My life in class limbo: am I working class or insufferably bourgeois?
www.theguardian.com
I have two degrees, two books to my name and I write for the Guardian. Yet I spent time in care, live at home and struggle for money. Can Karl Marx help me make sense of myself?

Basically:-

  1. Complains that Marx is just too obscure/complicated for his liberal know-nothing peabrain. (in a earlier version of the article, lets slip that he’s definitely lying about having read anything written by Marx)
  2. Gets a “Babby’s First Marxist Analysis” explanation of economic class contradiction from Ken Loach, and immediately thinks he’s completely disproven Marx by asking “what about Premier League footballers though?”.
  3. References an LSE/BBC study about class in Britain that that places crude social and cultural signifiers on equal standing with a deliberate misunderstanding of economic relations - apparently, your economic class has all to do with your income level, whether you’re a homeowner, and your savings, and nothing at all to do with how you earn a living - and acts surprised when it makes him feel confused about his own class position. And this is after he already admits earlier in the article that judging class through “superficial markers” is “prejudice and almost certainly wrong”.
  4. Gets a slightly more in-depth explanation of the Marxist conception of the petit-bourgeoisie, and how petit-bourgeois people like him are increasingly being proletarianised by neoliberalism, but then dismisses the entire idea because being petit-bourgeois is not as romantic as being working class, and because it makes him feel “parasitic”.

marx-doomer

  • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    24·
    19 days ago

    It’s a surprisingly effective method of disuading people from engaging with Marx’s ideas - simply act as a humble investigator in this “strange and archaic” ideology “we already know is wrong,” etc etc, pretending to be judging if after all it still has merit, despite fully intending on tossing it aside. This methodology has lasted centuries precisely because its effective, even the vague notions of class solidarity at the end are an attempt at appeasement and trying to meet the curious reader half-way. Acknowledge that some of Marx has merit, but assure the reader that the rest is too complicated for practical use and that that’s simply enough.

    It’s deceptive yet appears innocuous. It very well even may be an honest deep dive as well, the author may not be lying about their personal experience, but that’s precisely why the bourgeois media mechanisms love publishing this genre of posting, this “cave-diving.” There is no shortage of opinion pieces like this, and the media apparatus can magnifiy them as they please to placate a working class increasing in radicalization, sort of judo-ing them away from Marx and towards comfortably liberal forms of resistance.

    • echognomics [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      15·
      19 days ago

      Yup, it’s the same tradition/genre of analysis being carried on into the internet era by Natalie “all radical ideologies are rooted in envy” Wynn.