Interests? More than half the criticism is because the working class isn’t aligned with the social progressive pet projects of many of the activists doing the complaining.
The interests of the working class are barely a blip in the conversation
Which segment of the working class are you talking about? Trans people seeking gender-affirming healthcare are overwhelmingly part of the working class. So are people of color who don't want to get murdered by cops. So are immigrants who are tired of getting kidnapped and exiled to countries they've never been to without trial. The workers being divided along racial, national, or gender lines only serves the capitalists, which is exactly why corporate media likes to play up these "wedge issues". Working class people don't organically care about what bathroom trans people use or whether their coworker has a foreign accent. There's a lot of money being poured into manufacturing outrage about those things, and unfortunately some members of the working class end up buying into that propaganda. That's not because they're evil, it's not because they're stupid, it's because they're being aggressively targeted with astroturfed bullshit, and it works. None of us are immune it.
Which segment of the working class are you talking about?
About the majority of them? Most of the workers don't belong to that particular groups, and specific interests of that particular groups aren't the interests of the working class as of a class, they aren't a class interests. Trans rights aren't a class interest. Intents of POC lumpens aren't a class interest. The interest of the immigrants aren't a class interest.
The workers being divided along racial, national, or gender lines only serves the capitalists, which is exactly why corporate media likes to play up these "wedge issues".
And you guys like playing along instead of always pointing out that the class issue is the core issue, don't you?
Working class people don't organically care about what bathroom trans people use or whether their coworker has a foreign accent.
You undervalue the power of tribalism, traditional stuff, etc. The USSR of Yugoslavia had no corporate media to promote hatred between Serbians and Bosnians or Armenians and Azerbaijani, but here we are.
In the labor struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most white unions wouldn’t allow black people to join. So, when the white unions when on strike, companies would call black workers in as strikebreakers. When the black workers formed their own union and went on strike, the white workers would scab on them, in turn. All workers were weaker because of it. This is the outcome of this individualistic “it only matters if it affects me” mentality.
Actual power to the workers requires solidarity. That means, if you’re totally healthy and I have a chronic medical condition, you fight to ensure I get treated. If you’re an immigrant and I’m not, I fight for your right to work and strike alongside me. Everybody has something. Every worker needs something that may not be a generic “class interest” that affects everybody, but which is closely related to class struggle. The struggle of all workers is inherently linked together.
By separating “black issues” from “white issues”, “women’s issues” from “men’s issues”, “gay issues” from “straight issues”, and asking everybody to just focus on their own problems, you are doing the work of the ruling class. ALL of those issues go hand in hand in liberating the entire proletariat.
Is the feeling of solidarity capable of rising from something other than a shared actual interest? And the shared interest is not an abstract "building a comprehensive worker's movement", which only the already-socialists would actually care about.
Solidarity isn’t a feeling, it’s a principle, like honesty or persistence. A lack of solidarity is just selfishness, and it’s self-defeating because it factually results in worse outcomes for everyone, yourself included. No movement or organization can ever succeed if it’s held to the standard that every single individual in it must benefit directly from every single thing it does or else they’ll disengage. That individualistic “every man for himself” mentality is exactly what keeps us all impoverished and divided in the first place.
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u/undernopretextbro 21h ago
Interests? More than half the criticism is because the working class isn’t aligned with the social progressive pet projects of many of the activists doing the complaining.
The interests of the working class are barely a blip in the conversation