"Classism"

[Michael Pugliese]

    Yoshie  on lbo-list, yesterday, had these comments, to which I'd add my
assent. Yesterday, in introducing an article on post-WTO organizing,
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0008/features-howland.shtml
New Radical Seattle), I had this to say about PC words like classism, "One
annoying thing to me, is the, "classism, " word. I've probably said
before, but, class is a social relationship. Sure class exploitation and
domination, incorporates a subjective, affect laden, dimension, but it's
like saying the problem with capitalism is that it "disrespects" oneself and
the communities one identifies with. One of the problems with PC discourse
is that it can occlude power structures functioning in and through
individuals who are always parts of larger social groupings, and implicitly
promises that the renaming of identity groups will somehow, through some
linguistic abracadbra, eventuate in the "enpowerment" (another ugly word) of
the oppressed."
    Comments, comrades on "classism" and "empowerment" as theraputic,
moralistic, "feel good", apolitical, evasive, euphemistic...you can see
these weasel words annoy me. I can just see a corporate diversity consultant
using them!
                            Michael Pugliese

http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/current/#end
Re: Re: Commodification of Dissent and the SI

>...And they dare to reduce capitalism to "classism"!  As if
it were a matter of removing a false sense of superiority and criticizing
one another's privileges endlessly!  Now, this party line has had a
deleterious effect on the tenor of political discussion.  Carrol noted a
while ago: "I rather think this list should be renamed Uriah-Heep-talk.
Everyone is so 'umble and so insistent that everyone else be so 'umble."

Yoshie