Forgive me if I’m just overthinking or thinking about nothing, I’m just wondering how educated should a worker be to be class conscious?

How I came to thinking was just pondering on people who are gullible to other people’s opinions, and the ethics of ethical education? Maybe just nonsense meta stuff, but what exactly can people do, and how can we teach people to be self-aware enough to listen to what they truly believe in. Especially when it comes to adolescents who are surrounded by information dumping news sources and ideas from all sides, and any one source just has to be charismatic/bold enough for it to stick in someone’s head for long term

  • OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    The way I see it, there’s 3 ways to interpret human interactions. Very generalized and simplistic overview:

    • Realists believe that humans act on self-interest and the pursuit of power/wealth/dominance. This is essentially the human-nature-is-bad camp. Realists believe that world peace and prosperity can be achieved if there’s a balance of powers, where if one individual attempts to dominate the others, the others will band together to stop the dominator, as it is in their self-interest. Example: the way Europeans carved the world after the Napoleonic Wars. Also, the Cold War.

    • Idealists believe that humans act on mutual interests based on ethics and morality. This is the human-nature-is-good camp. Idealists believe that world peace and prosperity can be achieved if everyone is an idealist and preferably liberal. Example: US foreign policy focused on enforcing US ideology/hegemony all over the world through economic and military power.

    These two worldviews have dominated politics for most of history.

    • (Historical) Materialists (Marxists are part of this group) reject both of the above worldviews and instead believe that humans act based on multiple factors, that can be condensed into economic and material conditions. These conditions define class. Dominant classes (or nations) will always exploit the subservient classes (or nations) and define society to reinforce their dominance (i.e. their ownership of the economy), which Marxists are opposed to. Marxists believe that world peace can be achieved if classes are eliminated, and the way to eliminate them is to ensure that the economy is equally shared by all individuals and benefits all individuals equally. Marxists don’t believe that human nature is that important to consider, as humans will be forced to act in certain ways according to their circumstances.
    • redtea@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      We’ll put. I’ll only add that this,

      Dominant classes (or nations) will always exploit the subservient classes (or nations) and define society to reinforce their dominance…

      is because they’re compelled to do so by the logic of capital. And abolishing class society, at this stage in history, goes hand in hand with abolishing capitalism and it’s vampiric logic.