cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5268146

The Left In The Us Is Really Diverse

  • miz [any, any]
    ·
    3 months ago

    "rich" would have to be way more extreme (be more in control of the means of production) to get on the level of "pedo" and "zionist". like owning Twitch, not when they could ban you at any moment. sure he has enough social capital to survive transition to another platform but his earnings would surely take a significant hit

    • sleen@lemmy.zip
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Thats too far fetched, all that matters is that he has the control and can abuse that control. So I would say this is extreme enough.

      • miz [any, any]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        So I wouldn't say it is extreme at all.

        this part makes me think you misread my comment because it's agreeing with me? taking it as a given that you know what I mean by "means of production", consider that class is not something where you can only be in one category

        Marxism is dialectic, it rejects absolute pure categories. Things sort of exist on a spectrum but sort of don't. The way Marxists use categories is to understand that everything is connected to each other through a series of quantifiable interconnected steps, but that something is always dominant, and this dominant aspect is what determines the overall quality of the thing in question.

        If you're trying to shove everything into a pure category of absolutely worker, absolutely capitalist, then this is just a useless endeavor. When we talk of "worker" or "capitalist," we don't mean it as if these are pure categories, where a worker can't ever own capital, or that a capitalist can't ever do labor. They may do these things, they may exist somewhere in between. But clearly at some point, certain characteristics become dominant over others. Clearly Jeff Bezos's class interests are not the same as a minimum wage worker, as the latter likely has next to no capital while the former has far more capital than he could ever, by his own labor, afford.

        There is no reason to try and shove this person you're describing into a specific absolute box. If they're a salaried worker who runs some very small business / self-employment on the side as supplemental income, you could just say they're a worker with petty bourgeois characteristics. You don't have to say they're absolutely "petty bourgeois" or a "worker". You can just describe that they have characteristics of multiple categories. No reason you cannot do this.