The neoliberal left

[Lexicus]

Got it, so if an ethnic minority disagrees with what you think they ought to believe, it ceases to be a minority perspective. How convenient for you.

If a black person says that black people have genetically lower IQs than white people, does that magically become a non-racist perspective simply because a black person is saying it? I call a perspective 'white' depending on whether I judge it to reinforce white supremacy, not depending on the identity of the person who holds it.

How does helping people based on their class rather than their race or gender reproduce the oppression of people who aren't white men? If someone is poor, they will get help. Since a disproportionate number of black people are poor, they will still benefit disproportionately. Since a disproportionate amount of single mothers are poor, they will also benefit disproportionately.

Do you think black people can escape racism by becoming rich? If the answer is no, then you agree with me that in addition to whatever generic redistributive policy you want, we also need some specific solutions oriented towards black people. My whole point is directed towards people who think all we have to do is "fix" class inequality and other kinds of inequality will take care of themselves. If you aren't one of those people then you can stop feeling so personally attacked by my posts.

On the contrary, you are the one responsible for your use of language. If you willfully ignore connotation, you're the one responsible. Try replacing "reactionary" in the quote above with N***** and see how well that works for you

Look, I've already explained exactly why I called it reactionary, even including a definition from wikipedia and explaining how it meets that definition. You completely ignored that and decided to start us down this time-wasting tangent instead. Your analogy is also crap because "reactionary" is not a racist term of abuse. Indeed, I find your attempt to imply that "reactionary" is remotely comparable to the n-word to be mildly offensive.

 

[VarrangianBard]

If a black person says that black people have genetically lower IQs than white people, does that magically become a non-racist perspective simply because a black person is saying it? I call a perspective 'white' depending on whether I judge it to reinforce white supremacy, not depending on the identity of the person who holds it.

So by that logic white people can have a black perspective? Or a Native American perspective? I'm sorry, but you don't get to say what white people believe, what black people believe, or what any other group believes just to support your own argument. And saying that a white perspective is inherently white supremacist is incredibly offensive.

Do you think black people can escape racism by becoming rich? If the answer is no, then you agree with me that in addition to whatever generic redistributive policy you want, we also need some specific solutions oriented towards black people. My whole point is directed towards people who think all we have to do is "fix" class inequality and other kinds of inequality will take care of themselves. If you aren't one of those people then you can stop feeling so personally attacked by my posts.

I do believe that. I believe any attempt by the government to directly enforce racial equality is not only in of itself racist, but more importantly only serves to fuel racial resentment and legally entrench the concept of race.
Add that to the fact that it doesn't even work. Look at college application bonuses for example, that make it easier for blacks to get into good schools than whites. What that means is that whites and asians have to work harder to achieve the same goal, meaning that they are more qualified to be there. Unsurprisingly, whites and asians generally do better in college, and then go on to have more successful careers. We saw the same thing during the early days of the PRC. Children of party members didn't have to work as hard as children of "capitalists" to achieve the same level of education. Very quickly as a result, it was the children of capitalists who were running things, which led to a new round of purges.

Look, I've already explained exactly why I called it reactionary, even including a definition from wikipedia and explaining how it meets that definition. You completely ignored that and decided to start us down this time-wasting tangent instead. Your analogy is also crap because "reactionary" is not a racist term of abuse. Indeed, I find your attempt to imply that "reactionary" is remotely comparable to the n-word to be mildly offensive.

I'm not comparing the two words, I'm comparing your defense of the word to arguments made by white people defending their use of the other. Yes, your definition is technically correct. But when you use reactionary to describe something, you imply that it is hyper-conservative.

 

[Lexicus]

So by that logic white people can have a black perspective? Or a Native American perspective? I'm sorry, but you don't get to say what white people believe, what black people believe, or what any other group believes just to support your own argument. And saying that a white perspective is inherently white supremacist is incredibly offensive.

I just got through saying that I think the only meaning of "white perspective" is "inherently white supremacist." That's why I don't think I would even use the phrases "black perspective" or "Native American perspective."

I'm not comparing the two words, I'm comparing your defense of the word to arguments made by white people defending their use of the other.

Which is to implicitly compare the two words. Reactionary is not a slur, except to reactionaries who are in denial about being reactionary. You seem to fit the bill there judging from this:

I do believe that. I believe any attempt by the government to directly enforce racial equality is not only in of itself racist, but more importantly only serves to fuel racial resentment and legally entrench the concept of race.

This is classic reactionary white nonsense, justified moreover by a classic racist myth (here, the UNQUALIFIED BLACK PEOPLE myth) and a fascinating little story about the Chinese Communist Party.

 

[VarrangianBard]

This is classic reactionary white nonsense, justified moreover by a classic racist myth (here, the UNQUALIFIED BLACK PEOPLE myth) and a fascinating little story about the Chinese Communist Party

I'm not saying black people are unqualified. I'm saying people people that don't have to work as hard to achieve the same goal are less qualified, and thus a less selective college acceptance program inadvertently puts black people as a group at a disadvantage. If acceptance criteria bonuses were tied strictly to class, this would be less of an issue, becuase it wouldn't single black people out, and thus make them less cohesive as a socio-economic group. That would INCREASE their social mobility.

Which is to implicitly compare the two words. Reactionary is not a slur, except to reactionaries who are in denial about being reactionary. You seem to fit the bill there judging from this:

lol now you're explicitly using "reactionary" as an ad hominem. "White" too.

I just got through saying that I think the only meaning of "white perspective" is "inherently white supremacist." That's why I don't think I would even use the phrases "black perspective" or "Native American perspective."

You realize you are the one being racist here, right?

 

[Lexicus]

I'm not saying black people are unqualified. I'm saying people people that don't have to work as hard to achieve the same goal are less qualified, and thus a less selective college acceptance program inadvertently puts black people as a group at a disadvantage. If acceptance criteria bonuses were tied strictly to class, this would be less of an issue, becuase it wouldn't single black people out, and thus make them less cohesive as a socio-economic group. That would INCREASE their social mobility.

We have tried doing college admissions with class-based help only. It didn't solve the problem of racial disparity in college admissions. Non-whites were still underrepresented. Why do you suppose that could be?

lol now you're explicitly using "reactionary" as an ad hominem. "White" too.

I enjoy shaking things up that way. It's always worth it when people like you clutch your pearls and get all faint.

You realize you are the one being racist here, right?

Maybe you can explain just how, and against whom?

 

[Katie88]

If a black person says that black people have genetically lower IQs than white people, does that magically become a non-racist perspective simply because a black person is saying it?

Wouldn't that just be a perspective based on what we know about IQ: that it's mostly heritable, this heritability peaking in one's late teens and continuing well into adulthood; and that people of African heritage tend to have a lower IQ than people of European heritage.

I call a perspective 'white' depending on whether I judge it to reinforce white supremacy, not depending on the identity of the person who holds it.

This is why no one takes the far left seriously.

 

[VarrangianBard]

We have tried doing college admissions with class-based help only. It didn't solve the problem of racial disparity in college admissions. Non-whites were still underrepresented. Why do you suppose that could be?

Because primary school is still largely segregated, maybe?

Maybe you can explain just how, and against whom?

Saying a "white perspective" is "inherently white supremecist" is like saying a jewish perspective is inherently duplicitous, or a black perspective is inherently uneducated. Surely you see how those are racist?

Wouldn't that just be a perspective based on what we know about IQ: that it's mostly heritable, this heritability peaking in one's late teens and continuing well into adulthood; and that people of African heritage tend to have a lower IQ than people of European heritage.

IQ is a poor measure of intelligence, and is largely hereditary as much or more because of how the children were raised than because of genetics.

 

[Katie88]

IQ is a poor measure of intelligence, and is largely hereditary as much or more because of how the children were raised than because of genetics.

Well, that's certainly controversial (see separated twin studies, for example), but my point was that a black person who held such a view would have a solid basis for it.

 

[VarrangianBard]

Well, that's certainly controversial (see separated twin studies, for example), but my point was that a black person who held such a view would have a solid basis for it.

I get your point, I'm just virtue signaling.

 

[Traitorfish]

Oh sorry, I guess none of those countries were ever ruled by despots who didn't give a damn about the people. I guess Henry the VIII, Napoleon, Charles the 12th of Sweden, etc. were all just figments of our collective imagination, America never had a revolution to free themselves from perceived tyranny, and former British colonies weren't offshoots of a society that gradually freed itself from hereditary rule. No, of course, democracy just HAPPENS. How could I forget?

Henry VIII wasn't an absolute monarch, he was just a dick. Absolutism didn't make inroads in Britain until the reign of James I, which in the first place proved a short-lived experiment, as Charles I found at the cost of his throne and his head, and in the second fed directly into a fifty-year period of civil war, during which three subsequent regimes were violently deposed; hardly a legacy of stability and reform.

Napoleon ended was overthrown in 1815, and the sixty years following his reign saw three monarchies and two republics, succeeding each other through two revolutions, three insurrections, a coup and an abdication. France didn't achieve a lasting constitutional settlement until 1875, fully sixty years after the fall of the First Empire.

Charles II's regime was quietly reformed into a constitutional monarchy after Sweden's defeat in the Great Northern War, and although contemporaries tended to see this as a reaction to the excesses of Wittelsbach absolutism, it might plausible serve as an example of dictatorship providing the stability for democracy- except that Gustav III staged a self-coup in 1772, which reinstituted absolutism, until his son Gustav IV was overthrown by a palace coup in 1809, which was followed by a moderate constitutional monarchy, leaving Sweden a "maybe" at best.

The American Revolutionary War was an eight year civil war that is, among other things, known as "the Revolutionary War", suggesting strife and discontinuity rather more than stability and continuity, so that is just a supremely bad example for you to cite.

Democracy doesn't just happen. But I'm not the one arguing that.

 

[Lexicus]

Saying a "white perspective" is "inherently white supremecist" is like saying a jewish perspective is inherently duplicitous, or a black perspective is inherently uneducated. Surely you see how those are racist?

Let's take a step back. What do you think I mean when I say "white, male, reactionary perspective"?

Wouldn't that just be a perspective based on what we know about IQ:

Wow, and now you chime in with actual scientific racism. Love it. Can you tell me why you have "88" in your username?

 

[Katie88]

Wow, and now you chime in with actual scientific racism. Love it. Can you tell me why you have "88" in your username?

What an odd question. I was born in 1988, and I wasn't very imaginative when picking a username.

Now can you tell me if you actually disagree with the two claims I made and support that disagreement with some facts?

 

[Lexicus]

Now can you tell me if you actually disagree with the two claims I made and support that disagreement with some facts?

I don't disagree with either fact. What I disagree with is the proposition that a trait's being heritable necessarily means it is genetic (I also disagree that a trait being 'genetic' is meaningful in the way I believe you may be suggesting, but we'll get to that later). I also probably disagree with you on what, exactly, IQ measures, but we can get to that later too.

What an odd question. I was born in 1988, and I wasn't very imaginative when picking a username.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_white_nationalism

I believe you, but you should be aware of that.

 

[Traitorfish]

The entire 19th century, and much of the 20th. Even today there are repeated calls (e.g. the OP) for "the left" to go back to the imagined olden days when we focused on economics and ignored identity.

You're still talking at least two generations back, at a minimum. People who were old and out of touch in the era of the New Left, a movement staffed by the grand parents of the people in OWS or BLM. This doesn't strike me as a really current concern.

Today, yes, there are people who focus on economics over identity, but is economics really the same thing as class, and is priority the same thing as reduction? At best, we're working with some slightly jumbled vocabulary.

It seems like you're defining "the left" here as a very small section of what I would call "the left."

If we're talking about class, we presumably mean that part of the left which talked explicitly about class, which for most of American history has been a very small part of the left.

Please explain further. I don't know what narrative you mean. My view is that identity politics began long ago in the mists of prehistory, not as a "response" to class-reductionism. Class-reductionism is to some degree an imagined thing in any case, as people in the present-day who call for the left to ignore identity and focus on economics are in fact themselves practicing (white, male, reactionary) identity politics.

"Identity politics", as the term is conventionally used, describes a specific set of politics which emerged out of the New Left, somewhere to the left of liberalism and the right of actual socialism, which emphasised individual identity as the basis of political activity, which shifted the framing of minority issues away from material concerns towards questions of dignity and status. That isn't to say that these couldn't be important questions, but the weight of emphasis given to them evidently represented a lurch to the right, towards a politics concerned with an equitable settlement within the existing structure, rather than with challenging the existing structure.

This is something that mostly comes of the United States, where the civil rights and womens' movement, and later the LGBT movement, were quickly been coopted into a Democratic establishment that viewed "working class" as the height of vulgarity. Britain, and Europe generally, were slower to follow this pattern, as the dominant parties of the left were still explicitly working class parties until at least the 1980s, and that set a different tone for the whole discourse. To shift away from race, and without meaning to diminish the courage or resilience of grassroots American activists, it's hard to imagine something like Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners, an explicitly working class and LGBT campaign in support of the Miners' Strike of 1984-5, occurring in 1980s America.

Liberal "identity politics" is not simply a swing of the pendulum too far in one direction, it's a specific outcome of the failure of the New Left, and specifically the American New Left.

 

[Katie88]

I don't disagree with either fact. What I disagree with is the proposition that a trait's being heritable necessarily means it is genetic (I also disagree that a trait being 'genetic' is meaningful in the way I believe you may be suggesting, but we'll get to that later). I also probably disagree with you on what, exactly, IQ measures, but we can get to that later too.

Okay, fair enough. I thought what I posted was uncontroversial. Heritable and genetic are not the same thing, but they are strongly linked.

I agree that what exactly G measures is a controversial subject. But IQ is well correlated with success for groups of people, i.e. that a group of people within a certain IQ range will generally fall within a range of outcomes, like income, education levels, health, etc. Of course it's very difficult to bring that down to an individual level.

But again, your point that I disagreed with was about a black person who looked at the facts and came to that conclusion having a 'white' perspective rather than just a view that anyone, regardless of their racial/ethnic background, could take.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_white_nationalism

I believe you, but you should be aware of that.

I've heard of it before, but to be honest I don't spend much time thinking about Neo-Nazis.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think there may be some conflating of "white (or black) perspective" with the perspective of a specific white (or black) person.

 

[innonimatu]

"Identity politics", as the term is conventionally used, describes a specific set of politics which emerged out of the New Left, somewhere to the left of liberalism and the right of actual socialism, which emphasised individual identity as the basis of political activity, which shifted the framing of minority issues away from material concerns towards questions of dignity and status. That isn't to say that these couldn't be important questions, but the weight of emphasis given to them evidently represented a lurch to the right, towards a politics concerned with an equitable settlement within the existing structure, rather than with challenging the existing structure.

Not just a lurch to the right, it seems to me a deliberate strategic distraction meant to eliminate other issues from the agenda.

This is something that mostly comes of the United States, where the civil rights and womens' movement, and later the LGBT movement, were quickly been coopted into a Democratic establishment that viewed "working class" as the height of vulgarity. Britain, and Europe generally, were slower to follow this pattern, as the dominant parties of the left were still explicitly working class parties until at least the 1980s, and that set a different tone for the whole discourse. To shift away from race, and without meaning to diminish the courage or resilience of grassroots American activists, it's hard to imagine something like Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners, an explicitly working class and LGBT campaign in support of the Miners' Strike of 1984-5, occurring in 1980s America.

Liberal "identity politics" is not simply a swing of the pendulum too far in one direction, it's a specific outcome of the failure of the New Left, and specifically the American New Left.

And the export of that model to Europe is something I very much resent. Fortunately it has not been successfully exported, one generations seemed captured by it but then the 2008 financial crisis hit, more open repression of the working classes in each european country followed, and people began noticing how they were being manipulated to concede on the essentials of power in exchange for some pretend-status. Even the UK, which suffers from a political system favoring little choice, there was a hopefully successful rebellion by those who noticed that economic power conditions everything else.

One was attempted in the USA but the establishment of the Democratic Party managed to strangulate it. For now.

 

[Lexicus]

If we're talking about class, we presumably mean that part of the left which talked explicitly about class, which for most of American history has been a very small part of the left.

I don't agree that this is true. Even conservatives in the US talked about class for decades. The "no one talks about class" thing is a much more recent development. Of course, if by "talk explicitly about class" you mean "hew to Marxist dogma about class" then you have more of a point.

"Identity politics", as the term is conventionally used, describes a specific set of politics which emerged out of the New Left, somewhere to the left of liberalism and the right of actual socialism, which emphasised individual identity as the basis of political activity, which shifted the framing of minority issues away from material concerns towards questions of dignity and status.

I don't agree that this is true, either. As I noted in my first post in this thread the originator of the phrase "identity politics" was an "actual socialist", even by your lights. And my view is that the way the term is "conventionally" used obscures more than it illuminates.
In any case, though, the bell has been rung and it won't be unrung. All this quibbling over which abstraction we should 'prioritize', or consider more important or "fundamental" is entirely beside the point. The historical process is ongoing.

being manipulated to concede on the essentials of power in exchange for some pretend-status.

The funny thing is this describes precisely how whiteness operates! Ultimately I think it's how masculinity operates too. Of course, the sad thing is status isn't exactly pretend, even though it's not exactly real...

 

[VarrangianBard]

Henry VIII wasn't an absolute monarch, he was just a dick. Absolutism didn't make inroads in Britain until the reign of James I, which in the first place proved a short-lived experiment, as Charles I found at the cost of his throne and his head, and in the second fed directly into a fifty-year period of civil war, during which three subsequent regimes were violently deposed; hardly a legacy of stability and reform.

Napoleon ended was overthrown in 1815, and the sixty years following his reign saw three monarchies and two republics, succeeding each other through two revolutions, three insurrections, a coup and an abdication. France didn't achieve a lasting constitutional settlement until 1875, fully sixty years after the fall of the First Empire.

Charles II's regime was quietly reformed into a constitutional monarchy after Sweden's defeat in the Great Northern War, and although contemporaries tended to see this as a reaction to the excesses of Wittelsbach absolutism, it might plausible serve as an example of dictatorship providing the stability for democracy- except that Gustav III staged a self-coup in 1772, which reinstituted absolutism, until his son Gustav IV was overthrown by a palace coup in 1809, which was followed by a moderate constitutional monarchy, leaving Sweden a "maybe" at best.

The American Revolutionary War was an eight year civil war that is, among other things, known as "the Revolutionary War", suggesting strife and discontinuity rather more than stability and continuity, so that is just a supremely bad example for you to cite.

Democracy doesn't just happen. But I'm not the one arguing that.

I think we're on the same page. Sorry if I was a bit aggressive and unclear earlier. I was just trying to say that often a dictatorship is necessary to develop the social advancements needed for a republican government. I wasn't trying to say that absolute dictatorships always directly led to peaceful republican rule. And yeah my examples were pretty **** sorry.

 

[VarrangianBard]

Let's take a step back. What do you think I mean when I say "white, male, reactionary perspective"?

Well, you've defined white as "white supremacist", and reactionary as "not far left", so I guess male means something along the lines of "sexist pig-dog"