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COMMUNICATIONS
35 percent are blue-collar workers, a little more than half of these are
unionized, a little less than half are engaged in direct production. The
latter group is shrinking as a result of automation and related pro–
cesses and is, at the same time, being cemented into the foundations
of business unionism. Almost half of all Americans employed
are
white–
collar workers, perhaps 15 percent of these are unionized. And at least
68 percent of the working population exclusive of those in agriculture
is employed in service producing industries, as distinguished from goods
producing industries,
e.g.,
mining, construction and manufacturing. Such
statistics can be compounded in a variety of perspectives - but they
all point to the same conclusion, namely, that the particular class align–
ments and occupational distribution which once served as the empirical
basis for a traditional socialist, particularly a Marxist, analysis of Ameri–
can society no longer hold. This does not lead one to abandon either
socialism or Marxism, but rather to refocus insights, tactics and goals
in accordance with American reality.
The question is, then, how does one
transform
an hierarchical,
industrial, bureaucratic-capitalist state, not merely exchange it for
an
hierarchical, industrial, bureaucratic state under some other name?
Moreover, we cannot heal the breach between mental and manual la–
bor by manifestos. That is a consummation to be worked for, as the
configurations of a new society become clearer, not a condition to
be
achieved immediately. Indeed the effort to achieve it now can short–
circuit, not enhance, the Left.
What then, can Leftist intellectuals do? What immediate responsi–
bilities do they have? No more and no less than other specialized work–
ers. Intellectuals must redouble their efforts to radicalize their own
sphere of operations. They must take responsibility for transfonning
the bureaucratic hierarchies in which they work into human habita–
tions. And that means, of course, assuming power - and implies a
struggle on the highest symbolic levels - a struggle of words and ideas,
and when and if it comes to it, a struggle of bodies. Indeed the more
effective the intellectual ultimately is in this struggle, the more eager
the police
will
be to arrest him. He should not permit himself
to
be
arrested easily, or, the times justifying
it,
he should not permit
himself
to be arrested at all.
Universities, factories, government agencies, the Army, are
all
~enas
for this kind of action on the part of those in each structure
who can be objectively defined as creating the essential goods and ser–
vices by their direct labor. It is the job of the Left to continue to analyze
~e
"society "at "large and deVise appropriate tacticS. The professional
in-
