[Reader-list] Greetings for May Day

Tapas Ray tapasrayx at gmail.com
Fri May 2 17:23:05 IST 2008


True, we should be grateful to struggles waged by the working people for
many of the rights and liberties we enjoy today. However, "we" here on
this list are members of the petit bourgeoisie, and probably enjoy
certain securities and privileges not available to the "working people", 
  not because these have been won through struggles - our own or the
workers' and peasants' - but because those who run the show need our
help, as a class, in running the show. So we probably should be grateful
to them as well, however distasteful this may be.

Also, I think it would not be good strategy to conflate "postmodern" 
with "neoliberal". Both are labels, and all labels should be read with 
care. Postmodern, in my understanding, is a catch-all for a broad 
spectrum of tendencies. Some of these tendencies are emancipatory in 
orientation, and can reinforce the typically modernist project of 
Marxism. This, in fact, seems to be happening on the ground. Since 
fragmentation is said to be a major characteristic of the postmodern 
condition, minority ethnic and lower-caste struggles that have 
challenged the modernistic Indian state in recent years can be seen as 
expressions of postmodern tendencies. One hears of occasions in which 
there has been cooperation or overlap between these, on the one hand, 
and Maoist/Naxalite movements, on the other.

Tapas


Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote:
> Dear Radhikarajen,
>
> snip <
>
> All of these were won by working people, after
> miltiant battles,  all over the world. Not a single one of these was
> a sop offered by ruling powers. If all the precious liberties we have
> today are under attack, then I do not see how the 'very values which
> inspired them' become 'somewhat blurred'.
>
> On the contrary, I think they get sharper and more acute. The world
> we are living in today is more riven by class conflict than any other
> time in history. We still have nothing to lose but our chains.
>
> And as I said yesterday, only a world to win.
>
> best
>
> Shuddha
>
>
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> The Sarai Programme at CSDS
>

Asit asitreds wrote:
> dear freinds and comrades
> when we speak of mayday and redflag we atleast have to grateful if not
> respectful
> the story of the red flag is obvious it was the workers of chicago waving
> their shirts which had became red dripping with blood after being shot by
> the police, then begun the story of  8 hrs working days all the rights we
> enjoy today are the result of enourmous sacrifice and struggles it is for
> the postmoderns and neoliberal agents lost in the hyperreall world of
> consumer paradise with thier malls casinos and entertainmentparks, those
> jombies whose lives are shaped by madison avenue advertising whizkids
> history is what hurts.
> I just want to  qote a sentence from ralph miliband the giant political
> theorist
> all the civic freedoms we enjoy today are the product of centuries of
> unremmitng struggles our task is to transcend their class boundaries
> asit
> 



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