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”.
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”).
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!
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.
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”
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.
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.
Marx was Jewish himself, and wrote a fiery response against an antisemetic piece. He advocated for Jewish liberation.
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.
A clever trick to quell the poor’s thirst for equal rights
People can talk about more than one issue at the same time y’all
As long as each issue gets enough societal focus that shit gets done I’m fine with that. I see class warfare as the “turn it off and on again” approach which should be tried first, while culture wars is the deep dive into Google on all the issues we don’t have in common
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.
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.
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.
Europeans think racism is stupid, but then bring out the hitler energy for Romani.
Occupy scared the shit out of bankers. It’s no mistake that pop culture became obsessed with divisive issues immediately afterwards.
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.
Removed by mod
Gr8 b8 m8
