Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Libertad]

'Fucking speak for yourself' was my response. I was told that while my sentiments were understandable the language I employed was unnecessarily aggressive

And the horse he rode in on.

 

[andysays]

Stacks and queues are the same thing. As you well know.

Are they? Why do we have different words for them then?

To my mind, a queue conjures up a horizontal line of people waiting at a bus stop or at a supermarket checkout, whereas a stack is a vertical pile of inanimate objects like bricks or books. I don't mind being expected to join a queue, but I'd rather not be put in a stack, thanks very much...

 

[sihhi]

That's the one

I used to know someone who studied there and was told the head of Sheffield Labour Students - Jacob Hunt - was the son of Thatcher Tory minister David Hunt!

 

[J Ed]

Blocked from LP's twitter

 

[DotCommunist]

Blocked from LP's twitter

joined the ranks of the soi disant radical trolls

 

[BigTom]

We may have our wires crossed here - were you talking about the big idea of occupy, and that big idea being 'emancipation'?

Although I think you make an absolutely fair point in your previous post (about "no demands") I also thought Red Cat was talking about the big idea of occupy and agree with her from my experience in Birmingham, it's just that different people thought emancipation meant different things, or perhaps more correctly from different elites.
So I'd characterise Occupy Birmingham as having broadly four groups:

1) Right wing, ron paul fan, anons (we don't have capitalism, we have corporatism)
2) conspiraloons (fair amount of crossover with 1, especially the rothschild banker shit)
3) anarchists plus the odd trot
4) a smaller set of people who weren't (particularly) politically active prior to occupy.

I think all groups were looking for emancipation from elites - the first from banksters, politicans and jews. The second from illumanati/NWO/jews. The third from capital/capitalism/class.

Now the first one isn't emancipation imo, the second is wrong, dangerous and no kind of emancipation really - and the zeitgeist/project venus lot looking for a new technocratic elite as well as the ron paul types just the same.

Still linking through that is the idea that we are not free, that we are under the yoke of the 1% and need emancipation.

 

[BigTom]

ok, I want to splurge out a thought about intersectionality/privelige theory that I can't quite get through and I don't know if that's cos I'm just completely wrong or if I can't express it properly or am missing something, so please slap me down if what I put here is just idiocy

So I feel like intersectionality theory does something quite special - it both overcomplicates something that is actually quite simple, and oversimplifies something that is actually fairly complex. This seems like it is totally contradictory but then I'm a marxist so you can suck on my dialectics!

What I think is pretty simple, and intuitive, is that different people are oppressed and this oppression takes different forms, and that just because you are oppressed in some/one way doesn't stop you from being oppressive/an oppressor in others. Intersectionality takes this and overcomplicates it in the way academic stuff so often does. Partly I think that this is because there's an endless chasing of more axes of oppression through which to define people when actually you're better off looking at the person as a whole, not as a set of characteristics.

Then it gets complex - people are both oppressor and oppressed at the same time to different people or in different ways or different times and places. People can appear to be in oppressed categories but actually be oppressors. intersectionality/privelige theory (at its worst) reduces this to some kind of abacus style calculation that reminds me of the fail at the heart of ultilitarianism.

I dunno.. I've not been able to progress this thought further, got stuck so thought I'd see what comments people have. Still seems odd that something can both oversimplify and overcomplicate something.

 

[muscovyduck]

Oversimplifying it because every situation is different and whether you could account for every situation ever would be a philosophical question rather than a practical one.
Overcomplicating it because no one expects every situation to be the same in the first place.

 

[treelover]

'John Reid: Ten Days That Shook The World'

Have to wonder how the above would have fared on Urban if it had been around at the time: upper middle class, bohemian mileu, swanning around the world.

and no, Laura is not Reid or Hemingway for that matter.

 

[treelover]

ok, I want to splurge out a thought about intersectionality/privelige theory that I can't quite get through and I don't know if that's cos I'm just completely wrong or if I can't express it properly or am missing something, so please slap me down if what I put here is just idiocy

So I feel like intersectionality theory does something quite special - it both overcomplicates something that is actually quite simple, and oversimplifies something that is actually fairly complex. This seems like it is totally contradictory but then I'm a marxist so you can suck on my dialectics!

What I think is pretty simple, and intuitive, is that different people are oppressed and this oppression takes different forms, and that just because you are oppressed in some/one way doesn't stop you from being oppressive/an oppressor in others. Intersectionality takes this and overcomplicates it in the way academic stuff so often does. Partly I think that this is because there's an endless chasing of more axes of oppression through which to define people when actually you're better off looking at the person as a whole, not as a set of characteristics.

Then it gets complex - people are both oppressor and oppressed at the same time to different people or in different ways or different times and places. People can appear to be in oppressed categories but actually be oppressors. intersectionality/privelige theory (at its worst) reduces this to some kind of abacus style calculation that reminds me of the fail at the heart of ultilitarianism.

I dunno.. I've not been able to progress this thought further, got stuck so thought I'd see what comments people have. Still seems odd that something can both oversimplify and overcomplicate something.

That anon guy, Blackburn was certainly one of the oppressors..

 

[Libertad]

That Colin Preece needs re-education as well, in the face with a chair.

 

[Blagsta]

That Colin Preece needs re-education as well, in the face with a chair.

I came across him at Birmingham occupy. He seemed a little, ermmm, eccentric.

 

[muscovyduck]

Privilege theory reflects the box ticking culture of capitalism in general. ATOS assessments, exams, viewing figures, the list goes on. No one has really grasped the fact that some things just can't be measured.

 

[Libertad]

I came across him at Birmingham occupy. He seemed a little, ermmm, unbalanced.

I tried to engage with him but he exhibited an unwillingness to debate that I've previously seen with religious zealots.

 

[andysays]

'John Reid: Ten Days That Shook The World'

Have to wonder how the above would have fared on Urban if it had been around at the time: upper middle class, bohemian mileu, swanning around the world.

and no, Laura is not Reid or Hemingway for that matter.

Hmm, there appears to be a suggestion there (apologies if I'm reading it wrong) that the criticism of Lol Penz is based primarily on her "upper middle class, bohemian mileu, swanning around the world" -ness, rather on the fact that much of what she writes is unutterable disingenuous, misinformed, faux-radical, self-referential crap.

Her "upper middle class, bohemian mileu, swanning around the world" -ness is actually being put forward as an explanation (of sorts) for the fact that much of what she writes is unutterable disingenuous, misinformed, faux-radical, self-referential crap.

I hope that distinction makes sense and is useful...

 

[Red Cat]

Although I think you make an absolutely fair point in your previous post (about "no demands") I also thought Red Cat was talking about the big idea of occupy and agree with her from my experience in Birmingham, it's just that different people thought emancipation meant different things, or perhaps more correctly from different elites.
So I'd characterise Occupy Birmingham as having broadly four groups:

1) Right wing, ron paul fan, anons (we don't have capitalism, we have corporatism)
2) conspiraloons (fair amount of crossover with 1, especially the rothschild banker shit)
3) anarchists plus the odd trot
4) a smaller set of people who weren't (particularly) politically active prior to occupy.

I think all groups were looking for emancipation from elites - the first from banksters, politicans and jews. The second from illumanati/NWO/jews. The third from capital/capitalism/class.

Now the first one isn't emancipation imo, the second is wrong, dangerous and no kind of emancipation really - and the zeitgeist/project venus lot looking for a new technocratic elite as well as the ron paul types just the same.

Still linking through that is the idea that we are not free, that we are under the yoke of the 1% and need emancipation.

That's helpful. That was the impression I got of occupy here but I didn't have any personal experience so I hesitated to go further with that thought. And then I couldn't remember what my original thought had been. I blame the kids.

 

[Red Cat]

Privilege theory reflects the box ticking culture of capitalism in general. ATOS assessments, exams, viewing figures, the list goes on. No one has really grasped the fact that some things just can't be measured.

Yes, it cuts people up into sets of attributes.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

No one has really grasped the fact that some things just can't be measured.

This does bring up a frightening thought about the way we have tried to quantify more and more aspects of the human condition. It's similar to how we view childcare as lacking value unless it's done by a stranger who gets paid for the job. Everything needs a number, a price, a measurable unit by which we can judge the worth/fairness/morality of a situation. We're turning into robots incapable of or discouraged from making human decisions anymore.

 

[sihhi]

I dunno.. I've not been able to progress this thought further, got stuck so thought I'd see what comments people have. Still seems odd that something can both oversimplify and overcomplicate something.

• Its real life applications today are about taking only the bad from the 'identity politics' of the 1980s (not the good sort or the good parts).

I don't want to speak about the disability movements because they are very complicated depending on the type of disabilities, but here is my gross summary for the rest:

• In the early 1980s then the various "progressive" movements in London also had more muscle than what they do today. The Asian youth movements were around, anti-sus groups, in places like Haringey at least, were nearly wholly black organisations using lawyers on their own terms, women's movement had local groups - sometimes out of squats, sometimes not - that pushed for direct, local provision, the Turkish left groups were able to stand not as separate regional groups but within a large single umbrella 'campaign for democracy', internationally focused groups like the Anti-Apartheid Movement had functioning branches in nearly every borough for a fair many years - none of them were huge and none of them need undue praise.

• But something important does happen between 1981-1986 under the GLC - somehow the various groups fracture and divide and lose strength - under an overall deepening recession at the same time as a GLC strategy of funding and incorporation.

• The rigidity of today's applications - quotas, reserved seats and progressive stacks - are things that, in part at least, emerge out of the bureaucratisation of those movements.

• Today those earlier 'progressive movements' don't really function in the same way (or to the same degree) meaning that the working-class parts of them are nearly absent as active agents and instead are almost passive 'left-wing'-charity-recipients.
• So with privilege politics - from a working-class perspective - you've got a theory of society and action being constructed on stilts on a receding cliff - there is precious little working-class component to the 'liberation groups' that are apparently being catered for middle-class activists and 'allies'.

• My guess is it's something to do with the effect of this recession on middle-class students - anguish at themselves for not having actually even taken much notice of unemployed people earlier, the intensification of chauvinism/sexism in wider society (hard to explain - some threads on it), guilt at how bits of third wave feminism has collaborated with unsavoury aspects of society.
• Plus general stark realities as portrayed by a steadily as compared with 1981 (however slow the shift is, however much denied by some) proportionally more female and non-white media (although also more middle-class).
• If a socially engaged middle-class student hears a few times - still against the grain of most media reports - of how black people are likely to end up in prison rather than go to university (without the class aspect of those statistics ever being reported on) - the desire to do something immediate and sudden is there - let's have more black faces being seen to be representing students - however that's brought about - that can't be bad, can it?
• Somehow the guilt does spread itself outwards so that 'allies' are happy to accuse others in their non-'liberation group' of backward chauvinism without much listening to what people are saying - almost purely on the grounds that those in intersections experience oppression in a more real fashion.

 

[sihhi]

Perhaps the Ignatiev and Maoist link are more remote today

Two popularisers of privilege concepts are black female professors:

bell hooks was tenured properly in 1983 by UCal Santa Cruz,
kimberle crenshaw was tenured properly in 1986 by UCLA.


bell hooks first with the concept of triple oppression in Ain't I a woman?

Her main focus is almost wholly on how to teach people in universities better - a pedagogue - who explains that the best way to understand "race and gender and class" is through popular culture.
See here:



(A more Marxist approach would say that popular culture is only one site of production and cannot possibly reflect anything meaningful about other sites of production - the home, the state sector, the private firm)

Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality:

Intersectionality is what occurs when a woman from a minority group ... tries to navigate the main crossing in the city.... The main highway is "racism road." One cross street can be Colonialism, then Patriarchy Street.... She has to deal not only with one form of oppression but with all forms, those named as road signs, which link together to make a double, a triple, multiple, a many layered blanket of oppression.

California it should be noted had introduced an odd form of affirmative action hiring policies back in 1971 as a 'liberal state' and Crenshaw was tenured on the basis of a complex form of quota filling by points, her politics are in many respects liberal seeing society as basically a race between competing people to the crowning achievements - urging everyone to concentrate on producing a meritocracy:



US affirmative action is an absolute minefield btw, I'm not disagreeing with the thrust of the side of the debate in the video, but pointing out her political orientation.

 

[Balbi]

The academic theory's untested in application within academia. Naturally, when it's co-opted into a 'For Dummies' style of shouty political identity activism, it's going to be fucking corrupted and broken and the reversal of what it's supposed to be.

 

[frogwoman]

racism road.

self indulgent and pathetic and does nothing to fight racism and ironically makes a lot of white middle class people feel good about themselves because of how much they have "checked their privilege".Except they're not checking THEIR privilege are they, they're checking the privilege of random people that don't know the rules of their fucking "stacks", what a dehumanising and stupid concept if ever there was one.

this shit seems to be more about making people feel like they're doing something rather than actually helping anyone who has been the victim of racism, sexism etc.

do they think that people from minority groups want to see someone get on their knees and say "I am so sorry" like in that picture? is that their idea of what fighting racism is?

challenge the CONDITIONS that create racism, challenge the CONDITIONS that lead to this shit, this selfish, self-intersted, bullshit, that ironically encourages them to view themselves as different from everyone else through the very language of it, the very idea of being aware of how oppressed everyone is perpetuates the concept of viewing everyone as different depending on their race, sex, sexuality etc, does none of that. hanging out with the beautiful people of NYC does none of that.

and while they're doing this they're probably only going to be talking to white people anyway and using anyone non privileged they meet as fodder for their next new inquiry anecdotes anyway

makes me sick

 

[sihhi]

racism road.

self indulgent and pathetic and does nothing to fight racism and ironically makes a lot of white middle class people feel good about themselves because of how much they have "checked their privilege".

The thing is if you do say you want no part of it - you will likely be attacked for your 'more privileged' status - your whiteness is saying all that because you want to hold on to your superior advantage.
'Your privilege is showing'.

Do you think people are feeling good about themselves or bad?
I have to say, this kind of stuff sounds pretty gruelling - considering yourself a shitty person on the basis of things you have no control over like your time growing up - people being ashamed and upset about their childhood. I mean people's childhoods already plague millions across the country for various reasons. It seems like adding an extra reason to bemoan your childhood:

"I’m a woman, I’m white and I’m British. Growing up, my family had enough money for me to have what I needed, and more. I’m cisgender. I got a great education. Even though I’m queer, I date cismen too. I’m able-bodied, and I’m neurotypical.
...
I’m a privileged woman, whose class and ethnicity and physical ability have completely and utterly dictated how I experience my society in a positive way. The first step in becoming a less shitty person was understanding and then believing that not everyone is like me. The second step was listening to the people who are expressing the ways in which they are not like me. The third step was, and still is, figuring out how to facilitate change for the people who are not like me. ... The process by which you try and try to divest yourself of your own shittiness means you have to know that. Privilege means your rightness is reinforced often, and more women like me need to have their wrongness shown the hell up."

 

[frogwoman]

The thing is if you do say you want no part of it - you will likely be attacked for your 'more privileged' status - your whiteness is saying all that because you want to hold on to your superior advantage.
'Your privilege is showing'.

Do you think people are feeling good about themselves or bad?
I have to say, this kind of stuff sounds pretty gruelling - considering yourself a shitty person on the basis of things you have no control over like your time growing up - people being ashamed and upset about their childhood. I mean people's childhoods already plague millions across the country for various reasons. It seems like adding an extra reason to bemoan your childhood:

"I’m a woman, I’m white and I’m British. Growing up, my family had enough money for me to have what I needed, and more. I’m cisgender. I got a great education. Even though I’m queer, I date cismen too. I’m able-bodied, and I’m neurotypical.
...
I’m a privileged woman, whose class and ethnicity and physical ability have completely and utterly dictated how I experience my society in a positive way. The first step in becoming a less shitty person was understanding and then believing that not everyone is like me. The second step was listening to the people who are expressing the ways in which they are not like me. The third step was, and still is, figuring out how to facilitate change for the people who are not like me. ... The process by which you try and try to divest yourself of your own shittiness means you have to know that. Privilege means your rightness is reinforced often, and more women like me need to have their wrongness shown the hell up."

Yeah it sounds awful.

If I'm honest I've suffered quite badly with mental health issues and feeling guilty on the basis of my upbringing (or whatever) and other things that I had no control over and to be honest if i'd got involved with shit like this it would have sent me into a really really dark place.

 

[weepiper]

It's too much like organised religion. Guilt imposed from above as a means of control

 

[DotCommunist]

The academic theory's untested in application within academia. Naturally, when it's co-opted into a 'For Dummies' style of shouty political identity activism, it's going to be fucking corrupted and broken and the reversal of what it's supposed to be.

I've always said that the concepts hold use in order to examine your own position and perhaps confront prejudices in yourself you didn't think existed but were there anyway. But it is not yer weather underground self crit session. Nor a tool to tell someone else to sit down because they are not on the wheel enough.

Sihhi some pages ago was having a comedic exchange with frog about POC and her being a white woman who isn't allowed to challenge stuff because she is white.

What would happen if frog was literally being told 'you are white take a back seat' then silently pulled out the skullcap, placed it on her head and folded her arms?

Bumped up the proggressive fucking stack list with proffuse apologies eh!

this top trumps shit is so far removed from relevance its beyond a joke

 

[frogwoman]

Well these days it would be all right and i'd be bumped up the privilege list as long as i pledged to hold myself accountable for the occupation of palestine. why dont i pledge to hold myself accountable for the treaty of versailles and the death of christ while i'm at it eh?

 

[Treacle Toes]

It's too much like organised religion. Guilt imposed from above as a means of control

I think that's a great analogy. If it is imposed and therefore people check themselves/invite others to because it's expected of them it isn't real growth/understanding/awareness...these things have always been more subtle than that.

 

[chilango]

Fuck this.

I'm off to find some other privileged folk like me. And together we can do privileged stuff like what us privileged types should.

Is that better?

 

[sihhi]

Yeah it sounds awful.

If I'm honest I've suffered quite badly with mental health issues and feeling guilty on the basis of my upbringing (or whatever) and other things that I had no control over and to be honest if i'd got involved with shit like this it would have sent me into a really really dark place.

Sorry I was not trying to say anything about wider mental health problems affecting people, but these privilege checkers who have assumed they are 'shitty human beings' (really dislike the phrase) - appear to be making themselves upset - we can't know to what degree - that they had a happy childhood.
It is a tiny minority of rich people that do this, but it is odd. The danger is it spreading downwards so that middle-class and even stable working-class people begin to feel the same.

Benjamin Zephaniah recounts going to radical squats in the 1980s and a white middle-class origin woman saying to him (at that time young and recently out of prison with dreadlocks in a Rastafarian cap) when alone after sexual contact: 'I wish I could be black to proper feel the oppression you see'. Is this the same thing but unspoken - is that going too far?