timemachineyeah
drives me up a wall living in a very very red district, like “no democrat is ever going to win any local election, let alone a real leftist” district, like “our school board members ran on who was the most anti-mask” red, like “I pass white supremacist signs on the way to buy weed” red
and being in the local leftist community and the guy who runs the anarchist book club and the lady who helps keep the warming shelters open and the people who marched on city hall when a local business was getting death threats for having a drag show are all members of a discord and we get on this discord and have frank discussions about how best to vote
the people who do the protests and the mutual aid and all the real work
going “okay, they’re both fascists, but this one lacks ambition and seems happy to just glide in the position” or “they both suck, but this one can be reasoned with if you frame it patriotically enough” like we don’t even have a democrat to vote for. we know what a vote is. we know what we hope accomplish with it. we know what it can do, and we know what it can’t.
and going from those discussions to here where people think that your vote is some kind of fucking??? enabling maneuver??? as if someone isn’t going to end up in that seat regardless of what you do???
we didn’t build this system, we just live in it. we’re just trying to survive. a vote isn’t a statement of your values, it’s not an endorsement, it’s not a marriage contract, it’s a strategic play you make to keep alive.
the biggest mistake I see leftists making is overestimating their own popularity. “well but everyone would be leftist if they just-” no, stop, 1) you can’t possibly know that 2) everyone will not just
Spot on.
While I’m not a Marxist, he had a brilliant term for these people: “Petty Bourgeoisie” They think they’re in line with the upper-crust, but are just Proles that are kidding themselves.
Huh, when I initially read “petty bourgeois” I thought you’d got the term wrong, but when I looked it up to check its a common anglicisation of “petite bourgeois”.
I find the latter more intuitive, as it’s “little bourgeois”, but both are right.
Lil Bougie about to drop his new album “HOA Fees”
You’re actually looking for the term “false consciousness”. Economic classes, however, are defined (as per Marx) by your objective relations to the means of production, not your mindset or sympathies. If you make a living from rents/capital rather than from selling your labor/time, you are bourgeois. If not, you’re not.
Ah, that makes more sense. Thank you for the clarification - I’ll adjust my future rants accordingly. :)
Temporarily embarrassed millionaires
Petite Bourgoisie are Capitalists that aren’t large enough to survive soley on the labor of others, so they certainly aren’t proletarians, but not bourgousie outright. Think mom and pop shop owners with a handful of other employees, not actual proles.