you mean this one?
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Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 21:09:33 -0400 From: turbulo at aol.com Message-Id: <8C798F2E92F2B9A-A94-1E12 at FWM-R21.sysops.aol.com> X-Mailer: AOL WebMail 1.1.0.14204 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org X-AOL-IP: 152.163.211.149 Subject: [lbo-talk] Middle Class
Errors-To: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>I know the social democratic mind has a hard time digesting this,
>but history has known sudden leaps--both in society--revolutions,
>they are called--and the necessary leaps in consciousness
>that accompany them.
Really? Do tell. I've never heard of these revolution thingys before. *******<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> I think that's spelled "thingies." I know you "know" about 1793 and 1917, but the kind of consciousness these events gave rise to is, as far as I can tell, completely foreign to your temperement. Otherwise you wouldn't ridicule the notion of sudden changes in awareness, as you do. A revolutionary must have in him/her something of the millenarian, as opposed to the quotidian. ***********
> Maybe it's been so long sinch such an event has taken place that we
>tend to forget they ever happened. But progress will never happen
>unless large numbers of people disabuse themselves of backward
>ideas. And the notion that they are middle class is one of the most
>backward and paralysing ideas American workers are beset with. It is
>embedded in many other reactionary notions--that money and social
>status are an indications of personal worth, and that the social
>hierarchy is therefore legitimate, for instance. But it is also
>deeply implicated in notions of race. White poor people think
>they're midddle class because they're not part of the underclass,
>which happens to be guess what.There is nothing to be gained by
>capitulating to backwa! rd consciousness.
Sorry to repeat myself after just six months, but! ... When I was in Italy in 1976, I heard a story from a guy who said he'd been bicycling on Sardinia and rode past a mental hospital. On the hospital grounds, a female patient was tied to a tree, and three shrinks in white coats were slapping her, saying, "You're *not* the Virgin Mary!" Ever since, I've been tempted to recommend a trip to Sardinia for certain neurotics I know. But now I learn that that's the sound revolutionary treatment for deluded workers. Slap 'em around and insist "You *are* working class!"---Doug ********** You have a knack for trivializing big questions. More than nomenclature is involved here. One side of white American working-class consciousness is in solidarity with the white ruling class in opposition to blacks and US neo-colonial subjects. Many workers also believe that owning companies or being able to live off investment portfolios is a mark of superior intelligence or diligence. Saying they're middle class is often a shorthand expression of these feelings.