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I really cba getting into a longwinded debate but if anyone is unsure about the problems of liberalism they could do a lot worse than read the book 'liberalism: a counter history' that ober recommended a while back. In short classical liberalism is not so much about the freedom of each individual but about the protection of property. That property has historically been expanded to include slaves and servants and whatnot - even a paid labourer can be reduced to property because by the terms of his contract his labour is owned by his employer. Contrast that with modern social liberalism which is less concerned with property per se and more with certain freedoms to act however makes you happy (so long as it doesn't infringe on the ability of others to do the same). That last bit is important because it acknowledges that sometimes freedom must be limited for the collective good. Classical liberalism has no such provision - property is sacred. You have to understand it as an ideology of the bourgeoisie - a direct reaction to the ability of monarchs to deprive wealthy citizens of their property. It never cared about the needs of the masses. I think there probably does need to be a clear distinction in terminology here because it can get confusing - and some classical liberals are very clever at obfuscating the difference. I'd suggest 'libertarian' if it hasn't been co-opted by the worst of the free marketeers already, so the best term to use is anyone's guess.
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Aug 1, 2016 18:31
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TomViolence posted:Identity politics is good and great and fine as long as one of those identities is based on socioeconomic class and is recognised as intersecting with the others. No, identity politics is poison because it's individualist bullshit that directly harms a proper socialist reading. All discrimination is rooted in class, and by attributing essential significance to social groups (e.g. 'woman', 'black person', 'homosexual') you immediately buy into into a classic misdirection and harm the cause of real solidarity. Identity politics is the reason self-proclaimed progressives can merrily cheer on someone like Clinton becoming president. Socialism incorporates all that is necessary for all liberation and provides a consistent and convincing framework. Try arguing this as a white guy in some circles though and just lol. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Aug 1, 2016 |
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Aug 1, 2016 19:16
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TomViolence posted:Dismissing issues of race, gender and sexuality as bourgeois distractions doesn't sound like authentic solidarity to me. It plays directly into the atomising, individualised divide and conquer dynamic you seem so sure identity politics creates. The erasure of socioeconomic class from the discourse and its colonisation by economically agnostic liberals seems like a much greater factor in hamstringing the workers' movement than them gays and coloureds finally having a voice. Of course they're not irrelevant, but they need to be understood through a socialist framework to be meaningful. The colonisation of superficially progressive identity politics by the dominant liberal class, the attribution of essential significance to the identity itself (as opposed to the social-economic forces resulting in its oppression) and the erosion of socialist thinking within such groups go hand in hand.
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Aug 1, 2016 19:57
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baka kaba posted:I feel like this is an argument in favour of 'pure' socialism and not one that reflects the current state of society. You can easily say that 'woman', 'black person' etc are already classes, that division has already happened and been exploited, so the socialism that undoes that has to address their concerns, not dismiss them. It has to actually be inclusive and universal in practice, but of course the struggle is a long and gradual one, and there's a tendency to expect everyone to focus on a narrower movement that benefits the privileged more than everyone else. It's an expectation of solidarity with the promise of equality later, if at all I think it's important to distinguish between 'privilege' and 'class'. I wouldn't say that women/LGBT people/PoC etc etc constitute classes in their own right. Instead, they constitute less privileged demographics as a result of their divergence from the predominant makeup of the dominant class (historically rich white straight men). Class on the other hand I tend to take a fairly orthodox line on - who pays the bills by selling labour and who by exploiting it. The dominant class here effectively, though their control of the direction of debate (via the media/politics etc) are able to determine the privilege or lack thereof attributed to various demographics and exert a huge influence on the general culture of society. Now things are obviously changing as we see historically marginalised groups begin to gradually enter the sphere of the dominant class. There are plenty of women business owners now for example (though still a minority, a substantial one). This I would say is fundamentally related to the push to have feminism (or name any other liberation movement) be much more accepted within mainstream culture. And so it has become, but - very importantly - shorn of its class consciousness. So people clap and sob and cheer at Clinton likely being the next US president, but all that has happened is the network of exploiters has become a little more diverse and the privilege makeup of society has shifted slightly. Nothing has happened to benefit the people meaningfully at all. My issue with identity politics isn't the identities themselves - because they're as real as your experience of them. The problem is 'identity politics' today has been almost wholly gutted of meaningful progressive content. If a poor black guy looks at Obama and thinks 'oh hey a black guy in the white house, what a great achievement for progress' as many such groups would have them do, they directly undermine the socialist cause (often very deliberately I imagine). By encouraging people to associate themselves primarily with an identity, they obfuscate the fact that, for example, the poor black guy watching Obama has way more in common with the poor white guy watching Obama than either do with Obama. And it then becomes very easy to accuse anyone making the argument that, actually, women or PoC or LGBT people in positions of power aren't an inherently good thing of being bigoted in one way or another. e: The less than cheery fate of working class suffragettes is very instructive in this case I think, despite the apparent 'victory' of the movement. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Aug 1, 2016 |
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Aug 1, 2016 20:24
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foot posted:Class struggle/analysis didn't start with Marx, and it didn't end with him. Did anyone say it did?
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Aug 1, 2016 20:32
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Tesseraction posted:I think his point is that orthodox Marxism is not the only way to look at class consciousness. Yes, I don't think anyone suggested that it was. I personally find the orthodox class distinction between wage labourer and capitalist pretty drat convincing though. And the definition of the term 'capital' can be easily expanded beyond its original economic meaning to open up the discussion a lot. I think a lot of people assume Marxist writers post-Marx must be better because they built on him, but I don't really buy that as a given.
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Aug 1, 2016 20:51
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Truecaller does much the same, and allows you to auto-block persistent spam numbers. I imagine there's a few apps with basically the same function.
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Aug 6, 2016 12:44
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When senior Labour figures bandy about words like "Trotskyite' do they actually have any loving clue what it means? I would think a politician of all people should have a fairly solid understanding of different ideological positions. Surely they realise that while one or two members of momentum might be honest to god entryists there are not actually hundreds of thousands of communists in the UK, let alone Labour. I suppose what I'm asking is are they just cynical shitheads using the term to smear the genuine centre-left of the party by making them out to be scary extremists, or are they utterly moronic shitheads with no sense of historical or philosophical perspective who actually believe their own poo poo? Yeah, they're shitheads regardless but honestly sometimes it's hard to see which kind.
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Aug 9, 2016 12:51
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:I think he earned that qualification when he graduated from the wiki set up to torment a mentally ill man What the gently caress, where
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Aug 14, 2016 10:25
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Lol what an rear end e: today in 1969 British troops landed in Northern Ireland to 'calm down' tension between Catholics and protestants. The operation went well, and nothing of note occured in NI over the following years. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Aug 14, 2016 |
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Aug 14, 2016 11:15
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Cerv posted:Bristol is not in the North, and First Great Western aren't so generous IIRC I used to go first class between Glasgow and Newcastle a lot because if you booked far enough in advance there was only ten pounds or so difference in the fare. You got a big seat in usually a mostly empty carriage, a free hot meal that was pretty decent as it goes, and a bunch of free beer or wine. I'm pretty sure you easily ate and drank more than the difference in cost. Extra bonuses were the crew sometimes entirely rotating out at Edinburgh so you could often blag seconds on your food, and few people on the evening train so you were sometimes just offered whatever leftover sandwiches etc in the last 30mins. I was the only guy left on the train after Motherwell once and they just asked if I wanted the open bottle of wine, which had only had one glass poured out of it. I was happy to oblige! For an extra £5-10 it's a no brainer and I don't care if that makes me a bourgie poo poo. This was all when east coast was public mind, no idea what it's like since virgin took over as I don't get the train back to england so much these days. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 15:25
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oh my god https://twitter.com/DCobumUKIP/status/767861778588037120 e: Oh thank god, just noticed it's the parody account. Says a hell of a lot that I didn't realise that off the bat
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Aug 23, 2016 01:41
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I haven't got my leadership ballot yet or even an email to say I'm due one, please say I haven't been purged
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Aug 23, 2016 08:52
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I'm in the weird position of living in a major city but commuting out to one of the small towns around it for work, so the train I get is almost always empty while the one going the other way is packed. There's also barely any guards on them half the time so I have to pay for tickets probably half the time at most. It's pretty awesome.Tesseraction posted:Here's Corbyn quite angrily but eloquently explaining the entire story (after berating the journalist for not asking about the NHS): These videos really make Corbyn grow on me. He's so clearly contemptuous of the whole media and he seems to actively enjoy telling them they're idiots, albeit very politely.
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Aug 24, 2016 13:32
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