Anarchy in the AF

[ALB]

Peter Joseph in his latest book also employs the concept of "classism", as a parallel to sexism and racism, as discrimination, in terms of what they consume and how they are regarded, against people from the (manual) working class or "lower class" as he sometimes calls them. He of course knows the way out (a free access society of plenty) but I wonder what those who think this can be rectified within the wages-profits-money system that is capitalism envisage as the way-out. It would have to be something like equal wages or an equal income for everyone, but that's not going to happen, for purely economic reasons, under capitalism. So the attempt is bound to fail, in the meantime stirring up sections of the broader, properly understood working class against each other. We need to oppose,in fact be hostile to, Id(iot)pol.

[alanjjohnstone]

ALB, since you raised earlier Bookchin's attitude to towards identity and lifestyle politics,  wasn't "classism" one of Bookchin's criticism of the Left by overly identifying sections of the working class as something to aspire towards rather than abolish?Listen Marxist's Myth of the Proletariat seemed to want to address this. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1969/listen-marxist.htm#h3But as usual, Debs is in the ball with a very quotable quote to adopt. 

[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

ALB, since you raised earlier Bookchin's attitude to towards identity and lifestyle politics,  wasn't "classism" one of Bookchin's criticism of the Left by overly identifying sections of the working class as something to aspire towards rather than abolish?

I think that is more described as “workerism”.”Classism” is the idea that class exploitation is like racism and sexism etc.

[alanjjohnstone]

Thanks for pointing out the distinction.

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Listen Marxist's Myth of the Proletariat seemed to want to address this. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1969/listen-marxist.htm#h3

David Ramsay Steele, when he was a socialist, wrote a brilliant reply to this:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/listen-anarchist.htmlIronically, later he was himself to become an anarchist, a leading anarcho-capitalist writer and polemicist in fact.

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