⚡Eineygður Flakkari⚡ (toiletpaper@shitposter.world)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Aug-2024 09:39:05 JST
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⚡Eineygður Flakkari⚡ (toiletpaper@shitposter.world)'s status on Wednesday, 07-Aug-2024 09:39:05 JST ⚡Eineygður Flakkari⚡ @sun @strypey
Interesting. On the one hand, I feel a lot of the complaints in that article apply to me personally, even while I've sent around half my life as lumpenproletariat as opposed to bourgeoisie per se. On the other hand, I think "class" consciousness in itself can be problematic. It's like saying that everyone should be pulled down to the lowest rung rather than given the opportunity to rise up. Remove the top tier so we can all be equally miserable. :P
Part of the historical transition from class as defined by economic status to class as defined by categories like race, sex, sexual orientation, etc, is a consequence of 2nd-wave radical feminist activism of the 1960's onward, where the goal posts were basically shifted from one to the other. The Marxist rhetoric was refigured to work to the advantage of those feeling oppressed by their physical characteristics, to the extent that limited their upward mobility in an economic context. Many of the women involved were/are those who suffered sexual violence, and took their trauma on the campaign trail. As the saying goes "Make the personal political." A classic/seminal example of this is the "Redstockings manifesto".
Personally, I don't necessarily feel myself inimical to capital, at least in a laissez-faire context, because to me it's ultimately founded on equal rights (which belong exclusively to individuals) and mutual respect for each other's person and property. Mind you "property" is a can of worms, and generally runs into conflict with the satisfaction of human needs, to the extent that it becomes monopolised. That to me characterises the main thrust of antagonism between right and left, capitalism and socialism et al. What's required is to find a way to harmonise those two understandings of "rights", which I don't feel are mutually exclusive in spite of how they're represented to be. Removing the involuntary intercession of state/government from the private transactions of individuals is a key facet of how to deal with that in my opinion. Groups do not have rights, only individuals. When a group can abrogate the rights of an individual, "equal rights" are impossible.
The other thing that stuck me was this idea of slotting people into a box they cannot escape from on the basis of some perceived transgression. I've generally characterised that with an idea I call "isa-asa". Where we might say "So and so 'is a' <insert pejorative>", this puts them in a permanent category and refuses to acknowledge the capacity for people to change and grow, and to correct their ideas and behaviours. On the other hand if instead one says "So and so is behaving 'as a' <insert pajorative>", it implicitly recognises the transient nature of behaviour and provides the freedom for that person to improve themselves. Note that the latter is also focused on ideas and behaviour, rather than static characteristics like race, sex, etc, which one "is". When we focus on what a person "is", we've fallen into the trap of fragmenting society according to immutable and antagonistic classifications. It makes the problems permanent rather than solvable. Mind you that perfectly suits those who earn a living from the activism.
In the words of Booker T Washington, "There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs." This phenomenon is definitely not limited to complexion.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/