this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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You think Marxism is an overly simple take on things, but think your metaphor about journey's means anything at all?
I don't mean to be rude or anything, but it's not like communists have never heard of capitalists who also do some kind of labor. There aren't two classes, but rather, there are two very big classes that have contradictory interests and people will be filtered into one of those two. That's where the fight of capitalism is. Notice how peasantry has almost ceased to exist and most monarchs are ceremonial. Mao Zedong identified 5 classes within Chinese society in 1926: landlords, proletariat, peasantry, urban petite-bourgeoise, and national bourgeoisie. And that's actually what 4 of the stars on the Chinese flag symbolize, with the largest representing the CPC.
You sound like you're what's called petite bourgeois and you identify with the cause and ideology of the bourgeoisie because that's either something you aspire to or it's a structure you're able to take advantage of. Marx identified a transitional faction of capitalists precisely within his essay The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850, and there's a brief mention within the Communist Manifesto.
Basically, Marx said the capitalist class has separate factions who are not all in concert with one another, since not all capitalists have intrinsically similar goals. Some capitalists have contradictory interests to others and want the other abolished. In comparison, the working class have no such contradictory interests, all workers benefit from the same concerns: higher wages, fewer hours, more control over their workplace.
I'd really recommend reading the Marxist theorist Althusser on this one too. To summarize, he was one of the theorists who proposed class systems are more of an action one takes and the subsequent ideological formations within it than necessarily a strict divide of class hierarchy.
What book? I am not familiar with Althusser. I do read and often, so I’m always willing to read something else.
I’ve read the communist manifesto back in Army rotc. Communism had just collapsed but it was still required reading.
I'd recommend 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus' as Althusser's foundational text. His essay 'On the Materialist Dialectic' is the one where he talks about what I brought up. It can be tricky to understand if you haven't read much dialectic theory before Althusser, but he basically argues that there's a plurality of economic classes and activities, each with some degree of autonomy, but all of them depend on one another to a degree that they shape the boundaries of the other.
I will point out that in very clear terms that Althusser's own battle with mental illness shaped much of his philosophical work. He was very interested in structure and how various people were slotted into formations completely outside of themselves. He had a lifelong battle with schizophrenia that had him institutionalized at various points and in one very severe episode he accidentally killed his own wife.
He didn't believe in free will, is what I mean.
Well that I agree with. As I said the two class theory is bunk. There are many classes and they intersect. While I’m not super rich like Zuckerberg, I’m not exploited like a Walmart employee. I’m actually paid fairly for my work and not really mistreated at all.
Yet you have Amazon workers peeing in plastic bottles, and people still buy from Amazon.
So yes, I will read it.
My education is heavily focused on psychology. So I’m sure it’ll enjoy his take on things.
Are you a landlord