I've heard and read that way of conceptualizing before. I think it's a very
narrow, limited way of conceptualizing the situation. As I said previously, if
you have this kind of mechanistic, focused theory, you can then just omit
everything that seems extraneous to the theory and the theory just proves
itself. Certainly, the elite can use race or ethnicity to divide the working
class. However, in many cases, people are divided by these things without any
help from an outside force.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 8:59 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering
Frontrunner
Miriam wrote: "I cannot imagine how it is relevant to talk about people's
financial situations, about who has more privileges or more power, about who
ends up homeless or incarcerated, without taking ethnicity, race, religion, and
personal psychology into account."
Of course that is relevant to people's personal situations and it is relevant
to material that will serve as agitational material. But it is still not very
relevant to class analysis. Billionaires want your money and they don't care
what your ethnicity is. Workers have their class interests as well as personal
interests and their class interests are similar no matter what their personal
psychology or ethnic background might be. The bosses use that kind of stuff to
divide them and when you are talking about the attempted dividing that the
bosses do then it is relevant. But you still have to keep in mind what you are
talking about.
You do not concern yourself much with personal psychology when you are talking
about the class struggle. You worry about personal psychology when you are
talking about interpersonal relations. It is similar to this. If you are in the
kitchen cooking you are concerned with the recipe you are using. You might be
considering what ingredient you can substitute for another or you might be
concerned with whether you have the right size pan to accommodate the recipe.
But if you are talking about crop yields and the mass distribution of food that
recipe in your individual kitchen does not have much relevance to the subject
and you should not confuse one situation dealing with food with another
situation dealing with food. And you should not tell someone who is talking
about that mass food distribution that you cannot imagine how your personal
kitchen recipe is not relevant to it. Everything is relevant to something, but
some things have little relevance to some other things and you should really
bee sure that you are talking about the same thing.
---
Carl Sagan
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 5:27 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Roger,
You say that if we talk about economic classes, we must name them and
then you give them names like national bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, petty
bourgeoisie, proletariat, lumpen proletariat labor aristocra
peasantry, proletarianized peasantry and so forth. These are simply
names that describe classes in a capitalist economic system
Those are names that Marx gave them back in what year? In what country?
Even if I chose to think about contemporary issues only in terms of economic
class, as if no other variables influenced what is happening in today's
world, there is no rule that says that I must use those names. Those names
are not relevant to America in 2019, not as far as I'm concerned. And I
haven't heard any current Marxist economists use them either. Not that they
may not have used them as they were learning Marxist theory, but if they want
to communicate with their fellow Americans, they need to use language and
concepts that feel relevant to people's everyday lives.
You write about how class can be used to understand people's economic
situation. You said, The categories of what is commonly called class is there
to let us know what economic role people play in economic relations and how
they relate to each other on an economic basis. Ethnicity, religion or even
the specific job one performs are mostly irrelevant to this.
I cannot imagine how it is relevant to talk about people's financial
situations, about who has more privileges or more power, about who ends up
homeless or incarcerated, without taking ethnicity, race, religion, and
personal psychology into account. I suspect that what you are referring to,
is a very mechanistic formula of economic theory like, "dialectic
materialism" or some other economic theory, the reverse side of market
theory, which doesn't take real people and their thoughts, feelings, or
motivations into account.
In fact, one of the criticisms made of Bernie Sanders by some of his
detractors on the left, is that he doesn't talk enough about how race impacts
people's economic situation. I don't agree with that particular criticism of
him, but I do think that one can't look at class status in the United States
without analyzing the impact of race, religion, and ethnicity on just who is
a member of which economic class.
We also have, in this country wide differences in philosophical viewpoints
regarding religion, sexuality, and civil liberties and this divergence of
viewpoint exists among the very wealthy. So although in some ways George
Soros and the Koch brothers have similar self interests, in other ways, they
use their money in very different ways when it comes to influenceing events.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 3:24 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
Okay, you are getting into some of those quibbles that I alluded to that I
have with what Carl had to say, but your quibbles come from an entirely
different perspective. I will have to agree that it is over simplistic to
divide everyone into two classes, the ruling class and the working class.
However, this talk about different ethnicities, religions and things like
that does not even address the whole point of dividing people into classes at
all. In some contexts the word class means category and that is what you seem
to be talking about. You can divide people according to their ethnicity. You
can divide people according to whatever shade their skins are. You can divide
people according to whether they prefer to play chess or checkers. But if you
divide people by any of those criteria or any of the vast number of criteria
available for you to divide them by you have to ask the question of why are
you dividing them. Any such division you come up with may very well have some
usefulness in some study or endeavor like psychology, sociology marketing
studies or whatever, but you are still talking about categories as opposed to
class. Okay, dividing people into classes is categorical too, but the purpose
of doing so will not be the same as dividing people into the categories of
people who stand under five feet and people who stand over five feet. The
categories of what is commonly called class is there to let us know what
economic role people play in economic relations and how they relate to each
other on an economic basis. Ethnicity, religion or even the specific job one
performs are mostly irrelevant to this. As I have said before, you can be
either a lumper or a splitter and varying degrees of lumping or splitting may
be more or less appropriate for whatever you are doing with your categories.
You could pick out at random any two people from the human population of the
earth and compare them and find that one or the other has some advantage over
the other with some amount of greater power or privilege, but to what purpose
would you be making that comparison? The only thing I can think of is that
you might be studying individual psychology, but that doesn't have much to do
with what is ordinarily meant when the word class is used. This comparison of
just one person to another, though, is an extreme example of splitting. What
Carl has explicated, though, is an extreme example of lumping. Okay, there is
the ruling class. They are called the ruling class because they rule. They
control how the economic system is conducted and they have life and death
power over a lot of people. However, there are other people who have a lot of
power too who are not quite as powerful as the ruling class. Their own lives
may be subordinate to the ruling class, but they still have a high degree of
privilege and they maintain that privilege by implementing ruling class
directives and by making their own directives when not directly implementing
ruling class directives. You have powerful people who own the biggest
manufacturing companies and who control those companies. You have other
powerful people who manage the transfer of money who are the bankers. Below
those kinds of people you have managers of various levels and owners of
smaller companies. You have company owners who not only own and so implement
their own power, but who also perform productive labor themselves. Then you
also have people who make their living only from productive labor. Other
people perform agricultural labor for a wage or perform agricultural labor
while owning the farm where they work. Then you have a reserve of unemployed
people who are maintained to keep the price of labor from being bid up so
high that the owners would fail to make a profit after paying wages. Among
those unemployed are a layer who have to resort to criminal activity to make
a living and may become professional criminals. There are a lot of other
gradations too and it has very little to do with their ethnicity, religion or
other characteristics that you mention. But my point in mentioning all of
these layers in the economic system is to illustrate just how over simplistic
Carl's division is. There are a lot of classes other than the ruling class
and the working class and just how far you are going to split or lump them
depends on what you happen to be doing with the information. Now, let me add
what I have been avoiding so far. These various classes have names.
If you are going to talk about anything and have it make sense you have to
give it a name. Oh, I suppose you could describe it every time you mention
it, but that would be very unwieldy. I know, Miriam, that you don't like it
when I put a name to these classes, but they have to be named in order to
make sense of what is being talked about. When someone calls classes by their
names it does not mean that there is an attempt to make you think in a
certain way. It does not mean that you are being looked down on. It does not
mean that anyone is dismissing your own cultural perspective. It does not
mean that you are being personally attacked or however you see it. It only
means that the person who uses those names is calling something by its name.
The names of those classes include names like national bourgeoisie,
bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, lumpen proletariat labor
aristocracy, peasantry, proletarianized peasantry and so forth. These are
simply names that describe classes in a capitalist economic system and the
names were never given to any of these classes to offend you or anybody else.
And if we only call the class divisions ruling class and working class we
just cannot talk about the ways these varying classes effect and relate to
each other.
---
Carl Sagan
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 9:25 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
My feeling is that you can't just lump everyone together in, "the working
class". People have different levels of education, come from different
ethnic and racial and religious backgrounds, do very different kinds of
work, have very different kinds of life styles, and most importantly, have
very different views of who they are and what their place is in this world.
You're talking about power and it's true that you don't have any more power
than the people with no education or who struggle to make a living for their
children. That is, you don't have any more power to influence whether or not
we have war or peace, or whether or not we get a single payer health system.
But you do have enough power so that you will be treated with more
consideration by business people, politicians, and police officers. To me,
for people like us to say that there's no difference between us and migrant
workers or fast food workers or Walmart employees, is to trivialize the
kinds of problems that those working class people have. You're not one of
them. They know it and you know it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2019 10:11 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
With all due respect, I continue to consider all of us who are not members
in good standing of the Ruling Class, to be members of the Working Class.
Unless we are homeless or chronically unemployed, which would put us in the
Lower Class.
Middle implies halfway between something and something else. In the
economic structure of the American Empire, there is no "Middle"
anything.
My wife and I earned, back in the early 1990's, a bit over $100,000
per year between us. So $100,000 would put us mid way between
$000,000 and $200,000. But in order to be midway between $000,000,000 and
$100,000,000, we would need to come in around $50,000,000.
Middle Class is just another make believe term that soothes the Soul, but
means absolutely nothing.
But hey! All of the rest of you can call it anything you want, because the
fact of the matter is that all of us who are not members in good standing in
the Ruling Class are owned by one or more members of that Ruling Class.
Remember, when you get set to disagree, a Monkey on a golden chain is just
as much of a prisoner as a Monkey on an Iron chain.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/20/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering Frontrunner By Norman
Solomon, Reader Supported News
20 June 19
Joe Biden just put a spotlight on his mindset when he explicitly
refused to apologize for fondly recalling how the Senate "got things
done" with "civility" as he worked alongside some of the leading
racist lawmakers of the 20th century. For Biden, the personal is the
political; he knows that he's virtuous, and that should be more than
good enough for African Americans, for women, for anyone.
"There's not a racist bone in my body," Biden exclaimed Wednesday
night, moments after demanding: "Apologize for what?" His deep
paternalism surfaced during the angry outburst as he declared: "I've
been involved in civil rights my whole career, period, period,
period."
Biden has been "involved" in civil rights his "whole career" all
right. But at some crucial junctures, he was on the wrong side. He
teamed up with segregationist senators to oppose busing for school
desegregation in the 1970s. And he played a leading role - while
pandering to racism with a shameful Senate floor speech - for
passage of the infamous 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration.
Such aspects of Biden's record provide context for his comments this
week - praising an era of productive "civility" with the virulent
segregationist Dixiecrat senators Herman Talmadge of Georgia and
James Eastland of Mississippi (known as the "Voice of the White
South"), who often called black people "an inferior race."
Said Biden at a New York fundraiser Tuesday night: "Well guess what?
At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't
agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished."
To Biden, any assessment of his past conduct that clashes with his
high self-regard is unfair; after all, he really means well. On the
campaign trail now, his cloying paternalism is as evident as his
affinity for wealthy donors.
Biden shuttles between the billionaire class and the working class -
funded by the rich while justifying the rich to everyone else. His
aspirations are bound up in notions of himself as comforter-in-chief.
"I get it, I get it," Biden said during his brief and self-adulatory
non-apology video in early April to quiet the uproar over his
invasive touching of women and girls. He was actually saying: I get
it that I need to seem to get it.
"I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that
I've made to women and some men that have made them uncomfortable,"
Biden said in the video. "In my career I've always tried to make a
human connection - that's my responsibility, I think. I shake hands,
I hug people, I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, 'You
can do this' . It's the way I've always been. It's the way I've
tried to show I care about them and I'm listening."
Weeks later, appearing on ABC's "The View," he declared: "I have
never in my life, never, done anything in approaching a woman that
has been other than trying to bring solace." It was not a credible
claim; consider Lucy Flores, or the countless other women and girls
he has intrusively touched over the years.
For several decades, Biden has made his way through the political
terrain as a reflexive glad-hander. But times have changed a lot
more than he has.
"What the American people do not know yet is whether Biden has
actually internalized any of the blowback he's earned over the years
for his treatment of women," journalist Joe Berkowitz wrote last week.
"So far, it's not looking good."
What's also looking grim is Biden's brazen adoration of wealthy
elites who feed on corporate power. His approach is to split the
rhetorical difference between the wealthy and the workers. And so,
days ago, at a fundraiser filled with almost 180 donors giving his
campaign the legal limit of $2,800 each - an event where he tried
and failed to get funding from a pro-Trump billionaire - Biden declared:
"You know, you guys are great but Wall Street didn't build America.
You guys are incredibly important but you didn't build America.
Ordinary, hard-working, middle-class people given half the chance is
what built America."
The formula boils down to throwing the "hard-working middle class"
some rhetorical bones while continuing to service "you guys" on Wall Street.
Given his desire to merely revert the country to pre-Trump days, no
wonder Biden keeps saying that a good future can stem from finding
common ground with Republicans. But for people who understand the
present-day GOP and really want a decent society, Biden's claims are
delusional.
Biden sees his public roles of winking patriarch, civility toward
racists, and collaborator with oligarchs as a winning political
combination. But if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee,
Biden will suppress turnout from the party's base while providing
Republicans with plenty of effective (albeit hypocritical) fodder.
Already the conservative press is salivating over the transparently
fraudulent pretenses of Lunch Bucket Joe, as in this headline
Tuesday in the right-wing Washington Examiner: "Biden Rubs Elbows With
Billionaires in $34M Penthouse."
When Bernie Sanders (who I continue to actively support) denounces
the political power of billionaires and repeats his 2020 campaign
motto - "Not Me. Us." - it rings true, consistent with his
decades-long record. But Biden can't outrun his own record, which is
enmeshed in his ongoing mentality.
And
so, the former vice president is in a race between his pleasant
image and unpleasant reality.
As the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe
Biden is the biggest threat to Joe Biden's political future. He
continues to be who he has been, and that's the toxic problem.
Email This Page
Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of
RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to
the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a
coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network.
Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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