Tag: leftism

Reading a critique of Marx (Revolutionary Motivation and Rationalism by Allen Buchanan) and came across this little gem of wew

 "The crushing contradictions of capitalism have
given way to the tolerable tensions of the welfare state. The norma-
tive inadequacy of Marx’s view seems to follow as a matter of course:
granted the proletariat’s improved condition, it is no longer obvious
that revolutionary activity is rational.“

Why “Haha Heteros” and “Haha Cis People” and so on are actually important political praxis

Okay so basically privileged people are fragile and in order to be able to actually discuss oppression we need to mitigate that fragility.  Working class people have a grand tradition of affectionately teasing each other.  We do this WAY more than bougie people do but we do this not to tear eachother down but to strengthen one another so that we can take it when the world comes to tear us to shreds.

When we tease cis people/het people/white people/men/etc we’re doing it to help them build a callous so that they can actually have a meaningful discussion when it comes time to discuss actual oppression, rather than them feeling injured and huffy.

Some ways of explaining the necessity of identity based struggles for the liberation of the working class:

1. We need a united working class in order to have the revolution. If we piss off women/poc/disabled people by being dicks to them, we divide the working class. Men can be expected to organize with women, women cannot be expected to stick around if they’re inundated with misogyny.

2. To put in another way, class is the central pillar, balanced in the center, supported by all other forms of oppression on all sides. The pressure of those oppressions keeps the central pillar in place and the pressure of their weight makes it impossible to pull it out, however if we knock out the supports, we can easily topple the central pillar.

3. To put it into a cute metaphor with mice and cake: Let’s say there are three groups of mice, one has a 7/8ths of a cake, one has 1/8th of a cake, and one has no cake.

The mice with no cake are like “Hey it’s pretty shitty we don’t get any cake”

And the mice with 7/8ths of the cake tell the mice with 1/8th of the cake “Well I mean you could divide it with them, but then you’d only get 1/16th of the cake then” and the mice with 1/8th are like “HELL NO” and attacks the mice with no cake.

And then sometimes one of the mice with 1/8th of the cake go to the mice without cake and go “you know if we joined together we could get those guys’ whole cake”

And the mice with no cake are like “…you won’t share your cake with us and you attacked us for asking for any cake at all so we don’t really trust you… maybe if you were less shitty to us?”

And then the 1/8th cake mouse accuses them of dividing the working class.

Also sometimes one of the 7/8ths cake mice is like “We should both give them 1/16th of the cake, I know it’s a huge sacrifice, but it’s the right thing to do” but it’s really just doing that to keep the 1/8th mice focused on making sure the mice with no cake don’t get any of their slice so that they don’t gang up with the mice with no cake and take the whole cake and divide it in half.

One of the reasons I think a feminism based in liberalism is doomed to fail is it’s entirely based on the good will of our oppressors, whereas with a leftist based feminism we have something to bargain with (I.e. You need a united working class for your liberation, thus your liberation is dependent on ours now stop being a sexist douche)