OK, again, for clarity's sake
I was not suggesting you smeared people as racists; I was explaining to you what
redsquirrel had written. (I can't remember what you wrote about Brexit, so I wouldn't presume to make any claim based on that). Nor was it me calling you a liberal (nor was I calling you
aliberal, which means something else - "non-liberal"), that too was redsquirrel.
However, since you have in effect asked me, (and to my knowledge this is the first time I've said it to you), on reading the last few pages of this thread, I do think your outlook is liberal. I fully appreciate that people seeing that said of them will see it as a swear. And it kind of is, but it also has meaning. For me it means something
like this. (A post I wrote some time back). It does seem to me that you're seeing things in terms of individual morality, individual behaviour, rather than social construction. For a fuller and more erudite definition of what liberal means, see Raymond Williams' entry in his excellent book,
Keywords. (PDF provided by
butchersapron ).
One of the reasons people (it's happened in countless threads on these boards) get confused and think that class is an identity, is that there
are identities that grow up associated with classes. And they
can be useful (though not in the ways liberals tend to think). And we
can study the identity, and the culture, element of class. But that is a matter of base and superstructure. The problem is that liberals conflate the two. The phenomenon of class is not in itself about identity. Class is about means of production and relations of production in any given mode of production. To see that as merely another aspect of identity is to miss a huge number of important things: what the source of inequality and injustice is, what unites us, what we can do to oppose the injustice. It is both analysis and plan of action.
Whereas, the liberal "plan of action" is, at best, this sort of thing:
buy cakes from Jewish businesses. (Which, granted, would help an individual "Mom and Pop" Jewish bakery. But does nothing to address the structures of inequality). At worst, the liberal "plan of action" is:
divide the working class into mutually suspicious identity enclaves, and attributing group responsibility on the basis of skin colour, gender, and so on, or whatever census terms are fashionable.
You seem to be all over the place with regards to all of this. Which is in itself fine. And you may end up not agreeing with those of us who have come to that sort of structural analysis. Which is also fine. But it would at least be courteous to engage in a way that shows you are attempting to understand, even if you end up disagreeing.
I hope you don't think that's rude. It isn't intended to be. (I'm aware that it's pedantic and perhaps even patronising. I don't think I can avoid that).
