>As an independent movie producer, one would say he is a small
>capitalist. But that says nothing about his films. If he pretends, it is
>not to be working-class but to be a supporter of the working-class. He
>may have, probably does have, a pretty foggy definition of class (but so
>do many on this list (including Chuck), but that doesn't necessarily say
>anything about the films either. I presume by "middle class" Chuck meand
>that huge sector of the working class who brush their teeth everyday and
>sometimes speak fluently. That is, according to Chuck himself, the film
>is a powerful expression of the _needs_ of the working class (the whole
>working class -- something like 85-90% of the population), and if it
>expresses working-class needs, then it is irrelevant what Moore does or
>does not pretend to be or what class he himself belongs to.
>
>Carrol
it never fails to amaze me that people think they can knock someone of their pedastal -- as some sort of critique -- by claiming they are middle class. this is *precisely* the kind of identity politics of resentiment that Wendy Brown goes after in States of Injury.
What does someone's class locations have to do with anything? Marx was "middle class". Engels? What about the legends of anarchism? Did their class location mean that what they said wasn't worth listening to?
If someone wants to deride something as middle class, then the point is, as Carrol says, to ask how it upholds what in the olden daze folks used to call "bourgeois" consciousness. YOu know: if it advances ideas that mitigate the power of the work class, make its struggles that much more difficult, etc. THESE are things worth giving a damn about.
I mean, for christ sake. Doug was beaten up over on the Feminist Economist list years ago for having the audacity to be who he is and have a kind word to say about B Ehrenreich's book, NIckle and Dimed? Their point? Nothing more and nothing less than an ad hominem attack on Doug to the effect of: "Oh sure, how could *you* possibly have a good point. You're a man. And you're someone who writes about Wall St."
They even went so far as to grill him about how much money he'd been raking in on wall st. investments and book deals.
Does Doug's middle classness somehow make what he writes about suspect?
The why the FUCK do it to other people?
assholes.