[Peace-discuss] Howard Zinn speaks

[Jenifer Cartwright]

I couldn't get the full text, and I'm usually a big Zinn fan... but I certainly disagree w/ the statement below, because we talk/hear/read about class in the US all the time: middle class; vanishing middle class; blue collar workers; working class; working class background; underclass; permanent underclass; upper class; educated clase; socio- economic status (SES); extreme poverty; climbers; social climbers; RHIP; VIPs; head honchos; rank and file; Mr Charlie; the man; movers and shakers; above your station; know your place, etc etc etc. Polls give us class (and other) data ad infinitum -- which demographics voted for Clinton, Obama, McCain, etc. Class humor is what moved Larry the Cable Guy out of his trailer (so to speak) and into top 1% of earners (I'm guessing), and class distinctions are used to sell products from cars to cosmetics! Capitalism depends on a class system for its existence, and nobody's trying to hide or deny it -- it's all right out in the open for
 anyone to see.
   --Jenifer   

"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
  Maybe so, but he makes here an absolutely crucial point, the very point that 
most self-described liberals (and even more the purveyors of identity politics) 
can't accept. Covering that over is what Clinton, Obama et al. are all about. --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> From ZNet: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16498#Comments
> 
> Zinn sounds a little less buoyant than usual. 
> 
> /
Our culture demands, in its very language, that we accept a 
> commonality of interest binding all of us to one another. We mustn’t 
> talk about classes. Only Marxists do that, although James Madison, 
> “Father of the Constitution,” said, thirty years before Marx was born 
> that there was an inevitable conflict in society between those who had 
> property and those who did not./
> 
> /Our present leaders are not so candid. They bombard us with phrases 
> like “national interest,” “national security,” and “national defense” as 
> if all of these concepts applied equally to all of us, colored or white, 
> rich or poor, as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same 
> interests as the rest of us, as if George Bush has the same interest as 
> the young man or woman he sends to war./
> 
> /Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the 
> biggest lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American 
> people, this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with 
> different interests in this country. To ignore that—not to know that the 
> history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave, 
> landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against 
> poor—is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us by 
> people in power. 
/
> /
> /
> /--mkb/

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