A-are we cranks, leftypol?
A-are we cranks, leftypol?
Oliver Ortiz
James Young
No you're not - to call yourselves Cranks would be a step up.
You're all fucking NEETs
Ryder Sullivan
this is usually correct
Luke Powell
Of course socialist theorists usually aren't strictly speaking "working class". One of the worst things about being a prole on the bottom of the social order is that you have neither the money, the time, the inclination nor the opportunity to pursue intellectual goals or anything outside of basic survival for that matter.
By the way, this is a George Orwell quote, isn't it? He's got nerve; his grandfather was a landed gentleman and his parents were of upper-middle-class background. Besides, as far as I know, he lived mostly off his literary career. Should we therefore declare that he's one of those fake "middle-class" socialists?
Angel Baker
Yeah it's not difficult to use Orwell's own rhetoric against him. I mean he's a rich Eton fellow who worked with the government denouncing socialists, yet in this passage he seems to be basically telling a bunch of proletarians (which he thinks means manual workers) dedicated to intellectual pursuits how to lead the masses and how to be more proletarian-ish.
But I still think his criticism is valid and good-hearted. He only gets annoying later in the text when he attempts to psychoanalyze socialists.
Jason Brown
Middle class is a meme, either you own the MoP or you don't.
Landon Carter
Nah cranks are way worse than neets
Logan Reed
This
Blake Price
So much this.
I've seen dead middle-class households, the kids have flown the nest, wage inputs completely ceased.
They desperately try to cling to a lifestyle, which is almost as bleak as poverty.
Liam Reyes
wew
this
Charles Miller
Nah, this is just reactionaries thinking in stereotypes. Nothing new
Jeremiah Brown
Julian Mitchell
But if you are a wager worker and own stock in a stable growing company you're literally middle class by virtue of being prole and bourg in income: you DO own capital (very little, but your stocks increase value by you doing nothing but own them).
Jeez, you guys should fucking listen to David Harvey on this one.
Cameron Bell
Proles with above average labor power
Middle class is still a meme
Jackson Edwards
I'm already a roman catholic…so…
Kayden Foster
I've always interpreted Orwell's critique of such leftists as an almost sort of self-satire. There's not a poster on this board who can't easily find some form or manifestation of leftist whom we feel personally repulsed by being associated with. Equally, we all feel at times that all too familiar survivor's guilt.
In particular, the peculiar less-than-scathing remarks he makes on such folk – that they are fruit juice drinkers, that they wear sandals – and so on, signifies to me a sort of lament over one's own uselessness and failure to embody the glorified form of the oppressed worker. These are the traits of your everyday layman. The horrors of an average man. Not one of us is a hero to the working class, but just your average flawed human being, struggling along in life under capitalism. We have not immolated ourselves in the revolution; we do not walk about torn by war or struggle. Are we not all lifestylists, then? The glory of our aspirations does not often show on our persons, and so we feel a certain shame in how other leftists appear, how we ourselves appear. This, I think, is what Orwell describes here.
We are all cranks, for the revolutionary is a doomed man. And yet we still live.
Tyler Taylor
I think the problem with "middle class" as a term is not so much what it tries to depict but more the confusing and misplaced use of "class".
Personally, I prefer using "white-collar workers". Because that's what it is: a socio-professional group, not a class proper.
Parker Howard
Beautifully put.
Kayden Diaz
this…
Charles Baker
...
David Rogers
Bless you, poster.
That's actually a good way to read Orwell. I remember reading a story about how in the Second World War he was a correspondent for the Labour newspaper and wrote random-ass articles. At one point during the fall of 1942, with the Germans besieging Stalingrad, Orwell published this beautiful essay on catching frogs. Immediately, all these ultra-serious leftists started writing rage-filled letters about how he shouldn't be publishing irrelevant shit - there was a war on and millions of comrades were dying! He responded by pointing out that nobody was ever going to be a 100% perfect Communist warrior that only ever thought about the Cause. He was a Socialist, he said, because he believed in ordinary life and the freedom to truly enjoy it. That was what he had fought for in Catalonia, and what he wrote for.
Bless Orwell
Zachary Cook
I think not even you will be surprised in learning that you're wrong.
Robert Johnson
I'm not surprised to find you're a worthless piece of shit that doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
Carson Murphy
pls turn trip off
gosh darn why don't you stop giving a heck and take a Clorox Cocktail you welsh arsehole!
Cameron Long
What's wrong with nudism?
Xavier Phillips
Where do you think we are?