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poor leftists talk about poverty, labor aristocrats get uncomfortable and insist that sociological classes aren’t materialist. “all that matters is that we’re working class - we’re all in this together”
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black leftists talk about racism, whites get uncomfortable and insist that they’re not personally part of the problem. “we mustn’t allow the bourgeois to divide the proletariat along racial lines - we’re all in this together”
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female leftists talk about patriarchy, men get uncomfortable and insist that it hurts them too. “this men vs women stuff is reductive anyway - we’re all in this together”
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third world leftists talk about imperialism, americoids get uncomfortable and insist that red white and blue lives matter too. “what happened to the international working class - we’re all in this together”
you don’t have to invite yourself to every form and experience of oppression. anyone with a baby’s consciousness of intersectionality ought to be capable of admitting when they have privilege
No but if you have a boat that keeps you afloat for a year and especially if you know it, you have a lot more room to manouver than someone like me whose boat would instantly sink. It gives you more space even before anything happens to you so the difference is there all the time.
It’s like saying falling from a cliff has the same result regardless of how high it is. We are both on a cliff, but it’s not the same one.
The thing about poverty is that there are no error margins on anything. It strips you of good choices and ends up forcing you to make expensive and oppressive choices in ways that is impossible to explain to someone who has never been poor, and that is how we are different.
I deny nothing of that.
I don’t know how much to differentiate. Do the working poor need the same help as those who can’t work? Probably not. My guess is they benefit more from adequate wages and job security than state support. Those are things that I want for myself, too, regardless how much I currently need it.
Do you then go around claiming that working poor and those who’re unable to work are not in the same boat?
Well I work with unemployed folks and while the stuggle is similar it is again a very different boat in terms of agency and how well it stays afloat. So yes, it’s going to be a different boat even if it is a more similar one.
I suppose my point is that while all of these are workers, their conditions (level of privilege) is different and therefore while they are the same in one way they are different in others. Maybe if we look at it on a macrolevel we can focus on the sameness, but on a microlevel and in everyday power the differences dictate the lives of people in ways that can’t be reduced to being in the same boat.