gentrification

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 12:22 AM 1/29/99 -0800, John Kawakami wrote:
>Scuse me?  Many "leftists" are just people who hate the trappings of middle
>class boredom.  They certainly glamourize the more glamourous aspects of
>poverty (gang life, prison, living cheap, manual labor).  Centrists and right
>wingers do as well.  They like to praise the worker, while withholding the
>socialism.

That is an excellent summary of the problem.  The problem is the middle
class boredom and the longing to escape it to a more "rugged" life style -
the ghetto, the boheme, the country-side, the wilderness.  So the main
difference between the so-called "leftists" you are talking about and other
segments of the middle class is the cultural icon that symbolize that
escape: gangs, hip-hop, punk, bohemian lifestyle versus SUVs, safari,
survivalism etc.  But both fit well within th ecapitalism system  - since
both rely primarily on the consumption of cultural commodity.

wojtek