Edit for those curious why I shared this: Today [email protected] was popping off with a lot of “No war but class war” memes and they were getting a lot of support from the people over there.
I tried to share this there as well only to find out that apparently I was banned over there last week and I still have a week left in my ban. (Never knew I was due to never being told I was banned?)
Only reason I even found out I was banned over there was due to checking the modlogs for lemmy.ml after I noticed my post was gaining no ground.
That sounds like a strawman argument to me.
It literally isn’t, it’s a rephrasing of a popular slogan to point out the flaws in the argument. If you disagree with the rephrasing that’s okay, but there was not a claim that the bottom phrase is something that anyone actually says out loud, so it can’t be a strawman.
What oppressed minority is excluded when we focus on class war, specifically?
It’s not so much that some people are excluded, but rather that class war won’t solve a lot of problems specific to (intersections of) minority groups. That’s a point that’s pretty easy to miss if you’re not part of a discriminated minority, even if you’re aware of the need for class war.
The counter argument is that the systemic injustices that exist are perpetuated primarily through it being convenient to maintain the status quo.
A capitalists system like this needs a underclass to siphon wealth from.
Thus by fighting the class war you inherently will be tearing down the pillars upholding these injustices. If you get enough Republican voters to have class consciousness the culture war will fall apart on its own because it primarily exists to keep those groups distracted.
I agree, but racism, sexism, … won’t disappear just by abolishing the capital class. It is a huge step towards it, but not the absolute final goal.
class war won’t solve a lot of problems specific to (intersections of) minority groups
I would just disagree with this by pointing out how civil rights leaders like famously MLK Jr actually took the class-first approach and understood that it was economic inequality as a symptom of capitalism, from which “minority groups” and our notion of things like racial identity itself emerged out of. The Populist movement half a century earlier in the US had a similar approach as well, the Jim Crow order was just as much an economic order imposed by the capitalist landowning class to address the threat of the Populists as it was a racial order. Adolph Reed Jr’s book The South: Jim Crow and It’s Afterlives is a really good explanation of how this worked from a left perspective.
There’s a dialogue that continued post-MLK about his support or non-support of the queer community, his widow used his words in support and his daughter used them against. Engaging in some of the academic writing around this specific topic is an interesting way to approach the subject and form your own opinion. Especially in the context of the Christian socialism he advocated, which gets in to cultural issues in a way that’s sort of more measured and detached from contemporary culture war hysteria.
Don’t get me wrong, a class first approach is probably the most effective way to reduce hate and bigotry on a societal level. My only point was that it isn’t the only thing that’s necessary to completely eliminate it.
Could you provide some examples though?
Sexist attitudes won’t disappear just by abolishing the capital class, to name an example. It will definitely help though, because the capital class benefits from our current internal divisions and actively encourages it.
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…you’re talking as if you’re countering what I’m saying, but you’re seemingly talking completely past me.
I don’t claim the only war is class war, nor do I think that people should stop fighting discrimination until the capital class is abolished.
If your fight isn’t intersectional, it’s like trying to fix a puzzle with missing pieces – incomplete and ineffective.
The phrase “no war but class war” isnt saying “we should forsake the fight for civil rights until after we establish communism”. It’s saying that every war is, in fact, an aspect of the class war. When you are racist, bigoted, homophobic, sexist, anything like that, you’re fighting in the class war. You’re an agent provocateur on the side of the upper class, sowing chaos and division in the ranks of the working class. When you join the military, you might think you’re fighting in a traditional geopolitical war, but that type of war is just a tool that the upper class uses to buy resources with the blood of the working class. No war but class war acknowledges that the war for equality on any front is part of the class war.
You literally admit to being owned, and yet think that to free ourselves of that ownership is to hurt the civil rights of our owners? That’s some real obsequious and subservient shit right there. They hold an absurd amount of power over you and all you can think to say is “won’t somebody please think of the wealthy???”
That’s like saying it’s against a thief’s civil rights when you come to take back what they stole from you.
The rich control where you get to live, how much you get to eat, they control how much you earn, they destroy the Earth for profit, they pay no taxes, they write the laws (which also makes it easier for them to imprison you), they run the government, they detest you and view you as lesser-than, they withhold food/shelter/water/etc. up to and including death if you can’t pay, they steal your wages, they hoard wealth to the detriment of others, they fight to reduce benefits to the poor, and much, much more. Somehow, the conclusion you’ve reached is if we put an end to all that, it would violate their civil rights? That’s an absolutely garbage take, how blind can you be? Has it never crossed your mind that the rich are violating your civil rights even as I type this? Like, they literally run your whole life, you think they don’t leverage that against our own rights? If bringing them to the same level as everyone else seems like cruel and unusual punishment, then what about the people who have to live in instability every day as a result of the damage the rich have wrought?
The Nazis did all that stuff, too. Were their civil rights violated by the resistance and the allies? Same for the apartheid government of South Africa, what of them? I suppose Nelson Mandela must have been a great oppressor in your mind when he went to war with apartheid, seeing as the ruling class could no longer wield power of that kind over the people.
I see you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I said with this meme
So class war is when we the working class try to take back what we are deserved and culture war is when groups of people are fighting to take the rights of others away (and undermine democracy) under the guise of “it’s our culture”
When people scream, “no war but class war,” they’re usually saying that we should focus our efforts on fighting for what we as workers deserve (class war). By focusing our efforts there without fighting to protect our rights (and secure more) and democracy as a whole we are letting those who are focusing their efforts on culture war win on those grounds.
We can’t let them win on those grounds either.
By ignoring the fight in the culture war we will lose the class war. Especially considering the culture war includes the genocide of queer folks.
This is of course glossing over the owner class’s (bourgeoisie) influence on the culture war as well which they have a vested interest in making worse because if we have to fight there it usually means that we can’t fight as hard elsewhere due to our struggles with survival in general.
Basically we have to fight both wars, we can’t just fight one.
Fair enough, agreed. I’d say that the language used in the meme is a little ambiguous as to whose civil rights you’re referring to, though. My initial interpretation of the meme’s sentiment was basically “rich people have civil rights, too, and class warfare would step on those rights.” Sorry for going off like that.
Elaboration is good, actually.
Ya got me, though, lol. What I wrote above is nothing compared to some comments I’ve written before. Some things I have a lot to say about and some things are worth speaking at length about. That, plus a sprinkling of ADHD. Besides, a little reading never hurt anyone and it’s not like it’s mandatory or anything.
Being brief and clear with what you say is an art
An art I struggle with a lot (also ADHD)
One of the key benefits of being brief and clear is that when people try to engage with what you say they’ll have a much harder time steering the conversation away from the topic at hand
Hi no offense but your entire 4 paragraph comment is completely unrelated to the post because it never said anything about siding with the wealthy.
Not really unrelated, just a misinterpretation. You replied as I was explaining my thinking to OP, so you would’ve just missed it by a minute or two.
Property is only useful in securing someone’s safety and happiness. The less essential it is for their wellbeing, the less it should be considered their exclusive property. In practice this means limiting the maximum ownership someone can have through taxes. As property held increases, taxes become exponentially higher. You can hold more property by substituting the difference with your income, but only to a certain extent. Your income will be taxed progressively as well, and the will be an upper limit to the property you can ever own by yourself.
The key wrinkle is how to handle IP. The solution probably lies in making it impossible for IP rights to be traded or sold, limiting exclusivity to shorter durations(irregardless of the creator’s lifetime), and taxing the property and income they get from their idea.
How? What’s the logic here?
If we’re not going to engage on social issues, the default outcome will be letting the right-wing culture warriors drag us back to 1800.
So the snidely whiplash guy believes that class war doesn’t include social issues? That seems like a tenuous conclusion.
White saviour conservative fred is an odd choice as champion of social justice.
Great explanation, by the way.
The phrase “no war but class war” is frequently brought up when people are getting into a heated argument about social issues. The idea being “hey, the capitalist class wants the working class fighting among themselves, that’s why they stoke these culture war issues. Don’t let them.”
Which is a perfectly reasonable response in theory, except when you consider that the “culture war” is an entirely one-sided affair where one side just wants to live their lives as they are, and the other side is attacking them for that and saying they don’t have the right to exist.
Yeah, their version of “Stop the culture war” isn’t “Stop attacking vulnerable groups and focus on the bigger threat” it’s “Stop fighting back and let us destroy these vulnerable groups and focus on those people instead”. It’s just an attempt to distract.
Seems like a reasonable practical response too.
Your bipolar reduction of the culture war makes as much sense to me as a righteous argument against equality via class cohesion as the meme.
Toxic capitalists do want the working class weak and divided, that’s historically accurate.
I understand that this is a meme and you’re just trying to make it simple, but it doesn’t add up and making Fred the protagonist further muddies the waters.
Class is where the power against this is exerted from, not the capitalist system adopting notions of it that don’t threaten the economic arrangement, which is generally the ground the “culture war” fights on right now because there is no political power from the left in the US. The capitalist system adopting DEI for instance, like okay we can all be exploited equally, it’s easy to see the fairness in that and support the idea one group shouldn’t be favored above another. However the idea that the best people from each identity group get to have the best stuff isn’t doing anything in relation to income inequality, it’s a very reactionary notion of these ideas which in practice perpetuates the system that itself produces the disparities. Seeing this as a class issue and brining class to the table, without any way to exert political power in the US, is right now the job of the individual leftists.
Class war would not be won without intersectionality / solidarity. Its an anti war slogan, not an excuse to further dismiss marginalized groups.
The culture war is made up by people trying to take rights away from minority groups.Iif your class war incorporates those groups, addresses the injustices against them and enshrines their rights there is literally no distinction.
Anyone who uses this slogan to dismiss social liberation struggles is an absolute dickhead and working against class interests. No war means stop funding and fighting actual wars.
I posted one of those memes OP is referring to and this is exactly my view, not the one attributed to me by OP.
Yeah looking at the meme it definitely misuses the saying “no war but class war”. People in the comments are pretty unanimously taking it as OP did, probably because they are viewing it not only as a rightwing psy op but foremost as a material attack on their civil rights (which is indeed what it is.) if you intended to dismiss the ‘culture war’ as a right wing op then this missed the mark because it didnt take the mask off to reveal what the culture war actually is - it just dismisses it in favor of class war (which is a false choice) and somehow legitimizes the culture war by applying it as the target of an antiwar slogan.
In summary the meme is bad. It doesn’t reflect your stated views, it acknowledges the culture war as a war, and then makes a point not to participate in that and to focus on class instead.
OP wants a race war?
Absolutely not
What I’m saying with this meme is that a lot of people who scream, “No war but Class War,” and refuse to engage is social issues are allowing those who are fighting to strip rights away from people (culture war) to continue under some vague idea that if they cede that ground they can get unification to fight a Class War.
Okay so why are you trying to confuse an anti-war slogan with racism? The slogan is referring to actual war. As in the working class should fight the bourgeoisie and not themselves.
There’s no one here confusing it with racism except you.
The slogan may have started as an anti-war slogan but it has gained a lot of popularity with people using it in reference to “class war not culture war”
I think you’re making up a person to get mad at.
There’s no one here confusing it with racism except you.
Can you please make this make sense?
You asked if I wanted a race war in your first comment
Okay so why are you trying to confuse an anti-war slogan with racism?
Was the opening line of your reply when I said that wasn’t the case
You’re the only one bringing race into the conversation
Nooo… you brought race into the conversation with your original post when you said that ‘no war but class war’ interfered with social justice.
Bringing race or intersectionality into a class debate with the intention of poisoning the well, IS propaganda from the ruling classes. The wealthy elite may look like the monopoly guy in many peoples heads, and that guy is real, don’t get me wrong (especially in the West), and he represents a huge amount of the wealth and power.
But the class struggle exists in parallel, class exists inside race, Indians are suffering under a class system that is being forced on them by other Indians.
If you don’t acknowledge that the oligarchy exists to exploit, you will never address the injustices inside a homogenous culture. If you don’t acknowledge that class alone is plenty of reason to dehuminize, you are not engaging with reality.
That all exists on the race and gender side too. We’re all in this together.
Seriously. We can have two problems.
Correct and we do have multiple problems
There’s just a substantial portion of people who seem to think the only fight we should be fighting is the class war without realizing (or not caring) about the importance of fighting the culture war.
I posted one of those memes you’re referring to and this is BS because I also voiced my support for intersectionality and recognizing cultural issues. The point is to recognize how capital adopts and commodifies the language of intersectionality and inclusivity, and mediates which notions of it are entertained insofar as they don’t threaten their economic arrangement. Conflating this appropriation with actual intersectional or culturally/identity approaches is what causes this debate IMO.
“Culture war” is another thing, politics turns in to culture war when it can no longer affect economic conditions, which is the case in the US right now as both parties are in full consensus of the economic system. That doesn’t negate the fact that there’s a whole tapestry of significant cultural issues. You actually respect individuals who are targets of this political culture war more when you can liberate their identities from their mere political significance and see them as real human beings. A lot of the big names in the “problems with diversity” conversation, at least the ones I find to have the best handle on this, are the first to admit they support diversity and have directly benefitted from things like affirmative action. It’s really about how these topics are appropriated and mediated by capital and politics for their interests, because they don’t want this to be seen as a class issue or have any notions of that involved, because that’s where the real power against them is held and exerted from.
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I think this is a misunderstanding. It’s not about the civil rights of the owning class but of marginalized groups. Abolish capitalism will not magically end the patriarchy, nor will it end homophobia and racism. These are all important fights we should combine instead of pit them against each other. Class war isn’t the only war worth fighting, but it still is important. Intersectionality is the key. None of us is free until we all are free.
Owning stuff and owning people are different concepts.
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