What the hell does class have to do with anything?

Wesley Willis to thread!

Most lumpen thread ever.

I work at an investment bank. Two other employees of the bank, just a few floors above me, are:

1. a well known indie promoter in NYC.
2. a well known indie country singer/songwriter and FMU dj.

uh, no.

And I could make that argument with purely regional and race-related points ignoring class altogether.

And of course make that argument ten times more strongly not ignoring it.

= prole.

(Sorry, Evan, but that's classic.)

proletariat.

They can in the UK too, this has more to do with pride, and whether they actually want to go to school - particularly a "pretentious" one like art school is.

"Eeeeh son, stop that bollocks about becoming an artist, better become a footie player just like ol' dad, and then go down'a'pub'ave a few pints".

because they did not earn those opportunities. opportunities should not be through accident of birth

Also this is true in America, both parents were unemployed when I got into an art college, and I was far from being the only one.

Scott baio an inspiration to all....

Conservatives and liberals both have their imbedded stumbling blocks in considering this issue, as one glance at the preceding argument will reveal. Conservatives are too hard up on the play of individual motive in the class question. It's the Puritan work ethic redux: people are wealthy because they worked hard and therefore deserve to be wealthy; poor people are whiners who should just get a fucking job already; anyone who moans about social justice are pinkos who should hop the next flight to Cuba. We've heard this all before. Just as often, we've heard the typical liberal (or rather, radical) stances on this position: it's all the fault of the upper classes, they keep the poor down on purpose, our economic system is essentially corrupt and should be scrapped. After they've been repeated thousands of times for thousands of years, these remarks and all iterations thereof begin to sound a little hollow.

So... can we step back from the ideology a little and attempt a more mannered and complex debate? This might sound weird from the guy who was cursing out Bill O'Reilly a few threads ago, but seriously, let's give it a try. Besides, that bastard deserves any vitriol that comes his way.

I worldviews based on strawmen.

I think Mullet might actually even agree with me on this point, even if we disagree on the nature of (and solutions to) poverty.

I don't see what's so radical about this position. Even the most casual glance at world history will show you that so far it's been nothing but endless killing and suffering for the vast majority of humanity at any given time. Something is clearly wrong and we should be thinking about how to fix it.

As for your second post, I go directly to your last two words. Fix it. This is the only real option, in my mind: working out the flaws in the current system. There are no real alternatives available to us at this point, at least if one thinks of alternatives in the form of Marxist-Leninist communism. I belong to an Amnesty International chapter at my college, and there are disappointing numbers of fashionable Marxists running about with cellphones moaning about the glories of Cuba. That's bullshit. Equally so is the neoconservative dream, really the Puritan dream, of America as being a completely meritocratic society.

I think the real question that liberals need to face now is: how can we reconcile individual liberties (soundly trounced by communism) with social justice (often left on the wayside in capitalist societies) ? I like to think this question *can* be answered, but that's probably just naive of me.

God... I feel so conservative, bashing Marxism like that. I need to insult Bill O'Reilly again. Fascist pig-fucker. There, I feel better.

Cause lookin' at their track record over the course of the last
century: big f***in dud.

And I don't even feel like responding to anyone who says
"oh, Marxism has never TRULY been implemented. if we just have
one more go at it, we'll finally achieve a classless utopia;
honest." That's akin to saying that, given one more year of life,
Linda McCartney would have learned how to sing.

I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

The only way to enable a truly fuctional classless utopia is through the universal consumption of complex melodic music. Until this this happens your political theories are nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Geir Hongro

Damned collectivists.

Anyway, tremble before the might of Amon Toth as I pass judgement on your souls with my scales of... etc.etc.

Ah, right, let me guess - "libertarian." Or "north-right" (may Allah bless the Nolan chart), perhaps. Hell, maybe you're a Randroid.

Newsflash - those are all conservative.

[quote]and 2) I was addressing this statement:
"You're absolutely right that there are few viable alternatives at present to the Marxist view of class."[/quote]
Yep, the "Marxist view of class" is easily separated from Marxist ideology.

Analysis vs. ideology, it's very simple.

[quote]You must have missed it. And the other references to marx giving credibility to his theories or referring to fashionable
marxists.[/quote]
Uh-huh, as I said, it's funny how conservatives (or maybe you're not a conservative... you just make conservative laissez-faire capitalist arguments - ha!) equate Marxist-derived analysis with Marxist ideology.

"If anyone in the world still gives 2 shits for Marx's theories,
I have to wonder about their judgement/sanity."

This somehow pegged me in with Bill O'Reilly, whom I am
on the record as despising. I don't like capitalism - it _has_
been used as a tool to wring the blood out of the working classes.
But I disagree that Marxism is the only viable alternative left -
the cure is worse than the disease.

I don't really have a coherent point to make besides the fact that
Marx was WRONG. Analysis, ideology, "view of class",
whatever, his way of looking
at the world was horribly warped has had left a wake of pain and
suffering that I personally am affected by, in my own small part.
My mother was born and raised in El Salvador, and experienced
1st hand the practical application of Marx's ideas. Marx =
disenchanment, dislocation, dismemberment EVERYWHERE
in the world where his writings have been read and believed,
so excuse me for having a low tolerance for that shit.

If this has been confusing, sorry, it's hard to focus on the discussion
at hand with all the HILARIOUS jpegs and FANTASTICALLY funny asides!!!
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!!

He formulated a juggernaut of a theory. Perhaps one of the most powerful known in human history, at least in the political sense. Over a third, perhaps two-thirds, of the world's population live in quasi-Marxist states. His political potency lies in the fact that his theories crystallize unease and dissent. Even the whitest and richest of liberal college students can't help but get choked up when reading Marx's prose. His rhetoric is unmatched by anything I've read on the conservative side, although Burke has a few flourishes here and there. Marx wrote with the vigor of someone who knew he was going to change history. His shadow, along with those of Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche, looms as powerfully over Western civilization as does the shadow of Jesus Christ.

I hope that the value-neutral intention of that observation came across. I won't go deep into my opinions about the praxis of Marxist theory. Obviously the application of Marxist theory in real-world politics has been a bloody and disheartening thing to watch. However, we should never overlook the importance or utility of Marxist theories as analytic tools. His critique of capitalism was thorough, gut-wrenching, beyond all ken in that point of history. He has inspired perhaps hundreds of theorists to move in his wake, whether in admiration, opposition, or an interesting mixture of both. Even if you want to dismiss the vast majority of those theorists as hacks, that still leaves a vast body of work and thought that has proven necessary in our modern discourse about capitalism and the global economy.

So, you can take Marx or leave him in a concrete, political context. Preferably I think you should leave him. Soviet Russia has taught us that much. But you can't dismiss him and his writings out of hand because of that. It'd be like dismissing the New Testament because of the Crusades; it's all interpretation.

If you accept the premise that our society has moved into a post-modern "moment", then Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, the capstone thinkers of the hermeneutics of suspicion, are the fathers of our age. For good or for worse.

Needless to say, I hate these bastards, though not nearly as much as I hate the neocons or the old-school cons or hard-school conservatives in general. And Bill O'Reilly. And Dubya. Still, a fanatic is a fanatic, whether left or right. I don't draw ideological lines when it comes to combatting stupidity.

I really believe in what you've wrote. It's like a religion.
Scratch that - it is a religion.

We all want to sometimes just drag that smarmy yuppie out
of his sports car, beat him senseless, and drive off into
glory. Marx presents an ideological basis that allow people
to follow through on that vengeful impulse, on a grand scale.
You are so right about how marx's prose is so great - it can
grab you and it rings true. I honestly think he was inspired
when he wrote the book.

_The Mainspring Of Human Progress_ by Henry Grade Weaver
is a book that I recommend. It functions as a rebuttal of
Karl Marks, of sorts, although that is not it's intention,
and it is so level-headed, clear and simple that it doesn't
really seem to tow any party line. Recommended to anyone
who still believes in a democratic republic.

I think we can add the working classes to music in the long list of things you appear to know nothing about or have no experience of, Geir. What century are you living in?

the revolution will not be televised!
it'll be on the internet!
clicking on a pic of scott baio
half-naked
glistening
and not able to really take charge,
because the revolution will not be televised!
it'll be on the internet!

m.

(Since I'm at work, I wince every time I open this thread.)