/274/ Aufhebonus Bonus: July 2022
Added 2022-07-12 06:01:01 +0000 UTC[Patreon Exclusive]
On your questions & criticisms.
We discuss the link between Covid and war in Ukraine and return to the question of who exactly is the ruling class. Plus: inflation, what actually happened in the 1990s, contemporary art, and the politics of abortion.
Comments
I take some issue with the categorization of the Palestinian struggle as ‘fourth worldism’ - the history of that struggle, of and socialist support for it (though not uncontested, as pointed out), and of internationalism predates by far Palestine’s adoption by today’s left as a pet issue. What I would say is that a lot of the discourse surrounding the struggle today does indeed take the form of ‘fourth worldist’ humanitarian concern for ‘victims’ rather than robust and meaningful solidarity. An interesting point - last summer in Toronto, the local left and Palestine solidarity groups (the usual PMC suspects) were entirely taken off guard when tens of thousands working class Arabs from the surrounding suburbs took the streets not when Palestinians were attacked, but at the moment they began to fight back with rockets and other weaponry. What they were responding to was a show of strength and a defence of the dignity of the people, rather than the usual narrative of helpless victims or ‘existence is resistance’ (it’s not, unfortunately) stuff you hear from the a lot of the left activist groupings. Of course the influx of working class Arabs into the streets led to the PMC activists clashing with those they purport to represent in the most predictable, IDpol-laden ways, feeling threatened by the sudden influx of regular people, but that’s another story lol
dshamz_
2022-09-22 19:03:15 +0000 UTCThanks for the thoughtful reply Phil (Dan here lol). I’d just say that I don’t think the disorganization of the capitalist class and working class doesn’t mean that those groups are no longer classes. Isn’t this the difference between a class in itself and a class for itself? Capital is still being accumulated despite the condition of disorganization, and the bourgeoisie appears to remain on the offensive. My own reading of the PMC’s position in all this is that they play a subordinate but necessary and ancillary role to certain fractions of the capitalist class to keep workers disorganized as a class (as managers are won’t to do), so that their own interests aren’t mainly opposed to capital’s but actually entwined with it, and subsequently with the bourgeoisie’s self-reproduction as a the ruling class.
dshamz_
2022-09-22 18:30:39 +0000 UTC
