Letter from Neil Fettes

Dear Frank,

Thank you for reviewing the latest issue of Red & Black Notes as well as the latest pamphlet Revolutionary Optimist. An interview with Martin Glaberman. I feel however, that I must correct the impression left by your comments.

          In reviewing Red & Black Notes you write "it seems to be the only English language councilist journal still in existence now that Collective Action Notes is in remission. I think this statement is inaccurate since to the best of my knowledge CAN is not in remission, although a new issue would be appreciated. Moreover, the Boston-based newsletter The Bad Days Will End can also be described as "Councilist."

          Regarding the pamphlet, your comment that both Glaberman and his interviewers, of which I was one, seem to consider the working class to consist only of factory workers is somewhat surprising, since you have been a long time reader of Red & Black No* tes, and have seen the class analysis presented there. Martin Glaberman did work in factories in Detroit and other parts of Michigan for two decades and therefore it is not surprising that many of the anecdotes he retells are drawn from that experience.

          It would be inaccurate and "workerist" to restrict membership in the working class to industrial workers, but it would hardly be more accurate to reverse the equation and consider everyone to be working class in the same way. I'm not arguing that certain groups are "more" working class or fetishizing industrial workers, but simply noting the realities of working class existence are different for office workers, for assembly line workers and for education workers. And Glaberman does not draw a narrow class analysis. I have in front of me a pamphlet by Glaberman from 1974 which features an essay entitled "Marxist views of the working class" where Glaberman does indeed discuss the various strata in the working class (this essay is available on request from the address below). This theme is returned to in Glabermarfs book Workingfor Wages, reviewed by me in DB #108.

          Lastly your comment that Glaberman "never found a group or program that he can support wholeheartedly" struck me as very odd, While Glaberman was a member of a number of political organizations he was associated with the tendency and ideas associated with CLR James since the early 1940's. Although the organizations changed, the political outlook was consistent throughout its evolution.

With comradely greetings,

Neil Fettes / Red & Black Notes,

POB 47643, Don Mills, ON, M3C 3S7, Canada