Robin, this has been thinking a lot about hammer and hoe.

Oh,

can't ask you question now. I meanvyav,

you have to sit with that for a second. You really have to say with that, cause exactly, that's brilliant, you know. And and it's interesting that i feel like you've said this before. You've been saying this for 20, plus, 30 years. And you would think by now e would have, like all of us, a kind of clearer understanding of liberalism and a clearer understanding of the limits of the way marxism is mobilized. And, you know, the an interesting thing is the fact that there were these debates that took place throughout the twentieth century about the point of production verses, you know, some place else, that is, some place else, often community or neighborhood. And you've answered all the questions that i think every one needs to know, so go and do your work.

Let me ask you a more specific falthe question. How does has the debate, or set of confusions that pass for a debate sometimes about kind of racein class and all that, in the last decade or two, compared to what you saw in, say, the 19 thirties? Why?

Wel, the short version is hammer and hose available, but but to answer your question, dan, which is a good one. You know, i sort ofi feel like, you know, i feel like the way ruthy felt about this when i started riting about the communest party. Andit is faco division of south africa. And the reason i ented for not writing about south africa i couldn't get into the country in 19 86. And, you know, for good reason, now enough to know what was happening there. But in many ways, i never ever saw, and my mentors never ever saw a conflict. In other words, there wasn't an opposition between race and class. They were mutually constituative. Even if the folks who worked in san pedro didn't use that term, they understood it, cause they lived it. And so looking out the comees par in alabama, its very clear that the black working class was a working class, and they were black. And so they dealt with things, a forms of oppression and margialization, but also forms a community that made it possible for them to build a movement that was always inclusive the problem. And tus very simply, if you go back to, if you go back and read black marxism, and if you read ah, it's the section in part one where he talks about socialwhere he talks about social socialist theory and nationalism, and the limits of marx mangle's notion of socialist theory because of nationalism. One of the points he actually makes is in the conclusion of that section, he says, he doesn't use the term race, racial reductionism, but he says, you know, the problem with our understanding through marks is that race, racialism shaped the way in which marxus of the nineteenth century, in early twentieth century, understood class. So he's saying, the original ratial reductionism isnt in marks, not marks per se, but in marks in the way that the fact that that marks and angles could not escape the fact that they lived in a society that was already racial. And he saying that crimes began before there were black people on the scene. The crimes began within europe itself. That is, if you create hierarchies of difference that are based on these imagined sor tof notion of what the herinvoked is, you know, then that's what you get. You get a sense of where you can't separate race and class, but especially where you can't see class operations because of race. And we flipped it. We keep saying that all those movements that are coming out that are not claiming to be class movers, are not claiming to be universal, are the ones thatae are engaged in race reductionism. When it'slike, it's the original sin was back then, you know, understanding the way in which europe shaped socialist theory, and we could actually move past it, as long as we are able to engage itint

find, i'nt find the liberal, the liberals position on rason, class hard to understand, for the reasons ruthie explained.