I read Johan Pregmo's piece first, and enjoyed it, and also enjoyed this - perhaps it's the fact that I'm tired and on my 4th beer, but I don't see conflict between the two pieces.
Johan argues that the big battles of the left have already been won, and like St George fighting the dragon who kept looking for more dragons, never accepting we won...
And you argue correctly (I'm temporizing) that the continued battles are nothing more than a distraction - which I also agree with.
Not seeing the conflict (yet) between the two pieces.
May 27, 2022·edited May 27, 2022Liked by Jamie Paul
Great stuff. As Frank Zappa sang, “they just take care of #1. And #1 ain’t you! You ain’t even #2”.
And thanks for turning me onto QM. I would normally assume (and this is sad!) that “Queer” would mean dreary celibate activism. Glad I looked and was delighted to find the wonderful Justin Lehmiller writing there.
What happened when liberals abandoned class. Neoliberalism tries to pretend class doesn't exist, so the most you can do is swap labels. Because if it's a woman CEO downsizing you to boost her stock options, that's progress, right? Your company won't pay a living wage and fires anyone who whispers about a union, but you can wear pronoun pins, and that's totally not a distraction from meaningful progress, right?
In conversation after conversation with liberals on privilege, they ignore or minimize class, despite that being a larger factor than anything else. Maybe it's neoliberalism, maybe because fighting back in the class war would take effort, maybe because then all the NPR liberals couldn't look down on the poor white rednecks they love to hate.
The worst part is, for all the talk of "intersectionality," all this culture war just fragments us; cuts us into a million little identities and subgroups, all squabbling with each other over who's more privileged, while the rich keep us begging for scraps.
To be fair, this has been a pretty stunning year or so for labor: auto, writers, actors, rail, healthcare, hospitality, education. Of course, that is somewhat undercut by coming on the heels of decades of decline in union membership and power. Don't get me wrong, I'm in a union, but on the whole it's a little like being proud of your toddler for using the toilet: it's definitely a step in the right direction, but would be less impressive if they didn't normally shit their pants.
For people in actual positions of power, really regardless of the party, there's basically zero political will to do things like updating the National Labor Relations Act. Maybe we shouldn't be excluding agriculture workers, and maybe we should be strengthening protections for gig workers, and those wrongfully classified as contractors. But lip service and distraction are cheap and easy, and those other pesky things are hard.
Yeah, I'm heartened by the re-awaking of unions. We're 40 years behind, though. Doesn't help that racial divisions are what have always hampered socialism; the rich are great at pitting poor whites and blacks and immigrants against each other.
The historical relationship between socialism/communism and race relations is...complicated. Marx himself is probably the single most famous Jewish anti-Semite. But as I said, in the modern day I see it mostly as an incentive issue, at least with regard to the people in real power. Divisive group based rhetoric is free. To be fair, it's as free for the right as it is the left. But yeah, in the neo-Marxist sense, we're replacing challenging actual power structures with redefining what a power structure is so that it's easy to yell at. Money is the first among power structures. Everyone with money knows it.
I expect that whatever challenges in life, they're much more manageable if you face them with a warm home, a hot meal, a working car, and probably a doctor and a lawyer to call your own. Even Jay-Z, the young Hova, who has 99 problems, one of which is cocaine in his sunroof, get's pulled over and his first thought is "at least I can afford a lawyer."
I read Johan Pregmo's piece first, and enjoyed it, and also enjoyed this - perhaps it's the fact that I'm tired and on my 4th beer, but I don't see conflict between the two pieces.
Johan argues that the big battles of the left have already been won, and like St George fighting the dragon who kept looking for more dragons, never accepting we won...
And you argue correctly (I'm temporizing) that the continued battles are nothing more than a distraction - which I also agree with.
Not seeing the conflict (yet) between the two pieces.
I see this as a companion piece — a "yes, and." The disagreement is I think one of emphasis and maybe style more than core values.
Great stuff. As Frank Zappa sang, “they just take care of #1. And #1 ain’t you! You ain’t even #2”.
And thanks for turning me onto QM. I would normally assume (and this is sad!) that “Queer” would mean dreary celibate activism. Glad I looked and was delighted to find the wonderful Justin Lehmiller writing there.
Yeah, the magazine is trying to reclaim the term for liberalism, and we've got our work cut out on that score.
What happened when liberals abandoned class. Neoliberalism tries to pretend class doesn't exist, so the most you can do is swap labels. Because if it's a woman CEO downsizing you to boost her stock options, that's progress, right? Your company won't pay a living wage and fires anyone who whispers about a union, but you can wear pronoun pins, and that's totally not a distraction from meaningful progress, right?
In conversation after conversation with liberals on privilege, they ignore or minimize class, despite that being a larger factor than anything else. Maybe it's neoliberalism, maybe because fighting back in the class war would take effort, maybe because then all the NPR liberals couldn't look down on the poor white rednecks they love to hate.
The worst part is, for all the talk of "intersectionality," all this culture war just fragments us; cuts us into a million little identities and subgroups, all squabbling with each other over who's more privileged, while the rich keep us begging for scraps.
To be fair, this has been a pretty stunning year or so for labor: auto, writers, actors, rail, healthcare, hospitality, education. Of course, that is somewhat undercut by coming on the heels of decades of decline in union membership and power. Don't get me wrong, I'm in a union, but on the whole it's a little like being proud of your toddler for using the toilet: it's definitely a step in the right direction, but would be less impressive if they didn't normally shit their pants.
For people in actual positions of power, really regardless of the party, there's basically zero political will to do things like updating the National Labor Relations Act. Maybe we shouldn't be excluding agriculture workers, and maybe we should be strengthening protections for gig workers, and those wrongfully classified as contractors. But lip service and distraction are cheap and easy, and those other pesky things are hard.
Yeah, I'm heartened by the re-awaking of unions. We're 40 years behind, though. Doesn't help that racial divisions are what have always hampered socialism; the rich are great at pitting poor whites and blacks and immigrants against each other.
The historical relationship between socialism/communism and race relations is...complicated. Marx himself is probably the single most famous Jewish anti-Semite. But as I said, in the modern day I see it mostly as an incentive issue, at least with regard to the people in real power. Divisive group based rhetoric is free. To be fair, it's as free for the right as it is the left. But yeah, in the neo-Marxist sense, we're replacing challenging actual power structures with redefining what a power structure is so that it's easy to yell at. Money is the first among power structures. Everyone with money knows it.
If you put class on the list of privileges, it'd outweigh everything else.
I expect that whatever challenges in life, they're much more manageable if you face them with a warm home, a hot meal, a working car, and probably a doctor and a lawyer to call your own. Even Jay-Z, the young Hova, who has 99 problems, one of which is cocaine in his sunroof, get's pulled over and his first thought is "at least I can afford a lawyer."