N_igma
Epistemic nuisance
Well of course it did matter but people didn't see differences within a class framework, even though that was the case.
Does class still matter?
- Thread starter danny la rouge
- Start date
Well of course it did matter but people didn't see differences within a class framework, even though that was the case.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Well, that's quite a different thing. People aren't supposed to see things within a class framework.
Anyway, I took the trouble of looking up and typing out a couple of Connolly passages:
I have explained before how the perfectly devilish ingenuity of the master class had sought its ends in North-East Ulster. How the land was stolen from Catholics, given to Episcopalians, but planted by Presbyterians; how the latter were persecuted by the Government, but could not avoid the necessity of defending it against the Catholics, and how out of this complicated situation there inevitably grew up a feeling of common interests between the slaves and the slave-drivers.
“North East Ulster”, Forward, 2 August, 1913.
Men and women, consider! If your lot is a difficult one now, subject as you are to the rule of a gang who keep up the fires of religious bigotry in order to divide the workers, and make united progress impossible; if your lot is a difficult one, […] how difficult and intolerable will it be when you are cut off from Ireland, and yet are as alien to Great Britain, and left at the tender mercies of a class who knows no mercy […].
“Ireland and Ulster: An Appeal to the working class”, the Worker, 4, April, 1914.
He clearly sees the "Carsonite gang" as the class enemy, and the division of the working class as a tool of control.
Don't get me wrong, there's much to take inspiration from in the history of class struggle, I just find the idea of pride in being working class for its own sake nauseating, to say the least.
I'm proud of the tradition of working class socialism (which I consider myself a part of), I'm not proud of being working class. I hate being skint, I hate having to scramble from one bill to the next and I hate having to work in jobs that have absolutely no social value just to make ends meet.
dennisr
the acceptable face
it 'noble' you moany old git
in our day twas a pebble a day to suck on - and then you were lucky....
got to admit - i'm proud of my families ways with other folk - skills and abilities - sense of humour - everyday life 'struggle' - etc etc. as much as class history. i hate most when people loose their self-worth and pride - loss of community - mutual respect - helping each other out - etc etc - that's the sort of inverted snob that bugs me. I think that's class related - in that class relations shape us as individuals. I don't expect my family to spend their lives starving on picket lines or carrying placards (would be a bonus but...)
i think that idiots version of 'class pride' you point too is a combination of lack of confidence in one self - like anyone trying be in a 'gang'/following a given stereotype/proud to be thick etc - and an inarticulate two fingers back at folk looking down their noses at you. its understandable - inverse snobbery.
thats one idea we really have to drag back from the clutches of the ruling classes - their petty nationalisms, pseudo follow-the-leader identities, attempts to make you buy things that are supposed to give you a label or a status. Its building genuine 'pride in oneself' that is not divorced from your relationship to those around you - not what you ware or how you speak or who youknow - etc etc - that pisses me off to. damn, i've made myself miserable now :-(
I suppose that also goes for all those other divisions - race, gender, disability - etc etc etc - its what I mean when i say i want to abolish those divisions/ stop being shaped by them but acting back and shaping ourselves - real individuality
dennisr
the acceptable face
most of human history disagrees - the same is true of patriarchy.
for most of our existence on this plant there was no class, no borders, no countries
my view is its just a short period we are going through - had its uses - now these are outdated
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
Not dribble! not at all, imo
But
is an ongoing problem for me, personally (don't know about you)
For the overall stuff I care about, I have to stay focused on the individual stuff, cos that's what makes it real. But I don't think it's good to stay focused on the individuality bit, cos then you get selfish. Balancing act????
dennisr
the acceptable face
For the overall stuff I care about, I have to stay focused on the individual stuff, cos that's what makes it real. But I don't think it's good to stay focused on the individuality bit, cos then you get selfish. Balancing act????
you are being to kind - but I am obviously talking like a ranting old fool because i have confused rather than clarified the point i was trying to make...i certainly don't mean any obssesion with 'individuality' just the need to recognise that what makes us 'individual' is our relationship with those around us - its one of the big false concepts constantly sold to us by advertisers and politicians - the crude thatcher version being "socialism means 'forced control' - capitalism means 'freedom' " when actually this system is enforced - brutally in most of the planet - and through trying to constantly turn us into gullible, irrisponsible, fearful children waiting for the next "this will make you happy/free/sexy/etc - delete as appropriate" fairy tale nearer to home (although the odd bit of enforcement and fear is used when that doesn't work). Far from 'free' we end up constantly fighting not to be crushed and passified collectively but that also means - as individuals.
on a thread about what happened to feminism - someone made the simple point that what were once critical ideas are constantly sanitised - turned into marketing tools - divorced from the basis of their existence. That's no all bad - its 'negotiated' in the sense that - because lived reality does not fit given 'dreams' - things have changed, concessions have been made, general conciousness and conditions have changed and are doing so constantly (you only have to look at the loss of confidence of the financial world in its own system - let alone ordinary peoples illusions in how it all works). I think that a good general way of veiwing how things work.
In Bloom's right to question what he has - i'd say real 'class conciousness' is not about 'being part of the working class' shaping who we are but about recognition of what we have in common with the vast majority of other individuals and, in so doing, getting a better inkling about ourselves and others for what we really are, rather than what we would wish to be - accepting folk for what they are i suppose.
I think wannabe revolutionaries judging what they consider to be appropriately 'prolotarian' in other folk isn't just a big mistake on their part - it shows how little they have really broken with dominant boss ideas. More practically I would like to live in a place where a minority of people do not find it increasingly acceptable to treat others around them like crap because they have lost their sense of 'social being'. I hate that form of 'poor me' 'individuality' - its in my face every time I leave my house
Give me a few drinks and a sleepless night and i can knock together rambling ill-thought out thesises on the world problems in a jiffy
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
i certainly don't mean any obssesion with 'individuality' just the need to recognise that what makes us 'individual' is our relationship with those around us - its one of the big false concepts constantly sold to us by advertisers and politicians - the crude thatcher version being "socialism means 'forced control' - capitalism means 'freedom' " when actually this system is enforced - brutally in most of the planet - and through trying to constantly turn us into gullible, irrisponsible, fearful children waiting for the next "this will make you happy/free/sexy/etc - delete as appropriate" fairy tale nearer to home (although the odd bit of enforcement and fear is used when that doesn't work). Far from 'free' we end up constantly fighting not to be crushed and passified collectively but that also means - as individuals.
on a thread about what happened to feminism - someone made the simple point that what were once critical ideas are constantly sanitised - turned into marketing tools - divorced from the basis of their existence. That's no all bad - its 'negotiated' in the sense that - because lived reality does not fit given 'dreams' - things have changed, concessions have been made, general conciousness and conditions have changed and are doing so constantly (you only have to look at the loss of confidence of the financial world in its own system - let alone ordinary peoples illusions in how it all works). I think that a good general way of veiwing how things work.
In Bloom's right to question what he has - i'd say real 'class conciousness' is not about 'being part of the working class' shaping who we are but about recognition of what we have in common with the vast majority of other individuals and, in so doing, getting a better inkling about ourselves and others for what we really are, rather than what we would wish to be - accepting folk for what they are i suppose.
I think wannabe revolutionaries judging what they consider to be appropriately 'prolotarian' in other folk isn't just a big mistake on their part - it shows how little they have really broken with dominant boss ideas. More practically I would like to live in a place where a minority of people do not find it increasingly acceptable to treat others around them like crap because they have lost their sense of 'social being'. I hate that form of 'poor me' 'individuality' - its in my face every time I leave my house
Give me a few drinks and a sleepless night and i can knock together rambling ill-thought out thesises on the world problems in a jiffy
Personally i know that class consciousness i still there however the language those in working class circles use to identify the middleclass has changed and i also think that maybe this is in part behind the so called chav v goth animosity still i digress
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Thought i'd tack on this important new report Fair Society, Healthy Lives here:
Healthy living is cut short by 17 years for poorest in Britain
(Full report, summary and individual chapters in first link)
Healthy living is cut short by 17 years for poorest in Britain
(Full report, summary and individual chapters in first link)
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Thought i'd tack on this important new report Fair Society, Healthy Lives here:
Healthy living is cut short by 17 years for poorest in Britain
(Full report, summary and individual chapters in first link)
Cheers for posting that!
Kameron
Kamoceratops
Or the more you hang on to it.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Cretin
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Good question - will investigate.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
explain?
Kameron
Kamoceratops
I think people end up where they expect to end up generally. May be that would be better worded expected to end up. The people who do that expecting or the important expecting at any rate are your parents. Obviously where you expect to end up has a correlation with some metrics that we use to measure social class but I think that it is back projected, people take up the mantle to suit their circumstance rather than their circumstance foisting the mantle upon them.
Mostly I don't think that class is a useful social construct but may be I'm bias I don't think being British or English is useful either and would much rather be a European, or may be I'm just difficult about labels and my solid lower middle class background.
Mostly I don't think that class is a useful social construct but may be I'm bias I don't think being British or English is useful either and would much rather be a European, or may be I'm just difficult about labels and my solid lower middle class background.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
...and these expectations are not in anyway structured around experience of real power imbalances? It's quite obvious that they derive from them. Clicking your heels doesn't actually work for very good and very well established reasons.
It's biased btw - not bias, and it's not 'prejudice' either.
It's biased btw - not bias, and it's not 'prejudice' either.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Don't be daft. In a class society, even if everyone was some self-shifting go-getter out to better themselves the nature of the social structure would mean not all could succeed by definition. And that's leaving aside the whole host of other very real factors that mean elites by and large reproduce themselves. Whether you fancy the label or not has nothing to with it describing a social reality.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
I agree with all of this - don't you like waking up to the fact that you are not a parasitic manager and by organisation that we can ensure the social value of what we do.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Do you accept that there is a pile, though?
It must be really fab to be able to ignore objective reality.
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
Would Anusol help, Kameron?
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Do you think people who die earlier due to class are choosing this?
Kameron
Kamoceratops
I think you find that life expectancy is related to income, diet and quality of health dare. I find coupling them to an orthogonal or at best loosely coupled idea capricious at best and mendacious at worst.
