It’s not about the gays vs straights or blacks vs whites or the Romulans vs The Federation. It’s about the billionaires vs everybody else. It’s a class war. It aways has been. And life is never going to improve for most of us until we figure out where the REAL source of our pain comes from. Like George Carlin once said:
“That’s the way the ruling class works in any society. They keep the lower and middle classes fighting with each other so that they . . . the rich . . . can run off with all the f*cking money.”
Conservatives: “George Carlin is a Republican!”
Only in a social context where “liberal” just means “polite”.
Why do you stop at billionaires, and not include the politicians and the people that hold power?
Politicians are part of the state, which is shaped by the economic system which, in most of the world, is currently capitalism.
The root of the problem is class society and the capitalist system where the ruling class are the capitalists. So it doesn’t really matter who the politicians are until the economic system, and thus the ruling class, are changed, which can only happen by organizing outside the capitalist political system whose only purpose is to protect capital.
The state is part of the superstructure that is shaped by the economic base, which is in turned maintained by said superstructure. However, changes in the superstructure are never transformative unless they also come with radical change to the mode of production. Billionaires, and the capitalist class as a whole, completely block the path for the workers to seize the means and reshape society towards progress. It doesn’t matter what faffing idiot you put in power in the state, when the economic base keeps operating with the same logic of capitalist extraction.
Many middlemen are getting played, too.
You forgot the journalists who frame narratives and the intellectuals who secrete the ideology that makes it all possible.
If you think capitalism didn’t create and still heavily relies on racism, sexism, ableism, cisheteronormativity and so on (and no, comparing real life oppressed groups to fictional characters doesn’t help) to literally exist, you’ve not been paying any attention.
Fighting only a class war still leaves an imperialist white supremacist cisheteronormative ableist theistic patriarchy.
Intersectionality is the only way everyone gets justice and equity.
Last time I checked fighting class war resulted in antitheistic antimonarchistic country where supremacism and patriarchy was counter-revolutionary crime(see “Women and pro-literacy propaganda” and “Campaign for non-Russian speakers”).
I think, on average, we’re too dumb as a species to keep it in mind. I would hate to say we deserve the system we’ve got, but here we are.
You all need to read gramsci.
If you think racism is an issue of “whites vs blacks” you either have never seen racism (good for you) or never really heard the people affected.
Hegemonial culture is a thing, and it plays a major role in keeping modern systems afloat.
Can’t fight capitalism without addressing inequalities and fighting for a just society for everyone.
This is the literal concept of solidarity: also fighting for causes you are not personally affected by.
You’re so close.
Can’t fight capitalism without addressing inequalities and fighting for a just society for everyone.
So very close!
Because you think we end capitalism an poof, all other problems are gone?
Sure, can’t overcome e.g. racism without overcoming capitalism, but also can’t really have a better society without addressing the discrimination in the system.
If some other working class member tells you about the discrimination he receives, and you make the face in the meme, you’re helping capitalists by splitting the working class.
The fights are interwoven guys, can’t do “this first” or “that first”
You need to address the problems (yes that means also cultural ones) and stand together in solidarity to have a chance of building a better system.
Splitting the working class by making this face when people talk about how they are discriminated just because your not affected is only helping capitalists
Class inequality is not the same thing as anti capitalism. I like capitalism. I see it as a vehicle for those who contribute being rewarded.
We have classist structures outside of more things than business. Politics is the big one, but it’s nowhere near the only one. I’m for tearing down those who get power without needing to demonstrate the skill needed to wield it. Those that are given it either through nepotism or cronyism.
I truly believe that the system doesn’t care about race or gender or whatever. It cares about looking after it’s friends. If you’re not in the club you’re trodden underfoot. So pitting black against white and man against woman is a distraction. We all need to be fighting together against the “landed gentry”.
Okay okay okay. You talk about class inequality but say you like capitalism? What classes are you talking about?
And life is never going to improve for most of us until we figure out where the REAL source of our pain comes from
Yeah! Consensus reality!
“They got you fighting a culture war to stop you fighting a class war”
When you’re a trans teen from OK getting beaten to death by classmates, the culture war feels a lot more urgent to focus on in the moment. Survival isn’t something you can be passive about.
Some people partake in the culture war as part of manipulation by the rich… Some people are forced into it by defending themselves from the first group. And some people are compelled into it to protect the second group.
While you’re not wrong about how we got here, it feels like it would be too easy for one side of the culture war to spin this as “Ignore my bigotry, Wall St is the real enemy!”
Political parties are part of the culture war too. The rich don’t fit into a party. They like right wing economics because it keeps them rich, sure, but they push left wing culture because it gets people off their backs. As a whole, they play the two parties against each other, and we probably won’t be able to stop that unless we can get more parties into the running.
Political hatred - probably the most prominent form of hatred in the US - is driven by the dichotomy, the “you’re either with me or against me” that’s made so convenient by the fact that everyone has to fit into one of two buckets anyways. Throw more parties into the mix, and it’s harder to make that distinction because any given party works with you sometimes and against you at other times, and if you label them all as enemies, you’re going up against the majority of the country.
It’s easier said than done, though. Duverger’s law states that the maximum number of viable political parties is the number of seats in a given election + 1. So we can’t just will another political party into viability without booting out one that we already have. We have to change the voting structure. Proportional representation in congressional elections sounds good, and with fewer voting districts, it’s also harder to gerrymander. But that’s gonna be hard to push for.
Once we can accomplish that, the hatred will slowly subside (but not entirely,) and people will be able to see more clearly to deal with the class struggle. Plus, with more parties, we might even be able to vote in candidates who support the actual economic changes we want instead of just paying lip service to the lower classes.
My dad once told me my mom didnt feel safe walking alone at night in the neighborhood and asked if I felt the same. I said I didnt feel any concerns, but added the caveat that Im not a small woman, and Im a large man.
He paused for a minute, nodded and said “that makes sense.” Then after another few seconds goes “That’s not white privilege.”
Trying to comprehend the thought process:
I mean, that’s true. It’s not “white privilege,” but it’s still privilege.
He saw himself having an epiphany about privilege in general, so he had to swerve and add race into the mix so he could say a true (albeit unrelated) thing and miss the point.
It’s like when anti BLM people say “All lives matter” … Sure, all lives DO matter, but they’re intentionally missing the point, so they don’t have to acknowledge that police brutality disproportionately affects black lives.
Saying unrelated “true” things to undermine the original statement is a bit telling about intentions.
… Now compare the difference between being a built black man and built white man walking down that same street…
And that would be white privilege. I’m not sure what you’re trying to convey here.
Reminds me of my white dad talking to a friend of my brother’s who’s black about how he feels when a cop is around. “Not that different, maybe a little safer.” And the friend said he has to be very careful about everything he does in that situation. My dad’s not a conservative type, thank god, so hopefully it gave him some insight.
A few years ago, some cops were in my neighborhood looking for someone while I was sitting in my car. One ducked his head down to look at me and quickly left. I was VERY aware that my skin color might have just saved my life.
Living in multinational country I can say noone feels safe around police.
I was talking to my handyman the other day, he’s a nice guy and likes to learn. I’m telling him about how much it sucks to grow up in car-centric suburbs, and he told me about childhood.
I told him how the freedom he had now gets people arrested for child neglect, and all of a sudden he goes “yeah it’s so dangerous now with the crisis at the border”
It’s like they’ve been through an “education” camp. You carefully lead them through understanding how the world could be very easily improved, and they’re getting it… Then some phrase reminds them of their conditioning, and they snap back to step one.
It takes months of gently leading them to see that what they’re saying makes no sense… It’s possible, but it’s depressing how many people are falling into the fox newshole
Below is where discussion of class consciousness derails, thus fulfilling the meme.
Nobody is free until everyone is free
- Thanos
Entropy take me please.
When they’re talking about big pharma and other companies controlling peoples lives and how the people that control them conspire to keep the rest of us in line… Then start talking about Jews…
I mean marx also talks about the Jews and the Christians. I thought the position was that religion helps reinforce class society.
He more talked about Judaism and Christianity, but it was relatively minor compared to actual class analysis and additionally was most famously brought up as a response to antisemetic bullshit that supported the false idea that Jewish people were controlling all of the banks and all of the money and were the source of all problems.
Marx spoke of Religion as a component of classism, not as a replacement for it, unlike what modern anti-semites do.
I was told marx was an antisemite. That’s what people say about leftists in general it seems.
It’s easy for people to cherrypick with groups.
There are tons of antisemitic leftists. I’ve had to heavily curate my social media because of them, and I’m lucky because that’s all I’ve had to do (eg, I’m not being chased across college campuses or doxxed for belonging to a synagogue or have people waiting outside of my door to hound me immediately).
But there are tons of leftists who aren’t as well.
Leftism has become co-opted as way for people to virtue signal and rationalize things they want to believe. The right is definitely seizing on this strife. But historically, there’s nobody the left likes to fight more than other leftists.
And the meme at the top about immigrants… that isn’t new. The USSR was famous for establishing ethnostates and it carries over to modern day. Sure, you could immigrate. But it isn’t like workers held hands and ignored the differences. The pressure was there, but perhaps not the wage pressure. Out groups were still blamed for things like shortages and service degradation, just like today. Nor a defense of anti immigration, but people seem to think the problem exists in uneducated or unenlightened people close to be leftwing. Nope, it’s our cohort. We are watching it in real time right now.
Marx was Jewish himself, and wrote a fiery response against an antisemetic piece. He advocated for Jewish liberation.
Source?
Read Marx’s On the Jewish Question. It’s a response to the extremely anti-semetic The Jewish Question, and Marx basically goes through all of its bullshit and concludes that while religion is used by Capitalism to reinforce itself, he advocates for emancipation of religious people themselves. He was an atheist of Jewish descent.
I disagree. We all enjoyed WandaVision.
I didn’t
Well then… CLASS WAR!!!
Intersectionality is a thing.
I’m not sure where you’re coming from?
A clever trick to quell the poor’s thirst for equal rights
It doesn’t quell it. It redirects it. All of the negativity and animosity still exist in the world, but now it’s aimed at the wrong target.
but now it’s aimed at the wrong target.
this is such a classic move that I’m amazed we still fall for it in current_year
People can talk about more than one issue at the same time y’all
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I don’t see how on earth you think overthrowing the government should be done quicker than correcting someone’s use of pronouns.
Right? Specially when those minorities have been abused into one of the low social classes.
These are two related issues.
The city where I grew up in England is over one quarter South Asian. There was friction between the “sides”, but what few noticed was that actually no-one was doing very well. The city had been abandoned by the government long ago.
Bradford?
Real easy to dismiss “culture war” issues when you’re not on the receiving end of them. Race, gender, religious prejudices predate capitalism and will likely be with us long after it’s gone.
Race, gender, religious prejudices
All secondary contradictions as consequences of class society, which is currently capitalism; it being feudalism in most of the world before that instead of capitalism doesn’t change that it was, and still is, class society. Tackling the symptoms alone won’t solve the core issue.
Racial, gender, queer emancipation are all part of proletariat emancipation. It’s not an either/or.
The man’s talking about class differences in general though. Pretty sure those predate us apes even knowing there were other different colored troops.
Either way it kind of feels like a bit of a chicken and egg discussion. Were we hierarchical animals first, then leveraged arbitrary and irrelevant traits to enforce that hierarchy, or vice versa.
To me it’s really simple. You adress class issues -> you adress “culture war” issues (those disproportionally impacted get disproportionately addressed, as they should be). You address “culture war” issues -> shitshow ensues.
I know what I’m gonna focus on.
Occupy scared the shit out of bankers. It’s no mistake that pop culture became obsessed with divisive issues immediately afterwards.
Europeans think racism is stupid, but then bring out the hitler energy for Romani.
All y’all’s gold mines, they wanna deplete you.
Fuck that’s good!
When hes a white male and doesnt understand the repression he faces isn’t the only important.
For real though, repressing minorities is a tool which at the moment capitalists use to get days of unemployed, wage slaves or to split the working class. By fighting the capitalists you can help minorities, but you dont nessescarily do so.
It’s important to remember, that discrimination predates capitalism and won’t automatically perish by fighting the class war but by fighting it in solidarity and activley addressing all kinds of unfair and unethical behaviour together.
If you make that face when a women talks about being denied an abortion or a subaltern not able to participate in discourse, you haven’t understood solidarity and won’t get very far.
I mostly think one facilitates the other. Helping the poor helps in the sens they can then fight discrimination more effectively.
And that’s why we could think we should start by solving the more recent problem of classes first.
To be honest the lines between the two fights probably blurs to thoses who wants both because they value equality first right?
But it’s also true that it doesn’t apply that well to everything completely. Abortion is indeed a very good example.
I also was on this track for a while, but the more you actually take part in the movements, the more you see realistic opportunities, the more you understand how damn interwoven all these issues are.
Its not about “this first” or “that first” its about working towards a better world TOGETHER AND IN SOLIDARITY.
Its not even that you should overcome one or the other first, its that its onlz possible to address one issue by also addressing the other. We can’t have a (real and good) socialist society without overcoming racism, sexism etc, and we can’t (really) overcome racism sexism etc without overcoming capitalism.
Realising this means fighting together on solidarity, not downplaying the discrimination others must live through.
I do agree on your emphasis on solidarity, but in a different way.
I think we see this interweaving especially in movements and realistic actions. Because people have values that connect the two together, as well as connecting us. Solidarity is such a value, as well as equality.
But, technically i think the world isn’t very restrictive on what ideas can work together. Technically we can have socialism with racism or sexism, it’s just a less common point of view in our cultures. And same for a capitalism that’s not discriminatory, that’s might be harder to achieve but it’s a real stance, based on other values…
I think the main problem for leftist in general is that we must also learn to accept some differences in our point of views. Even being able to fight with people that doesn’t share said values.
That’s the solidarity we lack the most, with differences regarding our opinions.
I think that’s what get rid of this what’s “first” idea, as well as having multiple fights, all more powerful and with less hollow debates.
Rarer and rarer are the movement that do that correctly in my opinion. We form communities based on our strong values which is great.
But capitalists or politicians thrive on this drawback of having strong values. They use it to pit us against each other. Inside the left, and also by radicalization of both left and right ideologies. Though media like internet especially.
Okay, I think we have different definitions of socialism. In my book that’s a fair society where everyone gets the stuff he needs and gives the stuff he can. Can’t really make this work fairly with racism and sexism can you?
Sure you can change the political system (from unbound parliament to bound council) but that not a society changed from capitalism to socialism.
But I think this is a question of definition, more important is the question of “can you have capitalism without discrimination” and I really don’t think so. You need the army of unemployed so your system doesn’t collapse and you can’t have an army of unemployed if you don’t have some reason why they should suffer.
Also capitalism literally works in the way, that you get played as low as possible, so discriminating people to pay them less is so encouraged by the system, that it is practically build into the system .
On everything you said after that: “amen”!
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