>On 2006/05/21, at 1:36, info at pulpculture.org wrote:
>
>>At 11:48 AM 5/20/2006, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>>>Well, maybe he gets it all wrong, but he still needs a pair of shoes.
>>>
>>>JC
>>
>>Yeahbutt, what's really annoying is that these same people look
>>down their noses at you if you shop at Walmart because that is all
>>you can afford.
>
>Then they are not leftists, they are just pricks.
are you kidding? and why are you brining up leftists. I didn't say they were. In fact, if I could define leftists I'd say this group is not. What's fucking leftist about using mass changes in consumption habits -- absent collaboration with workers movement -- to simply alter the face of capitalism? WTF!
> My idea was that
>the guy had the $100 for a pair of shoes and had a choice between
>Nike and a union shop.
Dewd! Did you read the article. The point wasn't to offer you an option. The point was to encourage massive social change in consumption habits in order to change capitalism! Not to elimate capitalism, but to change it!
As for lefties, they can be pricks. What kind of logic is that? If you're a prick, you're not a lefty? Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit.
There are entire books written about the consistency of this sort of thing among certain factions of the left. It exists in feminist movements and I'd hardly call them "not left". You can dismiss them as not leftist but, in fact, there is a long leftist tradition of arguing that the only way to change things is for individuals to change their lifestyles. And the only way you can do that and be effective is to get everyone to do. Thus, you must have people looking down their noses as a form of social control.
I'm sitting here reading a book called "modern feminist thought" where she's explaining the whole leftist feminist move toward the personal is political, which came along with the radical, insistent demand that everyone change their personal lives and do so all at once in order to get rid of Teh Patriarchy. (tm) (I fucking hate that word!)
Katha Pollit just wrote on the women's studies list that it was perfectly OK to ridicule famous women as fembots, sluts, etc, etc. because those women harmed women in general and thus we could make fun of their personal choices in clothing and behavior as a form of politics. I'm sitting here reading the same rationale from feminists in the early 70s. Leftists even!
If making fun of how a famous woman dresses isn't also a way to try to exercise social control and show other women what kind of ridicule they'll be subjected to if they dress like that, I don't know what is. That's _how_ social control works! And, it's also constitutive of one of the "five faces of oppression."
Whenever people hold out normative judgments of how people _ought_ to act, that is where you can see power snaking through social life. Thus, movements like this, which seriously believe that mass changes in personal consumption choices constitute the fundamental need to be criticized for their seriously misinformed views.
Buy their shoes. I doesn't give a rats ass, but don't tell me that they're unproblematic in the way they pursue social change.
>>I couldn't afford to spend $100 on a pair of any shoes and never
>>have. Nor has my son. I don't _know_ people who can afford that
>>much on a pair of shoes.
>
>A number of list members, including me ? I would need to make sure
>the shoes would last long enough though. And I would not look down on
>people who wear cheap shoes. In fact 4 years ago, my birthday gift
>from my wife was 6 pairs of ¥300 sneakers.
>
>>It ends up being a new form of lefty elitism.
>
>That's the rock and the hard place thing. What are the choices a
>leftist has in a consumer society ?
>If I could afford fair trade stuff everyday I would buy it. I can't,
>so I get the best price I can.
>
>JC
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
"Scream-of-consciousness prose, peppered with sociological observations, political ruminations, and in-yore-face colloquial assaults."
-- Dennis Perrin, redstateson.blogspot.com
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org