Tag: proletarian

Oliver Twist Syndrome

Y’ know how the point in Oliver Twist is that working class people are just as good as posh ones (sorta) but in order to make Oliver sympathetic Dickens gave him a posh background and most importantly gave him a posh accent and wrote his speech in a posh dialect?

It’s interesting to me how working class people are only sympathetic, are only relatable, are only given cultural space when they can speak bourgeoisie.

Class Is Different From All Other Axes Of Oppression

Class is a material difference based on a social relation, and to abolish the social relation one must abolish the material difference.

All other axes of oppression are social relations based on (often vague and always arbitrary) material differences.  One can leave the material difference alone when abolishing these (e.g. you don’t need to abolish people having different skin tones to abolish to social relation of race)

Which I think is why you can have like men who are genuinely committed to anti-sexism and can be trusted, but no bourgeois is a true comrade.  This is also why international working class sympathy and solidarity is crucial (with the most privileged members of the working class needing to be the ones who aren’t shitty before they can expect help from the rest of us) 

Seriously,

Fuck respectability, fuck aspirational bullshit, fuck pretending we don’t like whatever stigmatized pop culture we love, fuck adhering to sexual standards that the bourgeoisie are allowed to flout, fuck the idea that we’re not as smart or as artistically valid as the bourgeois.

Here’s the makeover scene, note the conversation between Cyn (the brunette) who does not aspire to be a member of the bourgeois and the aspirational Tess.  Cyn criticizes the simplicity of the dress, it is meant to be read as her showing her ignorance of what is considered fashionable among the upper classes, but I think it says more about her characters working class pride.

She unlike Tess does not attempt to discard her working class accent, she does not discard her cultural roots, she is proud to be a prole.  She cares for her friend, but she doesn’t entirely approve of the masquerade, and I think doesn’t entirely approve of the world Tess is attempting to enter.  

Tess may be determined to be the exception, to get to the top, but she does not question the validity of the system, doesn’t question why these people should hold complete power over others, she sees them as innately superior.