamed for all the problems of Black<br />
America. Fifth, and perhaps the key, we anguish at all of<br />
the class prejudice that is forced upon us.'<br />
"The speaker is Barbara Mikulski, a thirdgeneration<br />
Polish-American from Baltimore and there is<br />
little question but that she speaks for millions of the inhabitants<br />
of what Peter Binzen calls Whitetown USA ...<br />
"People forget that, in the metropolitan areas,<br />
twice as many white as non-white families live in 'official'<br />
poverty, and of course many Whitetowners don't quite<br />
qualify for that governmental distinction. They are poor<br />
but not poor enough ... The Whitetown husband and<br />
father works hard as a truck-driver or turret lathe operator<br />
or policeman or longshoreman or white-collar clerk -<br />
perhaps at more than one of these jobs - to buy and hold<br />
on to his fourteen-foot-wide house and new color television<br />
set.<br />
" 'The only place we feel any sense of identity,<br />
community, or control is that little home we prize,' says 1145 Babylon.<br />
Mikulski. 'But there again we feel threatened by Black<br />
people.' "<br />
Carnegie Quarterly, Fall 1970.<br />
Euro-Amerikan workers are absorbed, as are<br />
Boer-Afrikaner workers in Azania, into supra-class settler<br />
communities where the petit-bourgeoisie is leadership and<br />
the labor aristocracy is the largest and most characteristic<br />
element.<br />
There is a distinct and exceptional Euro-Amerikan<br />
way of life that materially and ideologically fuses together<br />
the settler masses - shopkeeper, trade-unionist and school<br />
teacher alike. The general command of bourgeois ideology<br />
over these settler communities is reinforced by the<br />
mobilization of tens of millions of Euro-Amerikans into<br />
special reactionary organizations. Those Euro-Amerikans<br />
who are immiserated or heavily exploited are not only still<br />
commanded by loyalty to "their" Empire, but are<br />
submerged and disconnected amongst the far larger, heavily<br />
privileged mass of their fellow citizens. These "white<br />
poor" are truly the lost; the abandoned remnants of the<br />
old class struggle existing without direction inside