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

[Casually Red]

I wear a brown leather jacket thats quite similar to Pauls. That cant be mere coincidence .

 

[J Ed]

I don't know what they're reading, but I'd like to know more about this Maoist white skin privilege thing - any recommended reading on that one?

I haven't found much in the way of overall guides to it, I just know from googling it a bit to try and understand it myself that it seemed to originated with an American Maoist author here http://www.sojournertruth.net/whiteblindspot.html and here is a later Maoist critique of it http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/wbs-critique.htm

 

[butchersapron]

Any large scale importation of privilege theory into this country must have a material base - in the US it's ivy league and private liberal arts colleges (and the sons and daughters of finance capital that fund the institutions and the students). The ongoing privatisation of further education and the indivisdualisation of responses to this here (i'm against it, i'm against all the bad things, but i'm on my own, what can i do but write about it) in a period with no wider social movement and when the internet allows you to celebrate/monetise your individual opposition, is embedding this stuff and ensuring it becomes the dominant public face and voice of political opposition, As it has already in the US. To challenge this you need to challenge the social relations that produce these plonkers (whilst laughing at their behaviour). That's one reason why education is a class battle. To make the right to further education a part of basic class thinking, then we'll wipe these muppets out.

 

[Blagsta]

What I want to know is where they get these bizarre privilege theory ideas from, I know that tumblr blogs pay a part but words like 'liberation group', 'white privilege' and so on seem to get thrown around a lot but I don't get the impression that people are aware of any theoretical basis for these words. When I've talked to people about the Maoist origins of white skin privilege theory and so on I get met with blank stares, just what are these people reading?

The only person in real life i know that uses the term white privilege is a Canadian comrade.

 

[sihhi]

What I want to know is where they get these bizarre privilege theory ideas from, I know that tumblr blogs pay a part but words like 'liberation group', 'white privilege' and so on seem to get thrown around a lot but I don't get the impression that people are aware of any theoretical basis for these words. When I've talked to people about the Maoist origins of white skin privilege theory and so on I get met with blank stares, just what are these people reading?

What is a liberation group?

My impression was that the NUS is still dominated by the big-hitter Russell Group universities that contain many liberal students who concentrate on essentially liberal schemes: fairtrade coffee and student union shops, scholarship schemes for state school children, instant cooperative management meetings to discuss cuts to departments by transfering students as efficiently as possible, demands for students to be able boost their competitive abilities - more internship fairs, more short scholarships for students etc, charity funding etc.
I don't know if the privilege aspect and reserved quotas on committees is new or not, it's one thing having posts for anti-racism officers and international students representatives - but the quota could generate something unintended.

 

[chilango]

...and to put it crudely, "jazz hands" and so on act as a sign that all this shit is not just valid, but that it must determine not just what we do, but also how we do it.

 

[J Ed]

What is a liberation group?

Black students, LGBT students etc

 

[Casually Red]

That's one reason why education is a class battle. To make the right to further education a part of basic class thinking, then we'll wipe these muppets out.

cut the head off the snake, stamp on the egg

 

[sihhi]

Black students, LGBT students etc

I suppose the free school meals students are just one other group that have to tussle in amongst the others to press their demands.
Are women students a liberation group?

 

[J Ed]

I suppose the free school meals students are just one other group that have to tussle in amongst the others to press their demands.
Are women students a liberation group?

Disabled and Women students are the other two, yeah.

http://www.theyworkforstudents.co.uk/ is a good resource for unpicking the deliberate opaqueness of the NUS

 

[butchersapron]

Any large scale importation of privilege theory into this country must have a material base - in the US it's ivy league and private liberal arts colleges (and the sons and daughters of finance capital that fund the institutions and the students). The ongoing privatisation of further education and the indivisdualisation of responses to this here (i'm against it, i'm against all the bad things, but i'm on my own, what can i do but write about it) in a period with no wider social movement and when the internet allows you to celebrate/monetise your individual opposition, is embedding this stuff and ensuring it becomes the dominant public face and voice of political opposition, As it has already in the US. To challenge this you need to challenge the social relations that produce these plonkers (whilst laughing at their behaviour). That's one reason why education is a class battle. To make the right to further education a part of basic class thinking, then we'll wipe these muppets out.

Here is part of how this will play out, if tutors, why not colleges?:

Warning from headteachers as parents dig deep to fund boom in private tutors

Parents on modest incomes and families from ethnic minorities are behind a massive boom in Britain's multimillion-pound tutoring market, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

 

[Casually Red]

...and to put it crudely, "jazz hands" and so on act as a sign that all this shit is not just valid, but that it must determine not just what we do, but also how we do it.

cult behaviour

 

[butchersapron]

...and to put it crudely, "jazz hands" and so on act as a sign that all this shit is not just valid, but that it must determine not just what we do, but also how we do it.

...and this is how you will do it too.

 

[Random]

in the US it's ivy league and private liberal arts colleges (and the sons and daughters of finance capital that fund the institutions and the students). The ongoing privatisation of further education and the indivisdualisation of responses to this here (i'm against it, i'm against all the bad things, but i'm on my own, what can i do but write about it) in a period with no wider social movement and when the internet allows you to celebrate/monetise your individual opposition, is embedding this stuff and ensuring it becomes the dominant public face and voice of political opposition

Isn't this US elite individualism also something that was present 40 or so years ago, during a period of major industrial working class action you had rich kid students like the Weather Underground deciding that they were the vanguard, out on their own. Seems like nowadays we've got the same social layer without even the faintest whiff of a connection to class politics.

 

[sihhi]

To challenge this you need to challenge the social relations that produce these plonkers (whilst laughing at their behaviour). That's one reason why education is a class battle. To make the right to further education a part of basic class thinking, then we'll wipe these muppets out.

The social relations and a vision of the world based on having a personal chance in a world of constant competition that allows individual privilege assessments as a barometer of financial/philanthropic assistance could be starting to increase. Take things like total academy-isation and free schools* based in areas of high migrant concentration in inner cities.

Whether or not they will produce plonkers at the same level as Malcolm Harris is hard to judge, but a dissipated class perspective will remain.

Look at the backers and governors of the key one in West London headed by Toby Young - lots of finance sector, lots of private school products - these people are not messing around. They're having compulsory Latin until end of KS3 to give some back up to the nearly 100% private school Oxbridge Classics departments.
Their argument is a safe dominant privilege argument - ordinary children in a mixed catchment should experience a private school ethos of competition and an easy route to university - because they have been underprivileged and denied it.

 

[butchersapron]

Isn't this US elite individualism also something that was present 40 or so years ago, during a period of major industrial working class action you had rich kid students like the Weather Underground deciding that they were the vanguard, out on their own. Seems like nowadays we've got the same social layer without even the faintest whiff of a connection to class politics.

In the US you did for sure - and look at the results. Except this lot haven't the bottle to put their necks on the line. The point though, is not the elitism as such today, but rather, the generalisation of these start points for firstly, public debate and secondly (and connected), the left as a whole. There have always been cultural wars between the middle-class dominated left and the class as a whole, but they took place in different conditions, where there was a real labour movement (with all its failings) - this stuff is not an internal debate in that sense, it's almost an imposition.

 

[sihhi]

Disabled and Women students are the other two, yeah.

http://www.theyworkforstudents.co.uk/ is a good resource for unpicking the deliberate opaqueness of the NUS

So working-class students aren't a liberation group. An able-bodied male working-class student born of white parents who doesn't want to disclose his sexuality or is heterosexual has nowhere specific within the NUS constitution?

 

[butchersapron]

The social relations and a vision of the world based on having a personal chance in a world of constant competition that allows individual privilege assessments as a barometer of financial/philanthropic assistance could be starting to increase. Take things like total academy-isation and free schools* based in areas of high migrant concentration in inner cities.

Whether or not they will produce plonkers at the same level as Malcolm Harris is hard to judge, but a dissipated class perspective will remain.

Look at the backers and governors of the key one in West London headed by Toby Young - lots of finance sector, lots of private school products - these people are not messing around. They're having compulsory Latin until end of KS3 to give some back up to the nearly 100% private school Oxbridge Classics departments.
Their argument is a safe dominant privilege argument - ordinary children in a mixed catchment should experience a private school ethos of competition and an easy route to university - because they have been underprivileged and denied it.

That's one reason why we have to make sure the battle isn't fought around scarcity or rationing of some type. And death to meritocracy

 

[The39thStep]

The only person in real life i know that uses the term white privilege is a Canadian comrade.

My gardener uses it

 

[Nigel Irritable]

The only person in real life i know that uses the term white privilege is a Canadian comrade.

Aren't you being awfully loose with the word "comrade"?

 

[J Ed]

So working-class students aren't a liberation group. An able-bodied male working-class student born of white parents who doesn't want to disclose his sexuality or is heterosexual has nowhere specific within the NUS constitution?

I don't know about nowhere in the NUS constitution, but IME class just isn't mentioned in student politics. Becoming an elected student officer or NUS delegate requires a lot of time, if you have to work part time then it's significantly more difficult to do that and of course that excludes most working-class students.

 

[Delroy Booth]

In the US you did for sure - and look at the results. Except this lot haven't the bottle to put their necks on the line. The point though, is not the elitism as such today, but rather, the generalisation of these start points for firstly, public debate and secondly (and connected), the left as a whole. There have always been cultural wars between the middle-class dominated left and the class a a whole, but they took place in different conditions, where there was a real labour movement (with all its failings) - this stuff is not an internal debate in that sense, it's almost an imposition.

Yeah I was gonna say this stuff goes right back to the International Workingmens Association my mate just tweeted me this link http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/splits.htm Some choice quotes

Woodhull's journal, May 4, 1872:
"... In this decree of the General Council its authors presume to recommend that in future no American section be admitted of which two-thirds at least are not wage slaves. Must they be politically slaves also? As well one thing as the other...."
"The intrusion into the International Working Men's Association of bogus reformers, middle-class quacks, and trading politicians is mostly to be feared from that class of citizens who have nothing better to depend upon than the proceeds of wage slavery."

There's much more but I'm pressed for time


I suppose one of the key material differences is that the IWMA had a large membership, leading Chartists were involved, it was linked to a nascent movement. So for all the vanity projects and crank there it had something else too. The theoretical output that came of the experience of the IWA, of which Marx and Engels is surely a part, is infinitely superior

 

[sihhi]

That's one reason why we have to make sure the battle isn't fought around scarcity or rationing of some type. And death to meritocracy

That Free School won't be a meritocracy - look at the people there.

This guy on (edit) right is the education director - he will make many decisions.

51-year-old Thomas Packer served as Headmaster of the independent Teesside High School near Stockton-on-Tees for five-and-a-half years.

Before that, Mr Packer was Headmaster at Stover School in Devon which caters for pupils of a large number of nationalities as both boarders and day pupils.

Mr Packer’s first acting headship was at Victoria College, an all-boys school with a mixed Sixth Form in Jersey, where he also served as Deputy Head.

For a start, it will filter out the unwanted "ADHD" "troublemaker" types before entry and after just a few dud exam performances if they step out of line just once - "better school discipline" - just as they do in private schools - brilliantly this means they don't effect exam result tables.

They will also promote those likely to do well to get into university (the richer wing of the mixed catchment intake) into special streams, try out new treaching resources onto them perhaps bring in graduated or holiday time middle-class students from as teachers/tutors to do bursts of pre-exam or holiday teaching. The exam results table will guide the flow of education.

 

[Idris2002]

That Free School won't be a meritocracy - look at the people there.

This guy on left is the education director - he will make many decisions.




For a start, it will filter out the unwanted "ADHD" "troublemaker" types before entry and after just a few dud exam performances if they step out of line just once - "better school discipline" - just as they do in private schools - brilliantly this means they don't effect exam result tables.

They will also promote those likely to do well to get into university (the richer wing of the mixed catchment intake) into special streams, try out new treaching resources onto them perhaps bring in graduated or holiday time middle-class students from as teachers/tutors to do bursts of pre-exam or holiday teaching. The exam results table will guide the flow of education.

An education in treachery, then?

One of the few good things about my school is that they were resolutely opposed to streaming.

 

[butchersapron]

That Free School won't be a meritocracy - look at the people there.

<snip> For a start, it will filter out the unwanted "ADHD" "troublemaker" types before entry and after just a few dud exam performances if they step out of line just once - "better school discipline" - just as they do in private schools - brilliantly this means they don't effect exam result tables.

They will also promote those likely to do well to get into university (the richer wing of the mixed catchment intake) into special streams, try out new treaching resources onto them perhaps bring in graduated or holiday time middle-class students from as teachers/tutors to do bursts of pre-exam or holiday teaching. The exam results table will guide the flow of education.

Meritocracy isn't. It can't be. But this is the badge they'll use.

 

[sihhi]

Meritocracy isn't. It can't be. But this is the badge they'll use.

Yes - the badge is meritocracy for that catchment (which doesn't have a close by grammar school), the free school must equal and then exceed the grammar school in its competitive rigorous approach to equalise the playing field.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Here is part of how this will play out, if tutors, why not colleges?:

Warning from headteachers as parents dig deep to fund boom in private tutors

There was a mum on the radio earlier who had added up the cost of private tuition for her daughter so far (8 years of primary and secondary); it came to £8000. She came across as being proud of having made the sacrifice to provide for her child. This is another part of the very powerful individualist narratives so evident on this thread.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Louis MacNeice]

The unquestioning acceptance of meritocracy as being a desirable goal! Whatever happened to need?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Red Cat]

Toby Young was on Radio 4 News at 1 the other day supporting that Tory who suggested an end to toddlers running about with no purpose, doing so by arguing that there's evidence to show that it's children from deprived backgrounds who benefit most from an academic nursery education. I actually made a complaint to the BBC about how they've given him the authority to speak on a subject that isn't his field because he's a powerful, middle-class man promoting and benefiting from Tory education policy.

 

[weepiper]

Toby Young was on Radio 4 News at 1 the other day supporting that Tory who suggested an end to toddlers running about with no purpose, doing so by arguing that there's evidence to show that it's children from deprived backgrounds who benefit most from an academic nursery education. I actually made a complaint to the BBC about how they've given him the authority to speak on a subject that isn't his field because he's a powerful, middle-class man promoting and benefiting from Tory education policy.

He gives me the gyp.