if you're at all interested in these questions (does class have some kind of priority? If so, what kind exactly?), particularly as they come up in the US context, you can't really do better than this article outside of journals - ThreadSky

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social • 32 days ago

if you're at all interested in these questions (does class have some kind of priority? If so, what kind exactly?), particularly as they come up in the US context, you can't really do better than this article outside of journals

Reposted from William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸

Since his latest podcast interview is making the rounds, I want to remind everyone again that Vivek Chibber has no idea what he's talking about and should be ignored when he isn't being criticized.

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marxinhell.bsky.social•32 days ago

Thank you, Femi! Happy to know you find it useful!

thoreaupeutic.bsky.social•32 days ago

📌

loachista.bsky.social•31 days ago

📌

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social•32 days ago

"In the greatest irony of all, a book that loudly and repeatedly proclaims its opposition to all notions of cultural hegemony...ends up concluding that only the formation of just the right kind of working class cultural identity can make class conscious collective action by workers possible."

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social•32 days ago

the above is a decent shortcut for the impatient - despite what you might conclude from the way some people describe their positions, the whole woke vs anti-woke debate exists in the plane of culture and thus is itself culture war.

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social•32 days ago

which is fine, but it invites the question of why a class-first or otherwise class centered identity or messaging strategy is the appropriate one for a given set of historical and cultural circumstances - questions that a supposed theoretical or explanatory priority class relations do not answer

loukas.bsky.social•32 days ago

"Why does your powerful historical dialectic need a culture war?" is the "why does god need a spaceship?" for our time.

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social•32 days ago

supposed theoretical or explanatory priority of class relations*

snackguffin.bsky.social•31 days ago

Isn't it that potential class identity is simply a larger group? You have leeway in mobilizing the 99% against the top 1%, but if you're trying to mobilize 51% against 49% you have to activate everyone. And that's especially difficult when reactive counter identity response is often very efficient

pedrolobos.bsky.social•32 days ago

it might be that today's political fractures derive from the economic development of class antagonism... but whether and why they do not mirror that form is another question, and to answer that we surely do need 'culture' and 'society' and other sociological descriptors

nobutthankyou.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thank you for the recommendation. This "class first/only" argument has been bothering me for all these reasons. But, I didn't have the theoretical framework to consider them in until now

spectreserf.bsky.social•31 days ago

not finished reading yet but “something of an Old Left Review” is very funny

someday id love to get the juicy deets from a disinterested observer of the whole brenner fiasco/ouster in the early days of Catalyst

acrayji.bsky.social•31 days ago

Oh.... Wow. Werent you on Twitter?

spectreserf.bsky.social•30 days ago

the very same

napalmcourtoisie.bsky.social•31 days ago

What do you think of @benburgis.bsky.social answer to this piece ?
https://benburgis.substack.com/p/taking-the-red-pill-william-clare

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social•31 days ago

I think it's largely non responsive - much of the corrections about the nuances are already acknowledged in the original Roberts response, and the other responses pointing out that "money is at the heart of the issue" save the centrality of "class" at the cost of triviality

napalmcourtoisie.bsky.social•31 days ago

Thanks for your answer. I stumbled on Burgis article before reading the Roberts one, i'm gonna do it now. I have to confess reading "Chibber has to be ignored and doesn't know what he's talking about" seems like weird hyperbole to me.

marxinhell.bsky.social•31 days ago

I know it is strong language, but I will defend myself this far: his interview on "wokeness" consists of a mostly fictional genealogy of what is really just a term of abuse. Having wrestled with his earlier books, I feel I have earned my expression of scorn.

marxinhell.bsky.social•31 days ago

(And, as you'll see from the essay, I am hardly uniform in my condemnation. He and I actually agree about a lot of things, which makes me especially sensitive when he botches matters that should be done carefully.)

napalmcourtoisie.bsky.social•31 days ago

Hi William. I think you like Vivek Chibber more than you can admit : at least, he made you think a lot ! And i agree, your essays are much more nuanced and precise than i first thought. I really don't think "wokeness" is ONLY a term of abuse though, even if the right made its best to make it so.

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social•31 days ago

Yeah, I think the article is a fairer response to Chibber than the skeet, and am encouraging people to read it so that people get the substance of the criticism rather than just a stray "this guy sucks" message

napalmcourtoisie.bsky.social•31 days ago

i'm not a specialist (and english isn't my first language), but it seems to me a lot of Chibber talking points about id pol/"wokeness" are not so far from your own Elite Capture (=struggles around race & gender have been vampirized by elites), although of course i can already detect strategic and

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social•31 days ago

Yeah I'm pretty sympathetic at bottom and might even classify myself as a "class-first" theorist at bottom, I just have a different understanding of what that means and what's compatible with it than the anti-woke types

napalmcourtoisie.bsky.social•31 days ago

theoretical differences between your positions (and rethorical differences too, hehe, Chibber seeming to compete to be the Ultimate Grumpy Marxist dude with Adolph Reed.)

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