A lot of us are products of bourgoisie cultures and we will likely enjoy the art that such a society produces. Future generations will hopefully produce and enjoy arts not constrained by such backward sensibilities though that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try now.
It is like the flip side of the coin of self-identification amongst westerners; it is not revolutionary to incorrectly pigeon-hole yourself to the proleteriat if you don’t actually belong to that class, it is better to identify the class you belong to and then engage in class betrayal. Otherwise it is just another form of idealism.
To take examples of very popular western pop culture: LOTR and Harry Potter. If you like them, it doesn’t necessarily make you less a social scientist; just be conscious of your own limitations which extends to the things you enjoy - accept that you and the art you enjoy is flawed, and use that knowledge to help engage in revolutionary pragmatism (I used the above two as examples because of how orientalist they both are, LOTR arguably much more than HP).
Addendum - it obviously matters what parts of the above series you like; this is an ML space so I figured I could be a bit less precise with the language here. Both series are deeply problematic to say the least.
Thank you for articulating this point, comrade. I am certainly a part of the labor aristocracy myself and that white fragility has been very tough to overcome because no sensible person wants to think of themselves as an oppressor.
But finally I realized that no sensible person should want to be oppressed either. So how about I just do my part to bring down systems of oppression and use the privileges I have in the process to do so.
If Engels can do it, us western white folks can too.
I think liberalism has diminished our dialectical thinking; if one is a westerner labour aristocrat (a definition? One cares about property value) and not at the receiving end of the settler-colonial dynamic, no matter the colour - though we can’t ignore ethnicity, then at the very least we are a cog in the racist machine against the Global South which we only have a chance of mitigating through organisation.
It doesn’t, however, excuse the racism. By being real of what our place in the world is we are going to have a better chance of tackling this beast (though as one can tell from my comment history I am not very optimistic about us westerners. Like this is an ML forum and I see blinders all the time. To the point whenever someone says “what can I do” I feel like saying move to China, though this is not the correct take from a global revolutionary standpoint).
A famous example of attempting to do it right is Che Guevara - a Chilean labour aristocrat physician who decided to tackle the beast.I’m not saying that we all have that level of charisma and skillset but you know aim for the stars and you may at least land on the moon. Or as Zhou Enlai said to Khrushchev: we are both traitors to our class.
Well Zhou meant that as an insult Khrushchev because Khrushchev was born a Russian peasant while Zhou was born into the Mandarin Chinese class which had considerably more social privilege than other Chinese ethnicities.
But I agree nonetheless! One cannot engage in material analysis and revolutionary politics without first coming to grips with material reality. What’s very important is that we remember the circumstances of our birth do not diminish our value as human beings (that notion is fundamentally idealistic and liberal). But it does change what our role is in revolutionary organization.
Right. If people are putting all of their media through an ideological purity blender, theyre gonna have a bad time enjoying anything in this day and age. Instead of using a Marxist lens to be a hater, we can try to find joy in our analyses of the art we engage with.
I don’t think there is a problem with this. It just may means one’s ideology needs to be updated. Also it may mean one’s palate may be more sophisticated. We all have an ideology through which we filter our tastes; it is undialectical to think otherwise. It means understanding the limitations of what our tastes are, not to gloss over them and blame others’ of purity tests (not saying you were necessarily doing this). We all have purity tests. However, if this filter then adversely affects revolutionary pragmatism then one’s ideology and strategies need to be reconsidered. Marxism is a science.
It was not meant to be a get-out-jail-free-card for “Western guilt”. If that’s why I got all the upvotes then I may need to do a post about this.
I agree. To clarify, I’m just saying that you can’t use yiur ideology as the litmus test to deem whether a piece of media is worthy of your enjoyment. Well, you can, but youre probably not gonna be able to enjoy much, especially if you’re a Marxist living in the West.
A more pragmatic perspective is to just enjoy things and also find joy in the opportunity to sharpen your lens.
That pragmatism is maybe part of a person’s ideology? One may think there’s a separation but making those concessions is part of the filter. It is undialectical to think otherwise; the mind-body dualism has been replaced by monism - the material world including our own minds gives us the ideas.
A lot of us are products of bourgoisie cultures and we will likely enjoy the art that such a society produces. Future generations will hopefully produce and enjoy arts not constrained by such backward sensibilities though that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try now.
It is like the flip side of the coin of self-identification amongst westerners; it is not revolutionary to incorrectly pigeon-hole yourself to the proleteriat if you don’t actually belong to that class, it is better to identify the class you belong to and then engage in class betrayal. Otherwise it is just another form of idealism.
To take examples of very popular western pop culture: LOTR and Harry Potter. If you like them, it doesn’t necessarily make you less a social scientist; just be conscious of your own limitations which extends to the things you enjoy - accept that you and the art you enjoy is flawed, and use that knowledge to help engage in revolutionary pragmatism (I used the above two as examples because of how orientalist they both are, LOTR arguably much more than HP).
Addendum - it obviously matters what parts of the above series you like; this is an ML space so I figured I could be a bit less precise with the language here. Both series are deeply problematic to say the least.
Thank you for articulating this point, comrade. I am certainly a part of the labor aristocracy myself and that white fragility has been very tough to overcome because no sensible person wants to think of themselves as an oppressor.
But finally I realized that no sensible person should want to be oppressed either. So how about I just do my part to bring down systems of oppression and use the privileges I have in the process to do so.
If Engels can do it, us western white folks can too.
I think liberalism has diminished our dialectical thinking; if one is a westerner labour aristocrat (a definition? One cares about property value) and not at the receiving end of the settler-colonial dynamic, no matter the colour - though we can’t ignore ethnicity, then at the very least we are a cog in the racist machine against the Global South which we only have a chance of mitigating through organisation.
It doesn’t, however, excuse the racism. By being real of what our place in the world is we are going to have a better chance of tackling this beast (though as one can tell from my comment history I am not very optimistic about us westerners. Like this is an ML forum and I see blinders all the time. To the point whenever someone says “what can I do” I feel like saying move to China, though this is not the correct take from a global revolutionary standpoint).
A famous example of attempting to do it right is Che Guevara - a Chilean labour aristocrat physician who decided to tackle the beast.I’m not saying that we all have that level of charisma and skillset but you know aim for the stars and you may at least land on the moon. Or as Zhou Enlai said to Khrushchev: we are both traitors to our class.
Well Zhou meant that as an insult Khrushchev because Khrushchev was born a Russian peasant while Zhou was born into the Mandarin Chinese class which had considerably more social privilege than other Chinese ethnicities.
But I agree nonetheless! One cannot engage in material analysis and revolutionary politics without first coming to grips with material reality. What’s very important is that we remember the circumstances of our birth do not diminish our value as human beings (that notion is fundamentally idealistic and liberal). But it does change what our role is in revolutionary organization.
Haha yes I included it because of the insult :) (ie it is both aspirational and critical of us westerners in this context)
Right. If people are putting all of their media through an ideological purity blender, theyre gonna have a bad time enjoying anything in this day and age. Instead of using a Marxist lens to be a hater, we can try to find joy in our analyses of the art we engage with.
I don’t think there is a problem with this. It just may means one’s ideology needs to be updated. Also it may mean one’s palate may be more sophisticated. We all have an ideology through which we filter our tastes; it is undialectical to think otherwise. It means understanding the limitations of what our tastes are, not to gloss over them and blame others’ of purity tests (not saying you were necessarily doing this). We all have purity tests. However, if this filter then adversely affects revolutionary pragmatism then one’s ideology and strategies need to be reconsidered. Marxism is a science.
It was not meant to be a get-out-jail-free-card for “Western guilt”. If that’s why I got all the upvotes then I may need to do a post about this.
I agree. To clarify, I’m just saying that you can’t use yiur ideology as the litmus test to deem whether a piece of media is worthy of your enjoyment. Well, you can, but youre probably not gonna be able to enjoy much, especially if you’re a Marxist living in the West.
A more pragmatic perspective is to just enjoy things and also find joy in the opportunity to sharpen your lens.
That pragmatism is maybe part of a person’s ideology? One may think there’s a separation but making those concessions is part of the filter. It is undialectical to think otherwise; the mind-body dualism has been replaced by monism - the material world including our own minds gives us the ideas.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8676149/6768653
A tangent, if you are interested: https://redsails.org/what-is-fundamentalism/
Oh I agree with that. They aren’t inseparable. Material circumstances influence outlook, whether consciously or unconsciously.