SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
It's OK to like sushi as long as you don't like wasabi or pickled ginger
Those are the only parts of sushi worth eating.
Cold stodgy rice and seaweed? No, no thanks.
It's OK to like sushi as long as you don't like wasabi or pickled ginger
We're ok talking about quinoa though right?Food choices can fuck off from a class analysis though right? We're so multicultural now that whether someone eats hummous or guacamole or sushi or splashes out on expensive olives or fresh juice or even wine, is down to taste, nutrition, and because its all available these days. As if working class people should stick to stew and beer and rickets.
better stay away from this one then. esp 'filling 2'I just need to know before the Red Guards kick my door in.
If cocaine is OK, quinoa is OK tooWe're ok talking about quinoa though right?
My nanna was a midwife and a single mum and raised two kids off her salary in the 50s. She had originally gone into nursing in the 30s I think in part due to there being accommodation as part of the role and also because it allowed her to work in various parts of what was still nominally the empire (Palestine, Hong Kong - travelling there by flying boat!). Not bad for someone from a mining / farming village half way up a mountain.It used to be a job you could go into as a working class person, without funding yourself through years of university, and end up with a good profession and a decent income. That was what my mum did. When I was a kid our whole family lived off her nursing bursary.
Now nursing is university-only, bursaries have been cut and wages have fallen in real terms. That route for people (particularly women) to get themselves a good career without having family money to back them up has disappeared.
Is multi culturalism a major factor in guacamole consumption?Food choices can fuck off from a class analysis though right? We're so multicultural now that whether someone eats hummous or guacamole or sushi or splashes out on expensive olives or fresh juice or even wine, is down to taste, nutrition, and because its all available these days. As if working class people should stick to stew and beer and rickets.
I've not read any academic studies but I do know all kinds of exotic foodstuffs I never saw as a kid are readily available in asda now. Which may suggest the relationship between class and eg guacamole, sushi, olives, quinoa or live yogurt is tenuous at best.Is multi culturalism a major factor in guacamole consumption?
Yup there's far more stuff available and consumed ( depending on price ) by all sorts of folks. My question wasn't about class and food styles though it was about the link between multi culturalism and the consumption of things like guacamole ie could marketing ie promotion of 'super foods' , content of films, holidays abroad celebrity tastes etc have helped increase the consumption of some of these products rather than multiculturalism?I've not read any academic studies but I do know all kinds of exotic foodstuffs I never saw as a kid are readily available in asda now. Which may suggest the relationship between class and eg guacamole, sushi, olives, quinoa or live yogurt is tenuous at best.
The role of multiculturalism in this is either unclear or really obvious. I'm going with really obvious, but happy to read over any detailed analysis should it be available.
And doctors in a hospital have a managerial role in relation to nurses.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
Seem to remember the mushy peas/advocado issue as being a joke told by Militant in some by election.Mushy peas is the traditional proley version.
I heard the mushy peas/chippy/ guacamole joke about Mandelson (in Hartlepool I think?) but sure it's done the rounds a few times...Seem to remember the mushy peas/advocado issue as being a joke told by Militant in some by election.
I think you are rightI heard the mushy peas/chippy/ guacamole joke about Mandelson (in Hartlepool I think?) but sure it's done the rounds a few times...
Seem to remember the mushy peas/advocado issue as being a joke told by Militant in some by election.
I don't want to speak for danny la rouge but I don't think think anyone is claiming race/gender/disability/etc do not matter. They absolutely do, and the effects of discrimination can be every bit as, or even more, important than class.Danny, the one thing I’d disagree with you on is that the race/cultural background/gender/sexuality/disability status etc. of people in charge doesn’t matter. Yes they’re just a part of a person’s experience, and class and/or financial privilege also create huge differences in experiences and the lens you develop for understanding the world. And yes, when people get into arguments about not being able to understand the other’s challenges it can be very counterproductive. But these facets of our identity are still important as there’s a whole wealth of data showing how in multiple domains, the needs of PoC and/or women have suffered because White men in charge have taken Whiteness and maleness to be norm, and haven’t noticed (or cared about) the issues that other groups face on a day to day basis.
Yes I would absolutely agree 100% with all of that It has to be about intersectionality.I don't want to speak for danny la rouge but I don't think think anyone is claiming race/gender/disability/etc do not matter. They absolutely do, and the effects of discrimination can be every bit as, or even more, important than class.
Where class is different from race/gender/etc is that it provides that strategic point under capitalism that is a route to dismantling capitalism. That is why class is not more important but different to race/gender/etc.
And of course there is the intersection of class and race, gender, sexuality. It is absolutely part of the class war to fight to abolish pay gaps, to recognise that gender is part of casualisation etc
I don't suppose it's an either/or tbh, I'm sure it's all relevant. And I should really have used growing cultural diversity (because I meant the broad social context behind increasingly available exotic foods) not multiculturalism (as in more specifically a particular approach to cultural diversity).Yup there's far more stuff available and consumed ( depending on price ) by all sorts of folks. My question wasn't about class and food styles though it was about the link between multi culturalism and the consumption of things like guacamole ie could marketing ie promotion of 'super foods' , content of films, holidays abroad celebrity tastes etc have helped increase the consumption of some of these products rather than multiculturalism?
It's not just about food.This hummous thing is getting on my wick. My hospital porter dad made his own hummous not because he was desperate to join the chattering classes but because he was a Sephardi Jew from an Eastern Mediterranean background.
Please stick with sushi as the middle class cultural signifier from now on. Mick McGahey never ate sushi and neither will I.
Well put.I don't want to speak for danny la rouge but I don't think think anyone is claiming race/gender/disability/etc do not matter. They absolutely do, and the effects of discrimination can be every bit as, or even more, important than class.
Where class is different from race/gender/etc is that it provides that strategic point under capitalism that is a route to dismantling capitalism. That is why class is not more important but different to race/gender/etc.
And of course there is the intersection of class and race, gender, sexuality. It is absolutely part of the class war to fight to abolish pay gaps, to recognise that gender is part of casualisation etc
The point about how social housing affects people's interests is an interesting one. One could split people into, for example, precariously employed and precariously houses, then precariously employed but securely housed, securely employed and precariously housed, and securely employed and securely housed, and talk about their different interests and the different behavioural tendencies. Who would you want most in a tenants union? Probably securely employed and precariously housed, because they are most likely to risk a fight with their landlord, knowing that they can find other housing again.I know I'm late to reply to this, but it's occurred to me on waking up that I'm (for example) very well protected from various ups and downs - because while I don't own my home and probably never will, the house I live in is one I pay very low rent for (substantially below market) and my tenancy is assured, so unless I deal drugs or piss off the neighbourhood or burn the place down or whatever, I basically get to live here indefinitely. Minus is that it's not mine so it's not as asset, fine. But i can do what I want with it within reason, and there are a ton of repairs I'm not responsible for, and unless the HA sell it (which I admit could happen) I'm basically set for life. If anything I think I'm in as good a position in terms of the security of my home, as if I owned it myself. And maybe better, in terms of running costs. I have the right to buy it, but I don't want to because it'd cost me more if I did.
I'm just not sure (outside of the south east maybe) that home ownership is necessarily the class-defining grail you seem to be painting it as. Yes, it's nice to own your home but for a few thousand quid you can buy a perfectly livable van or caravan. I lived in a van for ages instead of renting, I don't think it changed my class except downward to 'itinerant' if that's a thing - but the fact is I did for a while own my own home, outright.
As has been pointed out, even if you own the place you live, you can't sell it and realise that wealth without moving out. And how many people actually do own bricks-and-mortar home of their own but no other wealth or assets except that, I bet its not all that many in a country of ~60million. I think the reason home ownership tops some people's 'middle class' list is not because of the home itself but because it represents an asset to leverage in order to make other wealth-increasing investments - and that can change your class substantially.
Eg. If someone owns more than one and rents out the others, that's class defining. If they own it and give up working, that probably is too. If they remortgage to invest in a business they aren't employed by, that too most likely. And various other 'I don't have to sell my labour anymore' scenarios, no doubt. If they own one and have lodgers, that may too - but not definitively, and IMO unless they live 100% off of that rent I'm really not sure it fundamentally changes their class, if they still sell their labour and would struggle if they lost their job. I just don't believe Home Ownership is really key to defining Class, not on its own. Other material interests come into it.
Still, I'm glad this thread is alive again. This is proper U75 stuff
If I've argued that homeowners aren't working class it was only by accident. I'm more arguing for class segmentation according to material interests. As for what to call each class segment, I would go for pragmatic naming, or something that fitted a political narrative that people might be likely to buy.Thanks for outlining your theory a bit more. But I'm not contesting it for the moment I'm seeking an answer to LDC s question - what does this mean for your politics.
I understand you identify homeowners as no longer working class, so are renters the key strategic block, how will they dismantle capitalism? Are you arguing for organising on a class (your definition of w/c) basis, or a cross-class basis? If homeowners are no longer part of labour you've significantly shrunk the size of labour, what do you think are the political implications for that? What does your theory mean for countries where renting is much more common? Is Germany less capitalist, orcloser to a revolutionary situation than the UK?
Bollocks. Marx very clearly outlined why labour was the crucial point in capitalism - the focus on the working class is not a moral, it is because the working class occupy the pivotal strategic point. In the words of EMW "The particular importance for Marxism of the working class in capitalist society is that this is the only class whose own class interests require, and whose own conditions make possible, the abolition of class itself."
You can disagree with that but it is a clear coherent politics that builds it base upon the group that is able to dismantle capitalism.
Where is your strategic pivot point? Is it still the working class but redefined to remove homeowners?
I don't know about understanding Marx, but the first sentence shows you don't understand (or are arguing in bad faith) the positions of people posting on this thread. I certainly do not believe Marx 'established a sort of science of how society works' and I'm skeptical that most other posters believe such. Indeed, in contrast to, say ska invita, I absolutely reject economics and political science.
The reason why I tend to believe that some "just don't understand Marx", is because the claims that a class model based on ownership of the MoP does not address X or Y are usually simply wrong (as danny la rouge has pointed out).
The claims that 'Marx did not take X into account' are not some radical new point, they are typically rather old hat. Which does not necessarily make them wrong or incorrect, but does mean that some posters are posting from a certain ignorance when they claim that 'Marx' is wrong because 'things are more complex now'.
I'd also not that at least one of the posters arguing against class and insisting that things are more complicated than in Marxian thought has repeatedly admitted they have read very little Marx. Which is fine, I would not pretend to be some scholar of Marx, but does mean that there is a very good chance they do not understand Marx.
Surely it's more that Marx is like Darwin and evolution, he did identify and describe something real but wasn't the last word himself. All the subsequent details still fit in the larger rubric though.If I've argued that homeowners aren't working class it was only by accident. I'm more arguing for class segmentation according to material interests. As for what to call each class segment, I would go for pragmatic naming, or something that fitted a political narrative that people might be likely to buy.
You wrote in the same post that you don't see Marx as having come up with the objectively correct description of society, and that Marx outlined a theory of political change that you seem to see as beyond dispute. Perhaps you can reconcile those two claims for me.
I think it's an indisputable fact that the working class (in Marx's defn) in the UK is avowedly reformist and shows no signs of being otherwise. 150 years of evidence is in and I'm going with that rather than with what Marx said. I actually think Marx would go with the evidence too. You can wait another 150 years for the prophecy of the working class becoming revolutionary to come true if you like. I'm a bit more impatient than that.
Yeah sorry but this desire to split people into ever tinier groups is part of the problem IMO. It plays right into the hands of the ruling class, viz 'divide and rule' except while we're dividing ourselves so we each get to feel special in our own little lived experiences we're doing their job for them.One could split people into, for example,
Do they? An enormous amount of post-Marx Marxian writing is explaining why the working class haven't become revolutionary yet. That would have been fine for a few decades but now it's just getting silly.Surely it's more that Marx is like Darwin and evolution, he did identify and describe something real but wasn't the last word himself. All the subsequent details still fit in the larger rubric though.
Well, yes. At base it's an observation of the particular social relations that arise under/go to make up capitalism. Just like evolutionary theory was an observation of something happening in the world. That stuff you don't rate was subsequently written by other people has no bearing.Do they? An enormous amount of post-Marx Marxian writing is explaining why the working class haven't become revolutionary yet. That would have been fine for a few decades but now it's just getting silly.
You can identify differences in order to bridge them. You could even phrase it in Gramscian terms - knitting together social blocs. Saying that everyone has one set of interests because they need to do salaried work has not been working. Has it?Yeah sorry but this desire to split people into ever tinier groups is part of the problem IMO. It plays right into the hands of the ruling class, viz 'divide and rule' except while we're dividing ourselves so we each get to feel special in our own little lived experiences we're doing their job for them.
No it hasn't, but not because it isn't true. It's been made not to work by and for those whose interests are served by the breaking of w/c solidarity. That's not even up for debate is it?You can identify differences in order to bridge them. You could even phrase it in Gramscian terms - knitting together social blocs. Saying that everyone has one set of interests because they need to do salaried work has not been working. Has it?
No it hasn't, but not because it isn't true. It's been made not to work by and for those whose interests are served by the breaking of w/c solidarity. That's not even up for debate is it?
An enormous amount of post-Marx Marxian writing is explaining why the working class haven't become revolutionary yet. That would have been fine for a few decades but now it's just getting silly.