A better, in my opinion, way of arguing this is that many self-styled radicals of the middle class origins tend to romanticize what they perceive as the polar opposite of their own middle class background - poverty, dysfunctionality and destitution. People employed in union jobs in this country are too close to the middle class status to fit that role. Hence the need to for the homeless, prisoners and the like.
As Pierre Bourdieu observed (in his book "Distinctions") aesthetics play a huge role in distinguishing among different elements of the economically defined classes (the so-called class fractions.) Hence the demand for counter-cultural aesthetics in certain elements of the middle class, especially symbol manipulators. Counterculture "translates" into a high status marker in a way that it is a substitute for economic resources, or rather lack thereof. It is like saying "I may not have the same economic resources as other fractions of the middle class, but I have a more refined cultural taste, which puts me on at least the same if not higher social status."
Bourdieu can travel a long way in explaining the so-called 'activist culture" http://libcom.org/library/give-up-activism in which the counter-cultural style trumps the political substance. This was also my impression from Graeber's description of the anarchist movement, or at least certain segments of it. For these guys, embracing the "bread and butter" socialism or union demands is way too middle class and thus "square" and un-hip. Romanticizing the life styles of social groups whose aesthetics ostensibly clashes with that of the middle classes is far more appealing.
Wojtek
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 7:13 PM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> On Mar 7, 2012, at 6:19 PM, c b wrote quotes some dude named Greg Rose:
>>
>> It is a sign of the intellectual bankruptcy of the Oakland Commune,
>> which sees the failure of organized labor to immediately form up
>> behind the Black Bloc as an indication that organized labor should be
>> demonized and dismissed in favor of a mix of the unemployed, the
>> underemployed, lumpenproletarians, and the homeless who form the new
>> revolutionary hope.
>
>
> That’s a winning argument, right there!
>
> —ravi
>
>
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-- Wojtek http://wsokol.blogspot.com/