Hypothesis: Obsession with class will always drag the left down.
- Thread starter bluestreak
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sleaterkinney
Well-Known Member
Devil's Advocatekyser_soze said:
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Hey, take the M out and Iain M Banks becomes all respectableBelushi said:Yes, though I'm a bit concerned that two of the posters on here have quoted sci-fi books
And besides, the best sci fi is that which uses scientific specualtion as a backdrop to human stories. eg. you invent a machine that can make food out of air and water. Extrapolating the implications of fantastic situations requires a good understanding of human nature...
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
As Crispy says, the best sci-fi isn't the stuff with whizzy gadgets and lasers, it's the stuff that looks at humanity.
I think joining your local Social Forum, there is still one in london would be a start allowing for new innovative ideas.
IMO, The power map, an idea from the U.S and their broad based organising groups is a good way in, Telco in london)you map the nodes of power/power relations in your city, from business to quangoes from cultural producers to councillors to developers to educational institutes(now major players in urban cities)
IMO, The power map, an idea from the U.S and their broad based organising groups is a good way in, Telco in london)you map the nodes of power/power relations in your city, from business to quangoes from cultural producers to councillors to developers to educational institutes(now major players in urban cities)
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Ahhh yes, we used to use these on my politics degree when assessing influences on public policy decision making...fuck, really don't want to think about one for London...
weird, there is a very interesting powerful and possibly influential article on the emergence of a global working class and its implications on CIF in the Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_seabrook/2006/07/the_making_of_the_new_british.html
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_seabrook/2006/07/the_making_of_the_new_british.html
I think if peeople are saying that communism/Marx is irrelevent, they should try and make a clear criticism of it, and not simply say that its old.treelover said:
Maybe this conversation seems a little pointless, as the concerns of activists and semi-activists are not that of the working class.
If your a pacifist, and you think all violence is wrong, then thats then thats fine. Didn't the fascist powers lose WWII? Would you not count that as a positive result of violence? I think thats its unfair on me to make out that the idea that violence can't change anything is conventional, maybe to Ghandi
Your examples are all revolutionary or pseudo revolutionary, would you support violence from states under no circumstances?
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
right up until the last post i was really gettting to grips with various notions, but that post killed me.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
((((118118)))))
what i actually meant was that my terribly drunk and tired brain couldn't make out what you were talking about, rather than a critique of your words themselves.
i'm glad this is the internet, if this was real life i think you might have hit me then
what i actually meant was that my terribly drunk and tired brain couldn't make out what you were talking about, rather than a critique of your words themselves.
i'm glad this is the internet, if this was real life i think you might have hit me then
To someone for whom the concept of 'class' carries about the same degree of usefulness as does the concept of 'star sign', why would you expect the nature of the ruler/ruled relationship to carry any more conviction with me than, say, the nature of the Mars/Taurus relationship? If your objective is to convince a skeptic of the truthfulness of your analysis, isn't it a bit presumptious to begin by presenting one of your conclusions as an axiom?kyser_soze said:
I think the hypothesis is false: the left can no more choose to be obsessed with class than an Astrologer can choose to be obsessed with the relative positions of celestial bodies.
Nor, to an external observer, is the degree of obsession relevant. If, for example, you believe Astrology is based on an unconvincing model of reality, no amount of fine tuning of the level of obsession by its practitioners is going to change that. Like any internally consistent but externally unverifiable system derived from arbitrary axioms, it can't be 'dragged down' - it can only occupy a position which is pre-determined by the attractiveness (or otherwise) of its arbitrary logic.
Perhaps the best you can hope for is that you can improve the chance of creating a match between your system's arbitrary claims, and the arbitrary desires of the more gullible and/or vulnerable listeners.
A bit like a used car salesman, I suppose.
Neither, really. I think classes exist in the same way that star signs exist. I think they have an effect in the same way that star signs have an effect (which is to say, real, but only to the extent that belief in them generates certain effects - not because certain effects require the concept of star signs or class).
If you believe 'class' exists, then it exists - it is an arbitrary construct. You could equally as well choose to believe that it did not exist, and it would not. Neither is 'correct' - the only test is whether it is helpful.
Your choice whether to believe in it does not compel me to believe it, or to be constrained by it. Nor is your belief in your class identity sufficient to guarantee the truthfulness of any of the propositions of class analysis such as ruled/ruler, etc.
I personally do not find the concept helpful, so I choose not to be constrained by it (although I come from what you would call 'working class' origins).
If you believe 'class' exists, then it exists - it is an arbitrary construct. You could equally as well choose to believe that it did not exist, and it would not. Neither is 'correct' - the only test is whether it is helpful.
Your choice whether to believe in it does not compel me to believe it, or to be constrained by it. Nor is your belief in your class identity sufficient to guarantee the truthfulness of any of the propositions of class analysis such as ruled/ruler, etc.
I personally do not find the concept helpful, so I choose not to be constrained by it (although I come from what you would call 'working class' origins).
a party for all those who believe in creating equality of choice and opportunity and the politics of decency.
sound very New Labour / Lib/Tory to me
I guess if you really want to reach out to the man on the street you're trying to unify people, cross culturally, regardless of background or current status. divisive politics will always end in failure, and the biggest division that i see the left having is the obsession with class. get over it and there might be some hope.
Man on the street?what about woman? why not person? Unity? What bluestreak forgot to add there was
there might be some hope if the world listens to me and kyser we would send the working class to the gulags just to prove we hate them so much because we have an inferiority complex etc etc
i just love the 19th century tone of these posts we are going to save the 21st century with a 19th century ideaology or as is the case out-nerd one another.And i thought the tories were meant to be conservative
sound very New Labour / Lib/Tory to me
I guess if you really want to reach out to the man on the street you're trying to unify people, cross culturally, regardless of background or current status. divisive politics will always end in failure, and the biggest division that i see the left having is the obsession with class. get over it and there might be some hope.
Man on the street?what about woman? why not person? Unity? What bluestreak forgot to add there was
there might be some hope if the world listens to me and kyser we would send the working class to the gulags just to prove we hate them so much because we have an inferiority complex etc etc
i just love the 19th century tone of these posts we are going to save the 21st century with a 19th century ideaology or as is the case out-nerd one another.And i thought the tories were meant to be conservative
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Falcon said:
So basically class is simply a construction of those who want to see it existing in society - that it's a faith-based issue? Bit post-modern that innit? I mean I can see where you're coming from - I've asked the question myself that if the 'diagnosis' Marx (for example) made about class and society is flawed/wrong, then any 'cures' for the inequalities in society/class divisions/other arbitrary label would also be wrong.
Brasic - what is this inferiority complex you reckon I have? I mean so far you've managed to misidentify me as a swappie (on another thread, altho that did get a laugh), and you're last sentence about us bringing 19th Century models to the 20th has more resonance for your own leanings doesn't it?
Class exists as a social fact, in that it doesn't matter whether you personally believe and act on it, because everyone else does anyway. It also exists as the material fact of the oppression of one class by another, and because of this fact it resists any attempt to collapse one class into another. I mean, a hunted fox might convince itself that it's actually one and the same as the hounds chasing it, but unless it can bring the hounds around to the same way of thinking things are going to end badly for it.
To those who son't 'believe in class', perhaps you might care to explain the differences in infant mortality, life expectancy (up to 10 years difference in some places), likely educational achievement (class is more important than race in this respect- notice that this is ignored), diet etc etc etc. Class mobility (chance of ending up in a different social class than you were born into) has decreased in the last 30 years.
This sounds a bit like nominalism versus essentialism or natural kinds (I've studied a bit wrt the definition of mental illness). If its a natural kind then its separate entities are bounded by different laws, and the concept "working class" would refer to the working class without mediation, like 'Tiger' does to tigers. Hmmm. If its an essence, then it is a difference between groups that cause observable properties of the objects. And if youyr a nominalist, then generally your denying universals/abstract entities.
That is iirc
I think if yoiur going to say that class is an arbitary construct, then you have to say what else you think is (eveything?)? Race, mental health, gender, intelligence, human etc etc.
I could go through my notes if your still unsure (I am
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