identifying with the enemy

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Fri May 18 04:48:06 PDT 2001


joanna bujes:
> My guess: because instead of identifying with their real selves, they
> identify with their ideal selves, which are basically cultural constructs.
> In this society Bill Gates is constructed as the ideal individual who we
> all aspire to equal. If he deserves his fortune, so ultimately will I when
> I get my fortune. Ha. Ha.

Probably, the ability to maintain two or more contradictory world-views is strongly conducive to survival.


> A real incident to illustrate. Fifteen years ago, I was selling a socialist
> newpaper in the poorer districts of San Jose. I knocked on the door of a
> run-down basement apartment, a Miller-guzzling male dressed in dirty jeans
> and an undershirt opened the door and allowed me to enter. The apartment
> was of the black-velvet paintings and apple crates variety: it bespoke of
> various kinds of impovrishement. I announced that I was selling a socialist
> paper and asked him if he was interested in buying a copy.
>
> "No." He said, "I don't believe in socialism. I'm a capitalist."
>
> "You are?" I queried looking around his apartment, "Then, where's your
> capital?"
>
> That stopped him only for a second,
>
> "My body," he replied, "My body is my capital."
>
> So, there you go. What untold fortune he was going to squeeze out of his
> body, I do not know.

This is standard-issue libertarian (fundamentalist liberal) dogma on the Net. The class context is familiar. It's interesting where and how it showed up in earlier times.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list