He seems to be one of the most hated figures on the online left. From my view, he does have a lot of questionable takes, but also does bring up some good points when it comes to fighting imperialism from a leftist perspective, so I’d like to know what people in this community think about him.
The existence of the working class is ubiquitous. Of course there is a working class. That doesn’t mean it’s proletarian or that class consciousness will arise in a way that is considered proletarian.
This may be true in the South but its not evident in the North. Even Engles wrote kf the embourgiousiement of the UK. This way of watering down class is a form of class reductionism and it doesn’t actually account for the actual physical processes of class formation. Rather it is dogmatic and simplified just as western academia presents it. It only serves to establish that somehow labor in the north is effectively the same as it is in the south. This is wrong.
Sort of, but that failure manifests in more ways than the sanctamonious narrative that comminists are just being lazy. Sometimes we cant understand our material conditions well enough to form a consensus and be effective.
You misunderstand completely. If you tell someone with explicitly petite bourgeoisie sensibilities, who lives in the Imperial core, that they are exploited and that they have nothing to lose but their chains they will hear something completely different than if you say the same thing to someone in a garment factory in Bangladesh. That someone from the imperial core has an employer is superfluous in determining the class character of these seperate parties.
This is because one has natural proletarian sensibilities that will aid them in understanding pathways to revolution that we as comminists advocate for because they are ground zero for the exploitative imperialist system. The other is embourgiousiefied and will more naturally find fascism in their class interests precisely because it can preserve and revitalize the position they feel entitled to and ultimately benefit from.
My point earlier is a point about rhetoric. We need rhetoric that actually penetrates the fact that workers in the core are largely embourgiousiefied instead of pretending that because I have an employer that somehow my class interests align directly with the global proletariat. You cannot assume proletarian sensibilities are ubiquitous to the imperial core.
Even colonized people within the US are capable of accessing the benifits of imperialism. This is not a moral statement. It is a material reality that can play a major role in class formation and expressions of class character.
A nice and neat little bow to put on your class reductionism.