:jesse-wtf: J̶̖̜͊͋̄̎ͅë̷̛͕̗̼̖̄s̸̩̔͊̅̓s̴̟̠̋̎̕ë̴̮́̉͋,̴̠͝ ̸͕͒͝W̸̧͉͎͒͐̄͠h̸͈͙̭̜̓͒a̵̟̜͖̖͐̐̽͠t̷̛̼̼͎̟͑͋ ̵͈̣͚̽͂t̷̺͔̘̣̂̑h̶̳̜̥́e̵͍̳̋́̊ ̷̛̼̪̠F̷̰̈́̀u̴̘̰̣͚̎̽̊ċ̷̡̻ķ̴̲̏̓́͜ ̵̳̘̯̉̈́Ȧ̶̺͚r̴̥͉͚̖̂̊̏͂ȩ̸̝͈̮̈͌̕ ̴̻̌̂͑͝Y̷̤͐̊o̷͔̩̊̏̒̾u̷͇̖̭̒͆ͅ ̵̪͌̽̃͂T̶͚͔͖̟̋̀ã̶͉̺l̴̘̪̫̓͆k̴̼̮̮̦̏̇i̸̝̱̖̋̒͘n̸̘͇̙̹̓̓̀͠g̷̜̳͍̭̕ ̷̨̭͖͈̇̀Ȃ̵͓͕͓̼͒̈́b̶̹̥͖̆ỏ̵͈ṷ̶̟̤̪͊͂ţ̵̤͓̾̓̚͜
Well, isn't that basically what happened? The professors dropped the "we're for the working class" thing and found a new audience. The working class had failed to rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie because they preferred treats to revolution. That's where the "deplorables" class-based slur came from and why it was so widely applauded.
Marxists didn’t “do a switcheroo” but rather got co-opted after having to distance themselves from Stalin. Things like Foucault and the other libs here (New Left) introducing concepts such as “PMC” that are “the middle class but engaged in cultural production” and mixing up material class status and the fluctuating function of that class at any particular time muddied the water and give us the intractable sludge we find ourselves with today.
In much of this, don't they have a point? The world the older Marxists have made for us has a rotten underbelly. How could they tolerate US police routinely killing innocent black people? How could they ignore Harvey Weinstein and other sexual abusers? It's why so large a fraction of working class voters generally backed Trump; it's also because Trump saw this from the beginning, and aimed his campaign squarely at the working class vote.
And when this happens, Marxist revolutionaries inevitably rush in saying, in effect, “No, no, you shouldn't settle for plenty of full time jobs at a living wage, you should die by the tens of thousands in an orgy of revolutionary violence so that we can seize power in your name.” Readers are welcome to imagine the response of the American working class to this sort of rhetoric.
And that's why they got dumped by the roadside. They were given a clear choice to make and chose the capitalists.
You've got an odd view of how neoliberalism came into being and you've framed working class ideology as a rational choice most people have made, rather than a response to the circumstances they've found themselves within.
There were American working class uprisings and nationwide unionizing efforts. There were violent revolutions. Those efforts weren't broken up by offering full time jobs and a living wage. In fact, those wages, weekends, and 40 hours were the victories the uprisings achieved. Much of them happened over 100 years ago, so I do understand they've kind of faded to the background of American history. Bloody Harlan, the Pullman Strike, various skirmishes around the Midwest, and most of all the Battle of Blair mountain in 1921, where 30,000 cops and soldiers were sent to arrest striking miners in Virginia. Afterwards with the coordination of power among federal law enforcement agencies, the creation of the FBI, and increased police funding nationwide, any sort of worker movement was put on the back foot and have remained there ever since. Union membership has dramatically declined since the 1970s, and at one point 10% of CPUSA members were FBI informants.
Most working class Americans now are either too beaten down to care, are professional managerial class, or they're some odd combination of worker with a petite bourgeois mindset with home ownership acting as a mental substitute for business ownership. Of course they won't listen to Marxists, they're either beaten down to the point they don't believe anything better is possible, or they've convinced themselves their mortgage and 401k gives them skin in the game.
Professors with new, more vague rhetoric about oppression were an adaption to the boundaries of acceptable rhetoric and were by and large a way to express a more or less liberal worldview using some language adapted from Marxism.
:jesse-wtf:
Where are these Marxists signing off on class traitors’ violence against black people? :angela:
Where are these Marxists signing off on capitalist exploitation and rape of women’s bodies? :rosa:
The world the older Marxists “made” is rotten because they made insufficient progress in eradicating those elements of capitalism. Liberal approaches to addressing these issues are not the only way to go about addressing them, and in fact you can watch their progress across the board stagnate as the USSR collapsed and the need for concession to workers vanished.
Plenty of full time jobs at a living wage??
At the World Socialist Web Site
They didn't. The communist organized labor unions were at the forefront of black belt organizing and anti-lynching campaigns. That's not to say there weren't also class reductionist elements in leadership or weird essentialist notions of "the negro nation" or whatever.
Also, wasn't the Weinstein thing like, just WSWS?