this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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That's a well intentioned sentiment. So don't tske any of this as an attack, just a clarification.
We aren't just all on this journey together, some of us are oppressed by others. Our problems aren't abstract, they are a consequence of the ruling class engaging in warfare on the rest of us, and that's what the person above was getting at.
We know we're people, but we also know that we aren't people to the ruling class.
Okay I'm communist I'm not in one of your parties. I have no idea what you're talking about journey's and different places, that doesn't mean anything. Both of the parties you're refering to serve the ruling class and help facilitate the oppression of the global working class.
There's more to it, but at the end of the day there are two classes, the global ruling class who oppress, and the global working class who are oppressed. These aren't different parts of a "journey", its a global system of production thst is predicated on the exploitation of one class by the other.
You think Marxism is an overly simple take on things, but think your metaphor about journey's means anything at all?
I don't mean to be rude or anything, but it's not like communists have never heard of capitalists who also do some kind of labor. There aren't two classes, but rather, there are two very big classes that have contradictory interests and people will be filtered into one of those two. That's where the fight of capitalism is. Notice how peasantry has almost ceased to exist and most monarchs are ceremonial. Mao Zedong identified 5 classes within Chinese society in 1926: landlords, proletariat, peasantry, urban petite-bourgeoise, and national bourgeoisie. And that's actually what 4 of the stars on the Chinese flag symbolize, with the largest representing the CPC.
You sound like you're what's called petite bourgeois and you identify with the cause and ideology of the bourgeoisie because that's either something you aspire to or it's a structure you're able to take advantage of. Marx identified a transitional faction of capitalists precisely within his essay The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850, and there's a brief mention within the Communist Manifesto.
Basically, Marx said the capitalist class has separate factions who are not all in concert with one another, since not all capitalists have intrinsically similar goals. Some capitalists have contradictory interests to others and want the other abolished. In comparison, the working class have no such contradictory interests, all workers benefit from the same concerns: higher wages, fewer hours, more control over their workplace.
I'd really recommend reading the Marxist theorist Althusser on this one too. To summarize, he was one of the theorists who proposed class systems are more of an action one takes and the subsequent ideological formations within it than necessarily a strict divide of class hierarchy.
I'd recommend 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus' as Althusser's foundational text. His essay 'On the Materialist Dialectic' is the one where he talks about what I brought up. It can be tricky to understand if you haven't read much dialectic theory before Althusser, but he basically argues that there's a plurality of economic classes and activities, each with some degree of autonomy, but all of them depend on one another to a degree that they shape the boundaries of the other.
I will point out that in very clear terms that Althusser's own battle with mental illness shaped much of his philosophical work. He was very interested in structure and how various people were slotted into formations completely outside of themselves. He had a lifelong battle with schizophrenia that had him institutionalized at various points and in one very severe episode he accidentally killed his own wife.
He didn't believe in free will, is what I mean.
Are you a landlord