One of the biggest issues today is that the general left(left leaning liberal, left libertarians) rejects a proper class analysis or rather they reject a class analysis in favor of a cultural analysis. While culture and the like are really important to analyze, it ultimately avoids the economic question.

When one looks into the cultural aspects of things one seeks to solve it through shallow solutions which usually do not act as truly dynamic shift in the relations between people. One can solve things like racial prejudice or discrimination; sexism; gender discrimination etc. by creating hiring incentives, marketing/ promoting ideas of diversity etc. but what is left after all those things? Who put the power structures of oppression in the first place? Who holds cultural hegemony on society?

When you try to change society through your cultural analysis are you really changing society? Are you using your own tools? Or are you using your master’s tools? Are you simply now using your master’s tools to perpetuate the system of oppression to a diverse group of people instead one? Now the both the masters and slaves are diverse, multicultural etc. but there are still masters and slaves so what have you solved if you’re still using your master’s system of abuse and oppression? I don’t know of any slave who said: “we need more black masters, that’ll make things more fair”. It would be insane to call a slave who yearns for the destruction of the system of slavery a “class reductionist”.

Because slavery IS an economic issue, it IS a class issue and takes precedence above all other thing as the thing that almost constantly oppresses people. The economic day to day struggle is the class struggle, racism, sexism, the struggle for LGBTQ rights is all under the economic struggle; the class struggle.

  • Camarada ForteA
    5•4 years ago

    Oh, so this means that people that work in Administrative sectors are all parasites, and definitely not exploited? They do not produce value, since this is considered unproductive labor (based on the capitalist mode of production). [This does not mean they are not expropriated through commodification of life.]

    According to your definition, the only exploited workers are producers of commodities. This definition based entirely on surplus-value [and productive work] is undialectical.

    Pay attention to the fact that even office workers do not live a quality life as well. Calling those workers parasites should be a symptom of bad analysis.

    • @some_random_commie
      0•4 years ago

      Oh, so this means that people that work in Administrative sectors are all parasites, and definitely not exploited?

      Yep, that’s pretty much what the Comintern is saying here.

      They do not produce value, since this is considered unproductive labor (based on the capitalist mode of production).

      Based on Marx’s own ideas. To quote him:

      Adam Smith was essentially correct with his productive and unproductive labour, correct from the standpoint of bourgeois economy. What the other economists advance against it is either horse-piss (for instance Storch, Senior even lousier etc.), namely that every action after all acts upon something, thus confusion of the product in its natural and its economic sense; so that the pickpocket becomes a productive worker too, since he indirectly produces books on criminal law (this reasoning at least as correct as calling a judge a productive worker because he protects from theft). Or the modern economists have turned themselves into such sycophants of the bourgeois that they want to demonstrate to the latter that it is productive labour when somebody picks the lice out of his hair, or strokes his tail, because for example the latter activity will make his fat head - blockhead - clearer the next day in the office. It is therefore quite correct - but also characteristic - that for the consistent economists the workers in e.g. luxury shops are productive, although the characters who consume such objects are expressly castigated as unproductive wastrels. The fact is that these workers, indeed, are productive, as far as they increase the capital of their master; unproductive as to the material result of their labour. In fact, of course, this ‘productive’ worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn’t give a damn for the junk. But, looked at more precisely, it turns out in fact that a true definition of a productive worker consists in this: A person who needs and demands exactly as much as, and no more than, is required to enable him to gain the greatest possible benefit for his capitalist. All this nonsense. Digression’.

      Pay attention to the fact that even office workers do not live a quality life as well.

      Yes, and next you’ll be telling us Tom Cruise is an exploited proletarian, right?