The Real Class War
americanaffairsjournal.org
The Real Class War
1–10 of 634 posts
Re: The Real Class War
#2If more of our pundits were as sharp as this kid, I'd have less anxiety over the future of our republic.
Instead, we have Maddows and Kristols and Matthews and Schapiros--venal persons, who make camps in Siberia seem like maybe not such a bad idea.
Re: The Real Class War
#3> "What is remarkable about today’s oligarchy is not its ruthlessness but its pettiness and purposelessness."
yup. the 0.1% is really good at hoarding capital, but to what end? none, apparently.
a startlingly coherent summary and critique of the many socioeconomic ills that we tend to discuss opportunistically here.
we non-0.1-percenters need to hone in on undoing the systemic changes since the 70's that has led to this gross and aimless inequity.
Re: The Real Class War
#4Recently, I have a friend group who all graduated from Stanford, with relatively upper middle class(but not suburb/NY upper middle class) roots, and you might even describe as "woke" who belonged to a fb messenger group called "Anti Asian Asian Group".
I felt like I had to call them out on it. Though they made the group as a play on "anti social social club" and to counter conservative sentiments their upper class counterparts might've had, I too thought it might've just been punching down on working/middle class Asians who had traditional values and almost can't help but have those values.
I guess that's the real class war; when people punch down on those who almost don't have the opportunity to decide who to become. Not that people completely lack agency in this country but I think a lot of people forget how much your environment can shape individuals and their values.
Re: The Real Class War
#5I disagree that the working class is not going to radicalize itself. They too are out here on the internet, talking to each other and culturally evolving at an unprecedented rate, like everyone else. For the first time they have the power to publish and think in public uncoupled from professional barrier. Better believe it’s being used, and that they will assert their awareness.
Re: The Real Class War
#6Amusing - it's immediately obvious that Harvard's political philosophy degrees, or at least Julius Krein's, seem to be given out based on word count and not much to do with political philosophy. It's regrettable to see an Ivy League education wasted on a man that would go on to declare himself an alt-right nationalist, and start his own 'zine to provide his readership his own shallow intellectual veneer over their bigotry. This thin critique of modern capital is a well-worn trope by the far-right, appropriating and misusing class analysis is not a new trick.
The amusement is immediate: this blowhard should learn the definition of working class, as it would be taught in any political science program, or even the first paragraph of Wikipedia: the working class is everyone who works through labour for subsistence. Specifically, the working class is not able to survive without working, and cannot subsist through their ownership of capital property and the profits thereof. You are working class, your manager is working class, his manager is working class, and often the CEO of smaller companies is working class.
Of course, Krein has no real class analysis, as always: these ghouls simply wish to divide the working class by the color of their collars and their skin, their gender and their sexuality, their political orientation and their creed, and convince the engineer, the mechanic, and the farmer that they are at war with each other and occupy different classes and in doing so, prevent them from ever realizing class consciousness.
Re: The Real Class War
#7Theorists of capitalism long argued that it and it alone could efficiently distribute resources across an economy (though not, oddly, within a firm).
This might be true in an economy whose rules about contrantracts, commerce, and property relations were fixed and predictable, but most economic simulations overlook or sidestep the fact that the most powerful economic incumbents can and do adjust the legal conditions to maximize their own gain.
Re: The Real Class War
#8[deleted]
Re: The Real Class War
#9> "What is remarkable about today’s oligarchy is not its ruthlessness but its pettiness and purposelessness." yup. the 0.1% is really good at hoarding capital, but to what end? none, apparently. a startlingly coherent summary and critique of the many socioeconomic ills that we tend to discuss opportunistically here. we non-0.1-percenters need to hone in on undoing the systemic changes since the 70's that has led to t…
Honestly, this is what gets me. Say what you will about the man, but few people complain that Elon Musk is a billionaire because clearly he's repeatedly investing his wealth in actually trying to advance humanity in meaningful ways. Similar story with Bill Gates and his foundation. But wtf is the average billionaire (of which there are thousands) or hundred-millionaire (of which there are tens of thousands) doing with their money aside from trying to acquire more money? You would think such people would be into building a positive legacy, but it's just not happening that way.
Re: The Real Class War
#10Amusing - it's immediately obvious that Harvard's political philosophy degrees, or at least Julius Krein's, seem to be given out based on word count and not much to do with political philosophy. It's regrettable to see an Ivy League education wasted on a man that would go on to declare himself an alt-right nationalist, and start his own 'zine to provide his readership his own shallow intellectual veneer over their bi…
While Krein used to support Trump, he decisively abandoned him after Charlottesville and calling him alt-right now doesn't seem founded in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein
To be frank, I think your sort of self-satisfied academic left rhetoric is a large part of the problem, and so you are so in love with it that you've fundamentally misunderstood the writer's argument, which is a great deal closer to your position than you seem to realize.