What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[FireIceTalon]

"class consciousness" is a myth. In my life, I've been variously in all of them. I have been homeless sleeping by the railroad tracks, and I've been in the 1%. Mobility was mostly my choosing, and I'm now where I want to be... Middle class, unstressed, have time to do my artwork, and wealthy enough to raise my children as I feel they should be raised. People aren't defined by "Class" in the US. We aren't born to be coal miners if we live in West Virginia. I don't have consciousness of being "White" in my life decisions, and it is not a "false consciousness" but rather an irrelevance. I have common cause with people of all race/ethnicity, and all classes for that matter. Why? Because, the people in my life, my family and my friends, are variously traversing different stages as they grow up and grow old.

"One way is to say that "objectively" people have common class interests and should act according to the class struggle pattern- but that they are not always "class conscious". They suffer from "false consciousness". But this is (a) not true; nor would it (b) help much if it were. a) There often are conflicts among objective economic interests within a Marxian class- e.g. among workers. Conflicts occur over migration, international trade, religion or race. And workers often have objective interests in common with capitalists and in conflict with the interests of other groups of workers. Class membership is no more and possibly less decisive than say race membership in determining one's political views. If you insist on the importance of race, you may persuade people to act according to their "racial interests" for a while- as the Nazis did. If you convince people that they should act according to what you tell them are your class interests, they might. The prophecy becomes self-fulfilling. But the action comes from race or class propaganda- not from race or class as objective facts. b) Further if we assume that classes are as important as Marx thought but that people do not act accordingly, because not having read Marx, they are not class conscious- if "class consciousness" becomes independent of class membership- and if class membership is neither sufficient nor necessary to bring the expected class behaviour, then social classes become one of many groups that influence man's action on some occasions. This would be a correct theory. But the distinctive point of Marxian theory is that class membership is decisive in determining most and particularly political actions. This is patently wrong. -- Ernest Van Den Haag

Arrogant, perhaps. But I call it as I see it. The Tea Party defines false consciousness to the extreme, because their agenda is based on turning this country into a right-wing christian, moral playground, and it's not going to happen. Roe vs. Wade will never be overturned, EVER. Separation of church and state will always be, it's in the 1st Amendment. They want lower taxes? A joke. We already have the lowest taxes in the world among any other western industrialized nation. Race? We have a black man as the president, and it is killing them inside. These and other issues are what they are screaming about, when they matter little, because they are issues that will not be changed. "Dont Ask Dont Tell" was recently appealed. Women are more prominent than ever in the political arena and will continue to be more so as we progress. Then they turn around and want to go fight some terrorists using terrorist methods, because some politician told them they would be doing their country a service. They love patriotism. But if you ask me, patriotism is just a short way of saying "send the poor man to fight the rich mans battle, to make the rich man even richer". At the end of the day, class matters the most, and they vote against their own interests time and again. But it's not just them. Anyone who is working class and votes Republican is voting against their own interest. I had a middle class Republican friend, who under the Bush era, voted for him because he was pro-life and cause he was "personable". Then when the economy tanked in 2007-2008 his business went down the tubes and he was furious. I was sympathetic of course, but deep down I was thinking "well, you reap what you sow, hows that pro life vote working out for you now?". The rest of the world laughs at us, because we are still fussing and bickering over these trivial social issues, and not focusing on what really matters: Economics and class. We don't like to talk about class here in America, but it matters, and ultimately, people here are divided by class more than anything else. I am very pro second Amendment, but I will never vote Republican because I know they do not have my fiscal interests in mind, and they will turn the country into an economic shithole as they almost always do. Not that the Dems are much better, and in fact, I view Obama to be a centrist at best, and a very weak leader in general. Yes politicians lie and do not keep their promises, but that makes it all the more important to understand the true platform of both a party and a particular candidate, and just politics in general. Also, not nearly enough people participate in political affairs, especially young people. We are not in particular, a politically astute nation, and that is a bad thing. I blame much of that on the anti-intellectual agenda of the Republican party. Class consciousness is indeed a myth, because we lack it here, lol. But like any other identity construct, it does exist, and does so in a very big way.

Tribalism was essentially a primitive form of communism. The Native Americans really had a near perfect communist system before the Spanish came here and Christianized them. Also I notice you keep mentioning how Communism is total state control. False, a true communist society is one with NO state control. The people, not a heavy handed state, own and share the means to production and distribution of resources. If the state is involved, you are still in capitalism or socialism, depending on the degree of the control (in this respect, communism is actually more similar to perfect free market capitalism than it is to socialism)