On 6/18/97 Len Flatley wrote:
>
> well, i have an interview transcript that was done with
> Chomsky here at WRCT in March '94. He compares the
> uprising in chiapas with the riots in LA., discusses why
> they WERE riots and how the same factors created both the
> LA riots and the Chiapas uprising.
>
> the interview can be found at:
> http://www.worldmedia.com/archive/interviews/9403-wrct.html
>
Yes I have found that, thanks. The relevant part of the interview reads:
"Compare Chiapas to South Central Los Angeles a couple of years
ago, the uprising there. In a sense, they were about the same thing.
They were about the social policies which are marginalizing and
making superfluous a huge part of the population. South Central
Los Angeles is an area where people used to have jobs. There were
industries, there were furniture factories, heavy industry. Well,
they've gone to places where you can get cheaper labor and you
don't have to worry about the environment. So these people are
essentially useless. They have no human rights any more because
they don't contribute to wealth production. And they're just
declining.
Well, Chiapas is a similar situation. Of course, Chiapas is
objectively, much poorer -- fewer television sets and bathtubs
and so on. On the other hand, it's striking that in Chiapas, one of
the most impoverished sectors of the hemisphere, there is still
a lively, vibrant society, which has a cultural tradition of
freedom and social organization. So they were able to respond in
a highly constructive way. They were able to organize, they have
positions, they have public support.
Now take a look at South Central Los Angeles. That was just a riot.
This is the response of a completely demoralized society, where
it's just disintegrated. It doesn't have social bonds, it doesn't have
goals, doesn't have hopes. And that's the difference. That tells a lot
about the United States, actually."
Chomsky doesn't really explain why the response of those in Los Angeles is
"just a riot" though. Of course I wasn't there so I have no idea what the
real story was. (I did talk to some-one from Launceston who was in LA at
the time, but she was virtually unaware of what was happenning).
This is not really an analysis I can understand. By contrast the analysis I
mentioned is not afraid to recognise the class nature of the uprising:
"...for a sizeable minority, perhaps a quarter of the population, there
has [being] their recomposition as marginalised sub-workers
excluded from consideration as a part of society by the label
'underclass'. The material basis for such sociological
categorisations is that, on the one hand there is the increased
access to 'luxury' consumption for certain 'higher' strata, while on
the other there is the exclusion from anything but 'subsistence'
consumption by those 'lower' strata consigned to unemployment or
badly paid part-time or irregular work.
This strategy of capital's carries risks, for while the included
sector is generally kept in line by the brute force of economic
relations, redoubled by the fear of falling into the excluded sector,
the excluded themselves, for whom the American dream has been
revealed as a nightmare, must be kept down by sheer police
repression. In this repression, the war on drugs has acted as a
cover for measures that increasingly contradict the 'civil rights'
which bourgeois society, especially in America, has prided itself
on bringing into the world."
...
"With the uprising, the American working class has shown that
capital's success in isolating and screwing this section has been
temporary.
The re-emergence of an active proletarian subject shows the
importance, when considering the strategie of capital, of not
forgetting that its restructuring is a response to working class
power. The working class is not just an object within capital's
process."
Chomsky's comments in the WRCT interview seem to differentiate between
Chiapas and LA mainly because of the tradition of organisation involved in
the former, implying that such was lacking in the latter. This apparantly
ignores the role of youth gangs in the LA revolt which I would be
interested in opinions on. The Au-To-psy analysis suggests that LA's youth
gangs had a considerable organisational role:
"We cannot deny the role gangs played in the uprising. The
systematic nature of the rioting is directly linked to their
participation and most importantly to the truce on internal
fighting they called before the uprising. Gang members often
took the lead which the rest of the proletariat followed. The
militancy of the gangs - their hatred of the police - flows
from the unprecedented repression the youth of South Central
have experienced: a level of state repression on a par with that
dished out to rebellious natives by colonial forces such as that
suffered by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories."
This would suggest that the main difference was merely one of tactics. The
tactics of the alienated working class youth of LA were to simply take what
they wanted and hit their enemies where it hurts most, their property.
Organisation styles differ, but that is to be expected in view of the
comparatively stronger forces ranged against the youth of LA, particularly
when we take into account Chomsky's point that the Chiapas rebels have
massive public support that tempers the state's response.
I have no way to judge who is right but it certainly appears that Chomsky
is wrong to say that the youth of LA don't have social bonds, goals or
hopes.
But then I admit that I am hardly objective. I can still remember the surge
of elation and solidarity I felt when I saw footage of the oppressed people
of LA looting and burning. Taking what they wanted and destroying the
property of their (and my) class enemies. I'm sure it was an inspiring
sight to millions of other people all over the world.
Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tasmania
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