this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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You could have just said "rich people" to include all the shady ultra rich fuckers from all around the world. This isn't a gender, race, culture or religion problem, it's a class problem.
I don't think that's entirely true. Yes, it's a class problem, but race and gender are intertwined with class in advanced capitalist countries. When white men fail, they're daring and courageous and bold for trying risky things. When it's anyone else they're stupid beneficiaries of nepotism - nepotism that's bestowed onto them by other white men.
You need to advance your class analysis beyond just income. The reproduction of labor and racial colonization and imperialist superexploitation complicate the relations to the means of production beyond haves and havenots.
Don't you think the same stuff goes on in Arab, Asian, African, South American countries? It's not all about white men, it's a class issue.
As Fanon said, 'to be rich is to be white, to be white is to be rich'.
Right, but in America, race and class are intertwined. Look at how they treat black tax evaders vs white tax evaders. Wesley Snipes spent 3 years in prison. Ja Rule got 28 months in prison. Lauryn Hill got 3 months. H Ty Warner got 0 jail time. Nicolas Cage at one point owed $14 million to the IRS and he’s never even been charged.
Sure, and then when a rich white man shows up from a rich white country he suddenly outranks them - and if they don't respect the white man, the West will wage economic war on them through sanctions and blockades and diplomatic aggression.
Race can be complicated, sure, but there's a hierarchy and it always stems back to the white man because white men colonized the world.
That's why decolonization and anti-imperialism are essential pillars of anti-capitalism, and that's why anti-whiteness is revolutionary.
Whiteness has to be abolished. It's not real. It's just a tool of supremacy and suppression.
I hope you go to a middle eastern country and spout the bullshit. I'd literally laugh as your head fell off your body.
Do you... think Saudi Arabia executes investors? lol
I think they... frown... on the idea that they are lesser than white people. Please please please go tell a rich Saudi the same thing you said about a white man showing up and being in charge of them I so want you to do that.
The underlying point to all this being you have a very myopic and biased understanding of the world.
Do you think it's a coincidence that almost all the world's rich people are (white and) from the global north while the almost all the world's poorest people are in the global south?
What queermunist is saying has got almost nothing to do with what people, including wealthy Saudis, think. It's not an idealist claim. It's material reality. You may be missing some of the subtlety in what's being said.
I'll turn it around: could a wealthy Saudi go to the US, France, Germany, Britain, etc, and start making demands like representatives of those countries could make of and in Saudi Arabia? If not, why not? If yes, then why do countries like SA keep the prices of exports below market prices, allowing western importers to charge the difference in tax to prop up their welfare systems? Bear in mind, too, that whiteness is a political category, a 'floating signifier' in the words of Stuart Hall. It's got nothing to do with biology and little to do with skin colour.
You might want to look up the concept of racial capitalism to develop a more nuanced view of the claims being made. Or watch Hall's lecture on the [floating] signifier, followed by reading something by Frantz Fanon.
Can a Saudi go to x country and act the same as x country going to Saudi? Hell yeah they can. I don't know where you get the idea that some random white can go to Saudi and somehow be more than the reverse. If anything watch a rich Saudi show up and see how far x country will bend over backwards to accommodate them.
Of course you guys are referencing Marxist ideology. As I said- you have a very myopic and biased understanding of things.you essentially only participate in echo chambers and have your communist buddies brigade anyone who dares counter your half thought out ideas. You are putting words in the other guy's mouth- trying to make his argument into more than it is. He literally has said a rich white man outranks a rich native to x country- end of story. Even if he was referencing your version- it's still Marxist echochamber bs.
Read Go, Ralph, singhal, etc...
What you don't seem to understand is that Marxists are historical materialists. This carries some implications, such as those I added to queermunist's comments. I added my thoughts because I understood what was being said and it was clear that you misunderstood.
For example, Marxists aren't overly interested in what 'some random white' can do because the model behind the phrase is liberal individualist. When talking about class relations, Marxists are talking explicitly about class relations, not individual relations.
From this perspective, rich white men do outrank everyone else. That's exactly what living under a racial hierarchy under racial capitalism means. The problem, to reiterate, is interpreting this claim from a liberal individualist viewpoint and reading 'rich white man' as referring to an individual rather than as a stand-in for a class.
Yes, everyone's views are biased. Idk what that is supposed to show in this context other than as a way to shut down the people you're disagreeing with as if to say that they're biased and you're not. I accept my views are biased. That's how I ensure that I don't live in an echo chamber.
Referencing echo chambers suggests that you don't understand historical materialism, which stands for the ruthless criticism of all that exists – if it's an echo chamber it cannot be Marxism. Marxists begin with the world as it currently exists. It does not begin with an ideal. It is the express rejection of idealism.
I will take a look at those recommendations but you're going to have to give me more than single surnames if I'm to find their work.
Buddy- you are literally re-parsing what has been said. Using your buzzwords does not make you more correct about what you are saying. I've given you the exact same amount of information on the "signifiers" as you gave me. You can go find the material for yourself.
You created your user on lemmygrad. Litrrally half your comments are from comradeship, reactionary, antileftist bs. You claiming you don't live in an echochamber is a logical fallacy
I gave you full names, the title of a lecture, and the subject of discussion.
What's the point in even recommending something to me if you're not going to give me enough to find whatever it is that you want me to read. You haven't even said what 'Go, Ralph, singhal, etc…' write about or indicated their relevance to the discussion. How am I supposed to know what I'm looking for?
How far do you think I'll get if I type 'Go', 'Ralph', or 'Singhal' into Google. Let me tell you, because it's the first thing I did before asking for more details – nothing if relevance to this conversation.
Are you reluctant to tell me more because you assume that I won't read what you ask me to read because you're not going to bother to watch or read what I recommend to you? And Marxists are the ones living in an echo chamber!
I'm re-phrasing things, yes. This is necessary. We haven't been able to move past the basic premise because you don't understand the central claim in the three or four ways that it's already been expressed. I'm not trying to be more correct. I'm trying to be understood. I'm open to the possiblity that I'm wrong. But for you to challenge what I've said you have to (and demonstrate) that you've understood it.
Edit: for reference, the lecture is titled 'race the floating signifier', as indicated in quotation marks in my previous comment. There was a typo in the second use, outside quotation marks, which read, 'following signifier', which is now corrected. The lecture is here: https://youtu.be/PodKki9g2Pw
If I thought for a moment you'd actually consider a non-communist approach I'd elaborate- as it is- no, I'm not willing to go dig stuff up for you. Your comment history speaks for itself.
You have the subject of discussion- the authors are on the subject at hand and have papers repudiating the ideas of racial capitalism
Regardless of this absurd tangent- you are still putting words in the original arguments mouth because you are assuming based on his user name (or you know he's one of you because you hang out in previously mentioned echochambers) that he's read and are aware of the same things you are talking about.
This is among the most bizarre interactions I've ever had.
How will I ever get out of my echo chamber?
Yeah. Again. Your history speaks for itself
Just to shut you up on this particular farce
It's Julian Go - Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism
Michael Ralph and Maya Singhal - Racial Capitalism
Thank you.
They first one is a good article. I have my critique, but it is good. I don't think it contradicts what I've been saying, though. It concludes:
As for the second, I can't say much until I've dug up more than the abstract but I'll say that while Robinson's work is a good place to start, I'm arguing in the vein of a different tradition, which centers Fanon not Robinson.
Anyway, thanks for the sources. I'm always open to reading more about the concept of racial capitalism.
I mean, they'd probably kill me lol
That doesn't make me wrong
That you believe a rich white guy can go in and just command authority purely on the basis of him being a rich white guy is objectively wrong.
So I think you're overlooking the fact that rich white countries conquered the world and back up rich white guys wherever they goes. His money and white skin have power because of what's behind it.
It's not unlimited - if he became a nuisance to other rich white guys they'd have him dealt with.
I think Chinese, Saudis, Indian, etc rich folk would have just as much power as any random rich white guy. That you are so hyper focused on white skin is really just proving my point.
Any random rich white guy has the full backing of whatever rich white country he comes from. His white skin isn't magic, it is a flag to everyone else that he's untouchable because he has its implicit protection as a member of a white ruling class in a white ruling country.
Think of it like the US dollar! It's not a magic slip of paper that has value, it's a token with the full backing of the US empire.
Ok bud. Source? Cause you sound unhinged frankly
I will never read!
... most of my thinking comes from secretly listening to podcasts at work - I put bone conducting headphones into my hair, boss doesn't know shit! 🤫
From Red Menace: Understanding Settler Colonialism in Israel and the United States, their three part series on Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, and Discourse on Colonialism - Aimé Césaire
From Guerilla History: The Counterrevolution of 1776 w/ Gerald Horne and Intro to African Revolutions and Decolonization w/ Leo Zeilig
From RevLeft Radio: Critical Race Theory and Black Liberation w/ Zoé Samudzi, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide, Blood in my Eye: The Black Colony, Revolutionary Strategy, and Dual Power, Unity and Struggle (pt. 5): Wage Labor and White Supremacy, and Black Feminism and Queer Theory w/ Zoe Samudzi
Citations Needed has some good eps on the topic too, Episodes 52, 130, and 185
I saw those references you gave in the other comment chain - I will never read but I'll keep an eye out for pods
Yeah... well I guess that really sums up everything right there doesn't it
Could it be for once useful not to be completely divided? Sure, rich people use and have used race, sex and so on to gain and maintain power but rich people are also composed, even if not homogeneously distributed, of different races, genders and so on.
Pointing fingers at rich white man helps in the same way as point fingers at rich Jews. It helps nothing but hiding the valid criticism of the out of control system we live in behind a hateful division of society.
That's exactly what queermunist is doing:
We are, in fact, completely divided in class society.