it's horrible. it basically gelds leftism as a movement capable of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted by redefining the meaning of "affliction" to disregard economics.

you'd think that would be immediately seen as a bareassed ploy in a capitalist society such as ours, but actually, it is rarely called out on that basis.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24975493)

you are a traditional leftist agitator. you hear these abuse stories from my employees, and it makes you really mad. "that manager is a real dick!" you exclaim. you focus on my behavior, and on the worker/management chasm, and your view of rights and obligations is framed in economic terms.

but you see, i am a bit ahead of the game. i know that leftist agitators are coming after me. so i transfer nominal control of my business to a board of directors, and i make sure that the new CEO is female. even better if she's a mexican immigrant or something. the shit-shovelers at my business are primarily white men.

as a leftist agitator from the old-school, this would not have bothered you. queen victoria was just as much of a capitalist bitch as anyone else, right? you had no sympathy for the coiffured matrons of the ruling classes, whether here or in latin america or wherever else. why the fuck would you? that would be SILLY relative to the plight of the workers.

but then modernity descends, and your fellow leftists begin to rephrase the whole game in terms of gender and race. my immigrant chick CEO is now a "minority" rather than a slavedriver. her story is one of "glass ceilings" rather than workers shoveling shit for her.

you can try and go against this narrative, and go on TV with her downtrodden employees complaining about their conditions, but you are ignored. and when you aren't ignored, you are attacked. why are you trying to drag down HER, of all people? are you mad that a MINORITY WOMAN is running the show? those whiny shit-heaver MEN should just have to GET OVER THEMSELVES and DEAL with it! grrrl power la raza squared!

even if you think these people are insane, you are still a man of the left who is not getting any sort of support from conservatives for your labor agitation. so you have little choice but to placate your purported allies.

so you back off. and then people like you also back off. and the old modes of leftism gradually wither, because your ability to critique power is now circumscribed by the "identities" of those IN power.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24975597)

economic class is a category. it's a very "strong" category for a lot of purposes, which means we can look at class alone and make a whole lot of predictions about lifestyle and so forth.

gender and race are also categories, but they aren't as predictive in many ways. if i know someone's gender and the town where she lives, i can't readily use that information to predict where she lives WITHIN the town. but if i knew her class and NOT her gender, i could.

class is also a powerful category because it has very specific correlations with things like life expectancy. it's very easy to see in tangible terms why being lower-class is shittier than being upper-class.

this is not something that corporatists like to see, because the traditional method of redress for class struggle is to take money or power in some fashion from those who hold a lot of it, and send it down the chain.

so the problem over time has been to defuse or deflect class anger, to protect the interests of entrenched wealth and power, and to destroy the use of "class" as a rallying point.

this is more important over time as more americans slip from the middle classes INTO the lower classes. class rage is often prompted by these kinds of downshifts. poor born poor tend to just be poor, but people with resources who then BECOME poor are often quite enraged, and search for systemic responses.

to weaken the use of "class," you must replace it with something. preferably, several things. and those new categories should avoid invoking traditional class demands such as wealth redistribution.

gender/race are wonderful from that perspective. as categories, they actually ENCOURAGE members of the most economically-privileged classes to depict themselves as "victims", and to promote a sense of false allegiance across economic classes.

so for instance the book "lean in" was targeted to "women," even though it mostly just describes a bunch of kerfuffles that took place well within the very top end of the wealthiest classes.

this is like a billionaire show-stallion aficionado pretending to make common cause with a shoeless peasant laborer and his donkey because they are both "horsemen."

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24975874)

but their pre-existing substrate of shared identity was quite strong beforehand. they share a limited geographic area and most people are within four degrees of a cousin relation to most others.

in an area where more fissures "compete" for attention, those which win out in the media will probably have strong and immediate visual impact, and race/gender categories certainly fulfill that wish. and that's without getting into corporate ownership/ulterior media motives and so on.

people in the west generally don't like to be categorized as lower-class, either. a lot of shame attaches to that. category identifications are a point of pride, which is why i think the focus on identity will ultimately be a disaster for the left. what happens if/when "male whites" assert themselves as a category in the same manner as others? for now, they mostly get mocked, but if the political paradigm remains identity-focused, it seems inevitable.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24975989)

Writing on these issues completely understands this, often connecting it to concepts like false consciousness, hegemony, and ideology which neoMarxists and feminists equally love. Thus, "identity" and "class" struggles are not separated nor separatable. No one argues that to talk, e.g., of a black woman's struggle means to disregard political economy. Clickbait blogs simplify issues but that is the nature of clickbait blogs.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977213)

so let's try making some actual sense.

- what is "structural struggle"? that's not actually what traditional leftists cared about, right? they cared about the distribution of resources and the distribution of the means of production. why should they care about "structural struggle" now?

- what is the structural determinism "argument"? what are its premises and what is its conclusion?

- what does it mean for "categories" to be "interlocked" and why should this matter? won't all categories be interlocked with these, general as they are? for example: height and attractiveness will both influence class. do i need to start complaining about askav's "tall privilege" and write a memo about ways in which he can be an "ally" to me?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977233)

That's what all that gobbledygook was.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977248)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeG4EMmqfag

I know you probably hate this guy, but I think his basic notion is right. I've seen both sides of it. I wonder if the cultural mores, concerns, and unity of the white elite drive academic production as well--after all, why accept for publication papers and books not addressed to concerns that have some purchase with the panel of elite referees for the submission?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977277)

You're right re: class struggle, of course. Sensible people talk about things in this way, Marx talked about things in this way, etc. But where you part company from '''''''''''''''' and from academia in general is when you say that "real leftists" don't talk as ''''''''''''''''' does. That's not true; that's pretty much how they talk these days. There are exceptions--so, some serious-minded left economists, historians, political scientists, statesmen/cabinet members, and analytic philosophers write sensible papers and books about class. But the rest of the left abandoned that project in the 70s. The 80s and beyond have been luxuriant nonsense of the kind ''''''''''''' is spouting. I like Hemi's account of its origins. Seems right to me.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977261)

maybe that's the fundamental problem - moving "narratives" of identity from things that can be measured at least somewhat objectively (class) to things that cannot be measured (and therefore cannot be questioned or even investigated) like the invisible knapsack.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24978776)

also, how mad does it make you (scale of hegemony to jouissance) that xo women slick the'yir panties for bonobo sex

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977255)

Anyway, as I mentioned, there are plenty of respected (and, more importantly, respectable) accounts of class that don't even really touch on all of these glimmer issues.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977240)

Yes, and it doesn't even take that much. A few issues are all we can focus on at any one time.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#31559091)

EDIT:

I mean, to me, it seems pretty close to universally shittier to be a woman than a man. That disparity deserves some attention. So does racial injustice, for that matter. I think saying "Forget that other stuff, it's not as important as CLASS" is arbitrary.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24975928)

their use of "identity" was secondary to class. and some of the orientalist/postcolonial writing was basically just a plea from third-world intellectuals for western intellectuals to pay attention to them.

this really began to swing around into a more modern form by the later 1970's. the failed "equal rights amendment" in the US and abortion/contraception battles helped refocus things into gender terms, and post-60's race-identity movements became more prominent within universities.

corporations can be quite good at identifying and taking advantage of those sorts of early trends, and that is what happened.

the traditional old left - having fractured itself, and debilitated by the final end of soviet communism - was not well-positioned to resist. though some tried.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24975955)

he basically agrees

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977219)

"I mean, to me, it seems pretty close to universally shittier to be a woman than a man."

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977114)

White male fragility, they call it.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#31559041)

While there are some real examples of privilege, most of the concerns discussed are exaggerated nonsense. It's creepy and frustrating to see seemingly mentally able adults buying into things that the crumble under the slightest questioning.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977151)

also, if any given property "X" INTERSECTS with "class," isn't that only meaningful so far as the class status is concerned?

so if gender intersects with class, but a certain number of women are filthy fucking rich, that kind of overrides everything else, doesn't it? oh, but maybe their plutocrat husbands condescend to them sometimes after getting back to the manor. that vitiates the whole pre-identitarian model then; better focus on gender now!

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#24977269)

Of course there are major disparities between how people treat a generic white guy vs generic black guy. Of course the same is true about men vs women.

The idea that this would offend and confuse white people who niggerthread is hilarious. "But CLASS" also makes no sense as a response

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2488966&forum_id=2#27122427)