Q: Last Saturday, Milan and some of us commenters had a robust dicussion on the concept of class. Do you find the concept useful? If so, do you think it should be more in-depth than the typical American understanding that’s limited to the amount of income/wealth one has? Should it also include aspects like the Marxist bougie/prole distinction, levels of education, cultural factors, or anything else?
A: I think it would be interesting to see someone try to sketch out in some detail the class structure of the United States as defined pretty literally in terms of people’s relationship to the means of production — and accounting for the fact that in the contemporary economy, this is more complicated than a dichotomy of “workers vs. owners.”
We have a home-owning majority and a large renting minority. We have a partially overlapping stock-owning majority and a large share-less minority. We have a majority that doesn’t receive any explicit welfare state benefits and a minority who do. And because the welfare state is tilted heavily toward the elderly who also tend to own capital in the form of stock and especially houses, we don’t necessarily have a large block of “capital-less workers who love the welfare state” to be the foot soldiers for a certain style of left politics.
Of course it depends what you mean by refusing to lend legitimacy. I was imagining simply not voting and then declaring refusal the way Michael Scott declared bankruptcy
Man these people are dumb. Trump wasn’t loved by “Hollywood.” He made one TV show, set in NY! He never got into LA, or movies beyond the one Home Alone cameo!
Let’s say lots of young people, progressive people, people of color, sit out the next presidential election. Still vote local maybe … we had 4 years of Trump. So far biden hasn’t made things much better. Let edems know they cannot win without a progressive stance because losing isn’t making things worse than winning…
A lot of 20s/30s white males love Elon. Like worship him to a level beyond Trump worship. Between that and his wealth, he is probably the single most influential person on earth.
