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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

I like Fisher's theoretical stuff a lot but I never was a fan of that piece, because it reeks of personal animosity towards newer generations on the left. It's very typical with old left Brits who couldn't get over the fact that class struggle isn't going to bring anyone into the streets any more, it's the kind of piece that is ten times more likely to be quoted on a conservative site than anywhere else.

And when one looks at British Labour politics in the years after this piece was written Fisher kind of got his wish, and it was an absolute electoral dead end.

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> I like Fisher's theoretical stuff a lot but I never was a fan of that piece, because it reeks of personal animosity towards newer generations on the left.

That may be so, but it doesn't mean there's nothing to it. Those "newer generations on the left" tend to think and behave in ways that can be pretty alienating to the rest of society, and so doom their prospects.

This is always said, but it is never true. The olds die, and the youngs become the old.

As Abe Simpsons famously said, "I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!"

>> That may be so, but it doesn't mean there's nothing to it. Those "newer generations on the left" tend to think and behave in ways that can be pretty alienating to the rest of society, and so doom their prospects.

> This is always said, but it is never true. The olds die, and the youngs become the old.

> As Abe Simpsons famously said, "I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!"

Yeah, but just because some "it" is current doesn't mean it's better. It's quite possible the hip new thing is just the youngs wondering off on a detour and getting lost.

This presumes the difference of opinion is purely generational.

Substantive criticism would be interesting, but you're not really saying anything about what he's saying. You're dismissing it based on who you think is likely to quote it today.

"Class struggle isn't going to bring anyone into the streets any more" and pointing out the absolute moribund labor party under Corbyn seems to me to be substantive criticism.

I also strain to find really substantive criticism in Fisher's original piece. "Russell Brand as popular left vanguard" has not really aged well, he's done the standard turn from proto-dirtbag-left to exactly the kind of media-talking-head-dumbass the leftists Fisher decries predicted he would.

I am broadly (but weakly) class-first in my leftism, but the kind of purity Fisher is demanding is bad tactics, but also counter-materialist. Race exists orthogonally to class but still has material implications - which is simply to say, black people still get profiled by cops even if they own a factory. For a good analysis of this, see Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Barbara and Karen Fields. Conversely, "the means of production" is not what it used to be - capital operates correlated but not identical to control over information vectors, and owners of those vectors exercise great power over people who can control their own production but not the distribution of it; see McKenzie Wark's Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?

The left is traditionally focused on class because Marxism, via materialism, made strong arguments this was the lynchpin of inequity. But if you run that same materialist analysis today, the evidence for class's primary, let alone a sui generis status, is the weakest it has ever been.

> which is simply to say, black people still get profiled by cops even if they own a factory.

You'd be surprised. While basic prejudice of course exists, much commonplace "profiling" is simply driven by statistical signals that happen to correlate with various sorts of bad behavior. Socially aware minorities who wish to actively mitigate this part of the problem (which is otherwise the hardest to address, for fairly obvious reasons) might want to start dressing up with suit and tie when out in public, and driving cars that are nicely-maintained but not too "blingy".

Of course, this goes to show the extent to which police profiling is in fact about broader notions of class and subculture, and not limited to race.

> While basic prejudice of course exists

You can stop writing after this, you've already agreed with me that class is not the sole driver of material inequality.

"Subculture" is also rooted in an ideology not centering class, and as you've used it (and as you ridiculously asserted elsewhere in the comments "the right has always been working to address prejudiced attitudes"), I suspect here it's a dogwhistle.

> you've already agreed with me that class is not the sole driver of material inequality.

Of course, I could not agree more about that. My point is simply that a class-aware analysis might have plenty to say even about things that are often reduced to matters of "race".

> "Subculture" is also rooted in an ideology not centering class

Subculture in practice is highly correlated with class. In fact you might even call it a dogwhistle for class itself; though this discounts the extent to which "low-class subculture" may in fact be a fixable problem, in a way that would not increase alienation or marginalization for low-class folks and may well mitigate these things, while driving a renewed "working class cohesion" and perhaps "class conciousness" that should be compelling from even an orthodox Marxist point of view.

> You can stop writing after this, you've already agreed with me that class is not the sole driver of material inequality.

It seems like a category mistake to talk about class as "driver" of inequality.

Class is a _type_ of material inequality. So it can't "drive" material inequality. Right? What could that even mean?

Maybe this is taking "class" to mean something like birth class, like inheritance, or parental status... which then it actually does make sense... but that's not what the word means at all in Marxist terminology. It's not what leftists are saying at all.

Class in Marxist terminology is defined by the prevailing relations of production, either social or technical. So, saying that inequality is driven by "class" is but another way of saying that economic fundamentals (such as, according to Marxists, the ongoing concentration and centralisation of capital, or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall; non-Marxists may of course point to other dynamics as more relevant!) are driving inequality. It's not clear what would be inconsistent about this.

Sure it wouldn't be "inconsistent" to say "the tendency of the rate of profit to fall" is "driving inequality" but I don't think that's actually what anyone is saying here.

When Fisher etc. say we must return a focus on class on the left, he means not the Marxist abstract idea of class as groups with aligned economic interests, but the specific classes Marx outlined as relevant under capitalist productive forces. Otherwise he owes us an argument as to why e.g. "black" is not a class despite its massive and identifiable role in America's economic and labor history!

Personally I am more agnostic about Marx's specific conclusions today; but if Fisher wants to call certain classes "class" but others "identitarian" I'll take his terms. But then I get to say "class is a driver of inequality" because it absolutely makes sense to say "Labor's subservience to capital is a driver of material inequality" even as it is also one type of material inequality. (Unless you think it stands so far apart from other kinds of inequality it cannot influence them at all - absolute bullshit.)

As I mentioned above, please also read Wark, where she covers in detail why she thinks Marx's analysis of extant classes is insufficient for today even as it purely pertains to labor relations.

>When Fisher etc. say we must return a focus on class on the left, he means not the Marxist abstract idea of class as groups with aligned economic interests, but the specific classes Marx outlined as relevant under capitalist productive forces.

Right. And to be concrete, it means people who control the distribution of wages, vs. people who are dependent on wages. A focus on class is a focus on the relationship between wage-workers and shareholders.

> it absolutely makes sense to say "Labor's subservience to capital is a driver of material inequality"

Well, I don't get it. Labor/capital is one form that subservience takes. It is a form of material inequality. I don't see how you can say that the subservience can "drive" the inequality.

"Subservience" is not a very specific term here btw, it's basically metaphorical... an individual laborer is literally subservient to their specific employer, but "labor" is not literally subservient to "capital." More specific concrete language would be much appreciated.

Let’s just say “signals that people believe correlate with various sorts of bad behavior,” which consistently happen to be identified with out-groups.

Having said that, the counter-examples to even that are legion: the professor who’s detained opening the door to his own house, the birdwatcher who gets the cops called on him, the college student shot while lost in the suburbs, the executive who’s pulled over all the time when turning into his neighborhood. (I’ll add to that a friend who was an NFL player whose frequent and threatening run-ins with the cops while playing in Georgia weren’t caused by sartorial or automotive lapses, but his white fiancé.)

These counterexamples are popular precisely because they show instances of unambiguous race-based prejudice, as opposed to lazy generalization from easily observable signals. If this really was a major part of profiling as a whole, we wouldn't even need to point to these anecdata because it would be obvious. Black people who might actively identify as middle- or upper-class and be informed by these social norms are regrettably uncommon, but surely not that uncommon!

What kind of large-scale evidence would convince you? The numbers seem quite clear to me. Cops arrest rich black boys as much as they do working-class white boys; punishments are harsher; the disparity increases as income drops.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/19/race-class-deba...

In aggregate, the accumulative benefits of capital are denied them; black wealth crosses generations at a fraction of the rate white wealth does. In this sense it is hard to make a case for any black American being a member of the true capitalist class.

> the disparity increases as income drops.

This is a relevant fact that seems like it may be amenable to intervention.

> black wealth crosses generations at a fraction of the rate white wealth does

Note that the factors that drive wealth preservation are also what drives wealth accumulation in the first place. When you've always been living in a more-or-less chaotic environment and almost no one around you is intimately familiar with a feasible alternative, it becomes really, really hard not to eat your marshmallow (or, to use a different image, your "seed corn"). This has nothing to do with race per se of course, but plenty with material conditions, even in a Marxian/Marxist sense.

This is specifically about children of wealthy families so none of your stereotypes apply. But your true colors really are starting to show.

> which is simply to say, black people still get profiled by cops even if they own a factory

Certainly a meme I've heard a million times. I think Obama even said it while he was still president.

But so what? I don't see what it's supposed to imply.

You've got a black guy living in poverty working two part time jobs no benefits, obeying one abusive authoritarian after another over his whole life.

Maybe that guy really does feel more solidarity with a black factory owner whose life does not resemble his in any way. But why is this?

It's not because that any black people are actually more affected by "profiling" than by their class situation. It's because they're economically conservative in the "embarrassed millionaire" sense -- more likely to view the robber baron as a figure of aspirational emulation than an exploiter. These types of people (they're the majority of every race of course) aren't leftists turned off by class politics, they're just on the opposite side: they're the economic right-wing. They're quite simply on the side of the owning class, even though they're not owners.

> if you run that same materialist analysis today, the evidence for class's primary, let alone a sui generis status, is the weakest it has ever been.

Huh?? People's day to day lives are still regulated by wages. Children's upbringings are defined by the competition to conform to requirements of the wage-paying institutions. How can class not be primary? Black or white, the odds have to be 90%+ that the last "or else" order you obeyed was delivered under a wage-based threat.

> It's not because that any black people are actually more affected by "profiling" than by their class situation.

It's impossible to look at racial disparities in sentencing, qualitatively or quantitatively, and think this. The research is clear: The absolute richest black people get accused and sentenced like working-class white people. Working-class black people get treated like sub-humans.

> They're quite simply on the side of the owning class, even though they're not owners.

The most successful revolutionary leftist movements in the modern west are those taking up racial issues, from SNCC and the Black Panthers onwards.

> Black or white, the odds have to be 90%+ that the last "or else" order you obeyed was delivered under a wage-based threat.

The intensity of "else" in an "or else" order matters. Worrying about "the most recent one" is pure sampling bias. That's exactly the problem; the median worst case for working-class white leftists is losing their job. For others, regularly, it's their life.

I beg you, read some books by black, female, and queer leftists. They have good ideas.

> The intensity of "else" in an "or else" order matters. Worrying about "the most recent one" is pure sampling bias.

It was a figure of speech, not any kind of "sampling" at all. I don't consider you to have addressed my point.

>That's exactly the problem; the median worst case for working-class white leftists is losing their job. For others, regularly, it's their life.

WTF is a "median worst case"?

You can certainly say: death rates for blacks are higher than whites. But the death rates in the USA are fairly low for any race; while the rates of having your entire life structured around class-imposed labor obligations are practically 100%! For every race!

These days, anti-COVID protest is what brings people to the streets. A few years back, it was all about wearing yellow vests and protesting gas tax hikes that harm small business.

This infers that young left is a unified in its belief on this, which is demonstrably untrue. The popularity of alt left podcasts from recent years (chapo, red scare, etc) is an expression of this disunity. Major sections of young left are alienated on the lib/woke sidelining of class. The old Brit disconnected left has resonance but also hand waves away the new divisions.

Edit:spelling, clarity

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