Dickensian turn?
anonymous
January 23 2010, 13:41:42 UTC
Instead of complaining, that the urban poor are so disorganised and fragmented nowadays, so impoverished and neglected that they have become a problem for any class fomation to battle the class struggle from above, you're lamenting how uncivilised they are. Instead of realising, that it's not manners or lectures about manners that poor people need, but overcoming of pauperism and self-contempt to get organised, you choose to critisize the lumpenproletariat. That fits in neatly with Berlin's official stance on the problem, having mayor Wowereit deploring the complacency and non-ambitious attitudes of unemployed and poor people in Berlin. Phrases like "Self-righteousness about their incapacity, their unemployment" are really the worst, most classist I have ever read from you
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Re: Dickensian turn?imomusJanuary 23 2010, 13:58:32 UTC
it's not manners or lectures about manners that poor people need, but overcoming of pauperism and self-contempt to get organised
The man who tweaked my hat off yesterday had no self-contempt, I can tell you. He and his three friends had organised themselves specifically to get drunk, and at that point had achieved enough pleasant disorganisation to share it (and some vomit, thrown in as a bonus) with those of us who were actually moving about the city with a sense of purpose. They had also obviously spent quite a lot of money on alcohol, so if they were paupers it was only because they'd drunk whatever cash they had.
I make absolutely no apology for admiring the non-alcoholic culture of Muslims.
Commoner Whimsy?jdcastenJanuary 23 2010, 19:18:25 UTC
Accountability to whom? I don’t think you’re talking about the local collective! Those escaping a poor background are the minority, no? I hope you’re not suggesting the poor can’t have dignity!
Are not you and Momus looking at symptom of a “social disease” and blaming the “the victim” of said disease as it were? I mean, there’s no excuse to be rude… but how did these rude folks get there in the first place? Do I hear a “the poor have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps… within an unfair system… and make it by that system’s rules” attitude?
Re: Commoner Whimsy?imomusJanuary 23 2010, 19:48:06 UTC
Hooligans just need to be drinking and vomiting less at one in the afternoon, on a train. It's the same reason some of us say "Rock stars? Nein danke!"
Re: Commoner Whimsy?jdcastenJanuary 23 2010, 20:04:29 UTC
I’d think I’d agree that hooligan “angst” should be refined and re-directed. I think the line between personal responsibility and social culpability can be fuzzy though-right wingers tend to focus on individual responsibility, left-wingers on social culpability.
I love “success stories” - but hate it when people think it was all about them, their exceptional talents, and not also a social milieu that does not help the majority.
Re: Commoner Whimsy?imomusJanuary 23 2010, 20:22:48 UTC
right wingers tend to focus on individual responsibility, left-wingers on social culpability
But existentialism stresses individual responsibility too, including the responsibility to make a political commitment. You're on very thin ice when you start to tell people their destinies are outside their own control. Marxism -- with, for instance, the idea that a class-in-itself must become a class-for-itself, or that labour must become unalienated, or that theory must lead to praxis -- stresses taking control, and taking responsible (and sometimes revolutionary) action. I think the emphasis on social culpability is a modern heresy, more nanny state than anything I'd recognise as leftism. Or like those Americans who sue the cafe when they spill coffee on themselves.
Re: Commoner Whimsy?jdcastenJanuary 23 2010, 20:42:19 UTC
Being a “radical moderate” I’d hope for a balance between the in-itself and the for-itself, between facticity and the individual will. I don’t think we should deconstruct the individual to a pure cultural artifact… but the facts are that the minority most protected and supported by “the system” are those with money and power… and it’s the same in Communism where a “coordinator class” self-deals all the empowering jobs to themselves, rather than distributing the production decision making process, as with more Anarcho-Syndicalist systems… but I’m getting tedious… I don’t really believe “hooligans” would be any less rude, even if they had an ownership stake in their factory or employment. Emphasis on the state simply means state regulations should be changed… and of course individuals must do this, and also change, alone and collectively.
Re: Commoner Whimsy?imomusJanuary 23 2010, 20:48:42 UTC
I’d hope for a balance between the in-itself and the for-itself
You'd want an objective class not to become fully aware of itself as such? That's an odd sort of "moderation". In-itself and for-itself is not something you "balance"; either a class has consciousness of itself or it doesn't.
I don’t think we should deconstruct the individual to a pure cultural artifact… but the facts are that the minority most protected and supported by “the system” are those with money and power
This seems to suggest that because money promotes agency, the poor cannot also be agents.
Emphasis on the state simply means state regulations should be changed… and of course individuals must do this, and also change, alone and collectively.
It's so hard to change a culture, and yet so easy to change cultures (just get on a plane).
Re: Commoner Whimsy?imomusJanuary 23 2010, 21:35:24 UTC
I don’t believe a person or a class can be 100% conscious, no. Maybe you don’t buy into Freud, but don’t you see a semi-consciousness as possible?
Ha! The unconscious of class consciousness! Nice wriggle. But I was simply saying that it's silly to say "I'm a moderate, so I'm going to balance the class-in-itself with the class-for-itself." A moderate position might be to wonder what a class should do with its consciousness of its objective interests, but surely not to deny it that consciousness or say it should stay halfway there. I suspect you're just not very familiar with the idea of the class-in-itself / class-for-itself in Marxist theory
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Re: Commoner Whimsy?jdcastenJanuary 23 2010, 22:29:11 UTC
You’re right… I haven’t read much Lukacs… but I’ve read more Marx and Sartre, etc. and have a vague feeling for what is meant by “Class Consciousness.” I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t strive for more consciousness, or that ½ the way there is the ideal balance… just claiming that it’s not fully possible: we will always have blind-spots, as individuals, and in a “group-think” collective
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Re: Commoner Whimsy?jdcastenJanuary 25 2010, 20:01:15 UTC
Those hooligans probably need a “12 step” program.
Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things that I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Re: Commoner Whimsy?
anonymous
January 24 2010, 05:47:24 UTC
Foucault parsed out a similar and interesting point along these lines, something to the effect that real radicals would want to go beyond the welfare state, any dependence and expectation of the state to do for them, in general. this got him barbs from the left -- accusations that he was a conservative, etc -- but in fact he was the real radical; essentially advocating breaking ties with any govt system and their nanny power structures, etc etc.
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The man who tweaked my hat off yesterday had no self-contempt, I can tell you. He and his three friends had organised themselves specifically to get drunk, and at that point had achieved enough pleasant disorganisation to share it (and some vomit, thrown in as a bonus) with those of us who were actually moving about the city with a sense of purpose. They had also obviously spent quite a lot of money on alcohol, so if they were paupers it was only because they'd drunk whatever cash they had.
I make absolutely no apology for admiring the non-alcoholic culture of Muslims.
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Are not you and Momus looking at symptom of a “social disease” and blaming the “the victim” of said disease as it were? I mean, there’s no excuse to be rude… but how did these rude folks get there in the first place? Do I hear a “the poor have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps… within an unfair system… and make it by that system’s rules” attitude?
Maybe I’ve misread?
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I love “success stories” - but hate it when people think it was all about them, their exceptional talents, and not also a social milieu that does not help the majority.
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But existentialism stresses individual responsibility too, including the responsibility to make a political commitment. You're on very thin ice when you start to tell people their destinies are outside their own control. Marxism -- with, for instance, the idea that a class-in-itself must become a class-for-itself, or that labour must become unalienated, or that theory must lead to praxis -- stresses taking control, and taking responsible (and sometimes revolutionary) action. I think the emphasis on social culpability is a modern heresy, more nanny state than anything I'd recognise as leftism. Or like those Americans who sue the cafe when they spill coffee on themselves.
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You'd want an objective class not to become fully aware of itself as such? That's an odd sort of "moderation". In-itself and for-itself is not something you "balance"; either a class has consciousness of itself or it doesn't.
I don’t think we should deconstruct the individual to a pure cultural artifact… but the facts are that the minority most protected and supported by “the system” are those with money and power
This seems to suggest that because money promotes agency, the poor cannot also be agents.
Emphasis on the state simply means state regulations should be changed… and of course individuals must do this, and also change, alone and collectively.
It's so hard to change a culture, and yet so easy to change cultures (just get on a plane).
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I don’t think money promotes agency… it has power within limits. We are all agents, some just get more done, and have more protections.
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Ha! The unconscious of class consciousness! Nice wriggle. But I was simply saying that it's silly to say "I'm a moderate, so I'm going to balance the class-in-itself with the class-for-itself." A moderate position might be to wonder what a class should do with its consciousness of its objective interests, but surely not to deny it that consciousness or say it should stay halfway there. I suspect you're just not very familiar with the idea of the class-in-itself / class-for-itself in Marxist theory ( ... )
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Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things that I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
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"Anyone who comes from a poor background and has managed to escape it knows this." What they escaped and didn't say is below!
"The non-ambitious attitudes of unemployed and poor people everywhere."
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