the "feminist" take in this article for example: http://www.newstatesman.com/2016/02/thatcher-problem
the argument is obviously absurd: it's claiming that it's the fault of the Left that leftist women aren't put into positions of power by the neoliberal status quo, and therefore to be feminist you must support neoliberal women who are since at least they are women with power. of course, ignored is the fact that actually leftist men aren't rising to neoliberal positions of power either, for obvious reasons, and the more compelling question of whether these women are using that power for things that are actually good for women.
but since the argument couched in the language of neoliberal feminism, on the surface it seems progressive and liberal and feminist as opposed to those misogynist communist bros who refuse to support hillary clinton
"It's my sincere belief that women need the same right to be as mediocre & wrong as men have always had. So this subtweet is a celebration."
lmao. to celebrate that is chauvinism, not feminism. i.e. be happy that the head of the IMF is a woman.
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:i dunno if that's deliberate, it's difficult for leftists to not be shitty and superior at everything all the time
this is why i write for The Sun
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:it's really funny to me that hillary clinton is going to win because people are just aghast that someone is calling her a cunt on twitter
i don't disagree with anything you or anyone else posted after this but this is reactionary bullshit. hildog's gonna because she was able to keep out every competitor save a 74 year old fake socialist, not because she's reaping the benefits of political correctness gone wild
HenryKrinkle posted:in many circles Marxism is derided for allegedly being "white" and "male" and is even equated with capitalism as "just another" form of Western imperialism. and this type of shitty thought is almost certainly leaking out into real world activism.
this is especially kewl since the history of marxism for the past 70 years has been defined by the struggles of people outside of europe and north america who would count as "non-white" to amerikkkan liberals.
Edited by animedad ()
dipshit420 posted:0hq2rOEwnIU
2010
damn.
WARREN: I had written an op-ed about a piece of pending bankruptcy legislation. The credit card companies have been pushing to try to tighten the bankruptcy laws, sort of like locking the doors to the hospitals and then claiming nobody's sick in America.
So, they were trying to get the bankruptcy laws constrained, constricted, so that fewer families could get in. Why? Because you can make more money if those families don't go into bankruptcy, if you're a credit lender.
And so I'd written an op-ed about how this would fall disproportionately hard on women who were raising families and who would be put in the position under this bill of trying to compete with Citibank, MasterCard, Visa, Bank One for getting alimony and child support from their ex-husbands.
Mrs. Clinton evidently saw…
MOYERS: The First Lady then.
WARREN: The First Lady. She was then First Lady. This is the 1990s. Late 1990s. Mrs. Clinton saw the piece, and I got a call from the White House. And they said Mrs. Clinton was going to be in town to give a speech in Boston and would I come and meet with her. I said, "Sure."
And so I put together all my files. I show up at the appointed place. After she's finished her speech, we're ushered into a tiny, little room somewhere in the bowels of this hotel, and just the two of us. They close the door. Mrs. Clinton sits down. We have hamburgers and french fries.
MOYERS: You tutor her.
WARREN: And she says, "Tell me about bankruptcy." And I got to tell you, I never had a smarter student. Quick, right to the heart of it. I go over the law. It's a complex law. Went over the economics. Showed her the graphs, showed her the charts. And she got it.
Within 20 minutes, she could play where the rest of it would come. Well, then that will mean this part's happened. That will mean this has happened. I said, "Yes, that's right." And at the end of the conversation, Mrs. Clinton stood up. She said, "Let's get our picture taken" which we did, and she said, "Professor Warren, we've got to stop that awful bill," referring to this bankruptcy bill that sponsored by the credit card companies.
So I left. She went back to White House, and I heard later from someone who is a White House staffer that there were skid marks in the hallways when Mrs. Clinton got back as people reversed direction on that bankruptcy bill. President…
MOYERS: That was supporting the industry. And because of her…
WARREN: President Clinton had been showing that this is another way that he could be helpful to business. It wasn't a very high visibility bill. And when Mrs. Clinton came back with a little better understanding of how it all worked, they reversed course, and they reversed course fast. And indeed, the proof is in the pudding.
The last bill that came before President Clinton was that bankruptcy bill that was passed by the House and the Senate in 2000 and he vetoed it. And in her autobiography, Mrs. Clinton took credit for that veto and she rightly should. She turned around a whole administration on the subject of bankruptcy. She got it.
MOYERS: And then?
WARREN: One of the first bills that came up after she was Senator Clinton was the bankruptcy bill. This is a bill that's like a vampire. It will not die. Right? There's a lot of money behind it, and it…
MOYERS: Bill, her husband, who vetoed…
WARREN: Her husband had vetoed it very much at her urging.
MOYERS: And?
WARREN: She voted in favor of it.
MOYERS: Why?
WARREN: As Senator Clinton, the pressures are very different. It's a well-financed industry. You know a lot of people don't realize that the industry that gave the most money to Washington over the past few years was not the oil industry, was not pharmaceuticals. It was consumer credit products. Those are the people. The credit card companies have been giving money, and they have influence.
MOYERS: And Mrs. Clinton was one of them as Senator.
WARREN: She has taken money from the groups, and more to the point, she worries about them as a constituency.
animedad posted:seems to me it should be cautious in agreeing with Reed when (as far as I can see) he never says who he's taking about. is it the left liberal print stuff, or black lives matter, or the enormous amount of organizing being done by people of color? this just muddies the water for the people that read his stuff and arent org'd up, because I think most of those organizations are rethinking all this stuff on their own, and identity politics have always been an issue in those circles that garners a lot of thought had discussion. If it's just "won't somebody include the middle class white soshialists" then...
BLM is just black Occupy and about as effective. It's about internal power games of "lived experience" and "voices" and "people of color," the eternal dance of a dozen people accusing each other inside an incestuous leftist bubble, which naturally looks repulsive to all the normal people outside it. The legacy of BLM will be their use as Clinton and Soros puppets and a bunch of "white ppl be like" memes.
To be fair it's not their fault. Young people are taught postmodern gibberish identity politics in academia that consistently erase class, and write their dissertations on "queering the kombucha" or whatever, and the students of actually relevant STEM subjects are groomed to be perfect methodological-individualist slave ants who will comply with everything when they work for the state apparatus. All apparatuses of revolution have been destroyed, all sources of correct politics such as the Soviets have been erased and that horizon doesn't exist anymore.
Reed's analysis is correct but he assigns everything to a nebulous "neoliberalism" that makes it really easy for a potential right-wing critic to make him look like a retard. Rather, he should try to map out a historical record of how/when the identity-fetishism of leftist academia began to take root and eventually took over actual politics.
COINTELBRO posted:animedad posted:seems to me it should be cautious in agreeing with Reed when (as far as I can see) he never says who he's taking about. is it the left liberal print stuff, or black lives matter, or the enormous amount of organizing being done by people of color? this just muddies the water for the people that read his stuff and arent org'd up, because I think most of those organizations are rethinking all this stuff on their own, and identity politics have always been an issue in those circles that garners a lot of thought had discussion. If it's just "won't somebody include the middle class white soshialists" then...
BLM is just black Occupy and about as effective. It's about internal power games of "lived experience" and "voices" and "people of color," the eternal dance of a dozen people accusing each other inside an incestuous leftist bubble, which naturally looks repulsive to all the normal people outside it. The legacy of BLM will be their use as Clinton and Soros puppets and a bunch of "white ppl be like" memes.
To be fair it's not their fault. Young people are taught postmodern gibberish identity politics in academia that consistently erase class, and write their dissertations on "queering the kombucha" or whatever, and the students of actually relevant STEM subjects are groomed to be perfect methodological-individualist slave ants who will comply with everything when they work for the state apparatus. All apparatuses of revolution have been destroyed, all sources of correct politics such as the Soviets have been erased and that horizon doesn't exist anymore.
Reed's analysis is correct but he assigns everything to a nebulous "neoliberalism" that makes it really easy for a potential right-wing critic to make him look like a retard. Rather, he should try to map out a historical record of how/when the identity-fetishism of leftist academia began to take root and eventually took over actual politics.
nah
Keven posted:Agreed that the problem is not enough stem degrees lmfao.
Your gonna get a stem degree, clipping plants stems in the countryside
the problem is when those non-class based sites of struggle are elevated and absorbed into institutions of oppression and capitalism. this is what i'd describe as neoliberal identity politics. the logic that we should celebrate the introduction of identities into systems of oppression from which they were originally proscribed simply because it gives the individual more power, power that can only be used in that context to further the goals of oppression, is an obscene absurdity. and that absurdity is exponential and all the more frustrating when those celebrating claim the moral high ground and use leftist critique as an example of a supposed issue in the Left with racism, sexism, etc. It's vile and done with a highly ideological purpose and serves to further the goals of the neoliberal status quo, which in itself can be colorblind, genderblind, etc. if it serves a profit-motive.
Edited by aerdil ()
I don't really know why I bothered with the long post, I'm sure everyone here knows all this stuff.
aerdil posted:yeah i definitely differ on the argument that there's no qualitative difference between antiracism and what i'd define as specifically neoliberal identity politics. there's value to be had in intersectional thought. i've never thought that marxism implies class is the only important area of struggle. it's primary, but attention and struggle must also focus on racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
the problem is when those non-class based sites of struggle are elevated and absorbed into institutions of oppression and capitalism. this is what i'd describe as neoliberal identity politics. the logic that we should celebrate the introduction of identities into systems of oppression from which they were originally proscribed simply because it gives the individual more power, power that can only be used in that context to further the goals of oppression, is an obscene absurdity. and that absurdity is exponential and all the more frustrating when those celebrating claim the moral high ground and use leftist critique as an example of a supposed issue in the Left with racism, sexism, etc. It's vile and done with a highly ideological purpose and serves to further the goals of the neoliberal status quo, which in itself can be colorblind, genderblind, etc. if it serves a profit-motive.
yeah I agree with all that I think. I just have trouble with all these Calls For Unity from Sanders supporters. they are the ones working within the Democrats, so I have difficulty putting much blame on the streets where racism really does ruin lives and contrary to popular belief this is an integral part of the political economy
thirdplace posted:le_nelson_mandela_face posted:it's really funny to me that hillary clinton is going to win because people are just aghast that someone is calling her a cunt on twitter
i don't disagree with anything you or anyone else posted after this but this is reactionary bullshit. hildog's gonna because she was able to keep out every competitor save a 74 year old fake socialist, not because she's reaping the benefits of political correctness gone wild
yeah but she's gonna beat that fake socialist
aerdil posted:yeah i definitely differ on the argument that there's no qualitative difference between antiracism and what i'd define as specifically neoliberal identity politics. there's value to be had in intersectional thought. i've never thought that marxism implies class is the only important area of struggle. it's primary, but attention and struggle must also focus on racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
we need to be really clear about what we mean when we say "primary" though. seeing as it obviously doesn't mean "everything else is secondary and ipso facto if you are paying any attention to racist or sexist oppression at all you are wasting your time and worse than useless and by the way if someone else in the org sexually assaults you you shouldn't say anything because that's divisive and distracts from the primary site of oppression, which is class and not your stinking crotch or whatever". because people do hear that and not always because they are CIA assets
Frankly, I think intersectionality has run out of value and it's time return to the 'crude determinism' of "people act in their own best class interests within the capitalist production process." The political results of intersectional politics has been zero and I'm starting to doubt that it ever did anything in the 60s and 70s outside of mythology. Not that this is something we can will, it will go away as the neoliberal world order collapses.