[lbo-talk] Re: queen for a day

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

>andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>> You know, I really hate this left wing reverse
>> privilege thing, "yous hould feel bad because you're
>> lucky, workers in Detroit have much less than you
>> do." No shit they do, that's in part why we are
>> socialists. But it makes me mad, not guilty. they
>> don't have less than I do because I wear a nice
>> suit, or even because I get paid gobs of money for
>> defending corporate interests. they have less than
>> I do because the bosses own and control the means
>> of production, and my wearing jeans and a T-shirt
>> to work is not going to change that, hmm? 

Yes, the reverse privilege thing is bullshit, but it comes from a 
misunderstanding of exploitation.  The widespread assumption is that the overpaid are 
responsible for the underpaidness of the underpaid.  It goes along with the idea 
that class is about income, not power, and it protects the college-educated 
from the pain of discovering that we individually have little real control over 
the course of our lives.  Guess who benefits if we feel guilt (and 
superiority) rather than anger (and solidarity).

Jenny Brown