When I said that I'm unusual in that I have gentility without cash, what I meant is that I'm a poor person with rich parents, which is to say that I'm not clearly proletarian, but I'm not clearly bourgeois, either. The thing is, because of generational shifts in political ideology, what with Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, an historically large portion of young people in the West are in this strange boat, that is, being poor people with rich parents.
I mean, yes, obviously, Bourdieu talked about this to some extent as "forms of capital", and, obviously, I know that, yes, Bourdieu was a mixed bag, in that, among other things, his analysis of less-monetary but no-less-beneficial relations to power very quickly got recuperated as the corporate-HR "check your privilege" media spectacle we know and love...
So I guess my point is that when you say that identifying as LGBTQIA or using the specially flavored Pride flag of the month is "bourgeois", it kind of comes across as saying that angry 19-year-olds on Twitter—who still may very well have, for instance, been cut off financially by their rich parents for being gay (this did not happen to me, but it very much happens to others)—are "bourgeois" solely for all of the non-monetary capital they received up until that point.
Which is to say that calling terminally online trans kids drowning in student-loan debt "bourgeois" is about as coherent or Marxist as calling people "bourgeois" for eating fresh vegetables or whatever.
So anyway maybe don't call the rando teenagers who are mean to you online "bourgeois" if you want anyone to take your legitimately Marxist class analysis seriously?
And maybe recognize that Late Capitalism has done a really good job of muddling inter-generational class reproduction and, as a consequence, has done a really good job of muddling materialist class analysis under the terms of a German dude writing in 1850s London?
Maybe recognize that materialist conceptions of class inherently dialectical, so the contradictions liberals abuse in order to recuperate Marxist concepts are kind of just part of the dialectic, and that trying to squeeze people into Victorian-era class definitions at this people is farcically idealist?
And then maybe recognize that being a tragicomic farce is really not a great way to achieve any meaningful structural change in the direction of a Communist society?
I am not saying "identifying as LGBTQIA+ is bourgeois," I am saying "LGBTQIA+ is a bourgeois ideology." Extremely big difference; as an ideology, "LGBTQIA+" is a means to answer concerns people in sexual and gender minority groups that does not threaten the mode of production and thus the ruling order.
Yes, well, the problem here arises from your general preoccupation with the spectacular elements of LGBTQIA+ identity, which is to say you're doing a shit job if you don't mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater (the "baby" being the LGBTQIA+-identifying people you insist you do not see as bourgeois).
Another way of looking at this is that your insistence on redefining a generally vague word that exists in wide use in the popular lexicon demonstrates a preference for contrarianism over rhetorical effectiveness.
From a linguistic standpoint, any sentence "LGBTQIA+ is..." must inherently be meaningless, unless, I guess, it ends with "...is a series of letters". To get a bit further into the semiotic weeds, "LGBTQIA+" is—like "woke"—a "floating signifier", and it is a fool's errand to attempt to pin it down to any particular meaning, because it will immediately float away towards whatever pre-existing meaning the reader has already attached to it.
One can only legitimately criticize "the series of letters" or "wokeness" *as empty signifiers*, where *the emptiness* is what makes them useless for structural change. The emptiness (and consequent uselessness) are what make them so ripe for bourgeois recuperation.
"LGBTQIA+ is a bourgeois ideology" is a thoroughly nonsensical thing to say, and you're playing dumb when you try to insist that you're not saying "identifying as LGBTQIA+ is bourgeois."
If you actually wanted to, you could make an effective point about bourgeois recuperation of liberation movements, but clearly you'd rather be a troll than see any meaningful progress towards Communism.
I am making that point, though, not any kind of pedantic distinction, "LGBTQ+" is absolutely recuperated, and thus, is a bourgeois ideology. That is what recuperation does, explicitly. It also wasn't always called a variant of "LGBTQ+," in fact, "LGB" came up in the 1980s and has updated as queer struggle (again, for lack of a better word) has been institutionalized. My opinion is that the popular way SGM are addressed is entirely co-opted, and thus, bourgeois ideology.
This is not any kind of trolling or attack. We are very much on the same side, here (or should be).
As I understand it, the defining feature of Leninism is a kind of ruthlessly pragmatic pursuit of concrete goals vis-a-vis Marxism.
I don’t see any of that here.
You know what tendency seethes in (usually justified) _ressentiment_ and does fuck all else? Trotskyism. Sure, be Trotskyist if you want. But a Trotskyist pretending to love Stalin is a farce.
I mean, I *personally* get what you’re trying to say, but you seem stubbornly set on saying it in a way that knowingly facilitates misinterpretion, which is what I mean when I describe this rhetorical style as pathological contrarianism at the expense of any meaningful impact.
You perfectly well know that people misinterpret you, and yet you’d rather stand on a corner continuing to yell into a void the same things you perfectly well know will get a rise out of people due to preventable misinterpretation, and this sort of stubborn futility is *the very definition of trolling*.
Being theoretically correct doesn’t inherently mean anything when it comes to any sort of materialist dialectic. And expending time and effort into this sort of meaningless idealism at the expense of material impact is not a materialist approach to activism.
Now, far be it from me to say you have any moral imperative to engage in materially impactful activism. It’s just extremely frustrating reading you complain about the futility of other people’s recuperated rhetoric when you deliberately engage in exactly the same thing.
When I said that I'm unusual in that I have gentility without cash, what I meant is that I'm a poor person with rich parents, which is to say that I'm not clearly proletarian, but I'm not clearly bourgeois, either. The thing is, because of generational shifts in political ideology, what with Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, an historically large portion of young people in the West are in this strange boat, that is, being poor people with rich parents.
I mean, yes, obviously, Bourdieu talked about this to some extent as "forms of capital", and, obviously, I know that, yes, Bourdieu was a mixed bag, in that, among other things, his analysis of less-monetary but no-less-beneficial relations to power very quickly got recuperated as the corporate-HR "check your privilege" media spectacle we know and love...
So I guess my point is that when you say that identifying as LGBTQIA or using the specially flavored Pride flag of the month is "bourgeois", it kind of comes across as saying that angry 19-year-olds on Twitter—who still may very well have, for instance, been cut off financially by their rich parents for being gay (this did not happen to me, but it very much happens to others)—are "bourgeois" solely for all of the non-monetary capital they received up until that point.
Which is to say that calling terminally online trans kids drowning in student-loan debt "bourgeois" is about as coherent or Marxist as calling people "bourgeois" for eating fresh vegetables or whatever.
So anyway maybe don't call the rando teenagers who are mean to you online "bourgeois" if you want anyone to take your legitimately Marxist class analysis seriously?
And maybe recognize that Late Capitalism has done a really good job of muddling inter-generational class reproduction and, as a consequence, has done a really good job of muddling materialist class analysis under the terms of a German dude writing in 1850s London?
Maybe recognize that materialist conceptions of class inherently dialectical, so the contradictions liberals abuse in order to recuperate Marxist concepts are kind of just part of the dialectic, and that trying to squeeze people into Victorian-era class definitions at this people is farcically idealist?
And then maybe recognize that being a tragicomic farce is really not a great way to achieve any meaningful structural change in the direction of a Communist society?
I am not saying "identifying as LGBTQIA+ is bourgeois," I am saying "LGBTQIA+ is a bourgeois ideology." Extremely big difference; as an ideology, "LGBTQIA+" is a means to answer concerns people in sexual and gender minority groups that does not threaten the mode of production and thus the ruling order.
Yes, well, the problem here arises from your general preoccupation with the spectacular elements of LGBTQIA+ identity, which is to say you're doing a shit job if you don't mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater (the "baby" being the LGBTQIA+-identifying people you insist you do not see as bourgeois).
Another way of looking at this is that your insistence on redefining a generally vague word that exists in wide use in the popular lexicon demonstrates a preference for contrarianism over rhetorical effectiveness.
From a linguistic standpoint, any sentence "LGBTQIA+ is..." must inherently be meaningless, unless, I guess, it ends with "...is a series of letters". To get a bit further into the semiotic weeds, "LGBTQIA+" is—like "woke"—a "floating signifier", and it is a fool's errand to attempt to pin it down to any particular meaning, because it will immediately float away towards whatever pre-existing meaning the reader has already attached to it.
One can only legitimately criticize "the series of letters" or "wokeness" *as empty signifiers*, where *the emptiness* is what makes them useless for structural change. The emptiness (and consequent uselessness) are what make them so ripe for bourgeois recuperation.
"LGBTQIA+ is a bourgeois ideology" is a thoroughly nonsensical thing to say, and you're playing dumb when you try to insist that you're not saying "identifying as LGBTQIA+ is bourgeois."
If you actually wanted to, you could make an effective point about bourgeois recuperation of liberation movements, but clearly you'd rather be a troll than see any meaningful progress towards Communism.
I am making that point, though, not any kind of pedantic distinction, "LGBTQ+" is absolutely recuperated, and thus, is a bourgeois ideology. That is what recuperation does, explicitly. It also wasn't always called a variant of "LGBTQ+," in fact, "LGB" came up in the 1980s and has updated as queer struggle (again, for lack of a better word) has been institutionalized. My opinion is that the popular way SGM are addressed is entirely co-opted, and thus, bourgeois ideology.
This is not any kind of trolling or attack. We are very much on the same side, here (or should be).
As I understand it, the defining feature of Leninism is a kind of ruthlessly pragmatic pursuit of concrete goals vis-a-vis Marxism.
I don’t see any of that here.
You know what tendency seethes in (usually justified) _ressentiment_ and does fuck all else? Trotskyism. Sure, be Trotskyist if you want. But a Trotskyist pretending to love Stalin is a farce.
I mean, I *personally* get what you’re trying to say, but you seem stubbornly set on saying it in a way that knowingly facilitates misinterpretion, which is what I mean when I describe this rhetorical style as pathological contrarianism at the expense of any meaningful impact.
You perfectly well know that people misinterpret you, and yet you’d rather stand on a corner continuing to yell into a void the same things you perfectly well know will get a rise out of people due to preventable misinterpretation, and this sort of stubborn futility is *the very definition of trolling*.
Being theoretically correct doesn’t inherently mean anything when it comes to any sort of materialist dialectic. And expending time and effort into this sort of meaningless idealism at the expense of material impact is not a materialist approach to activism.
Now, far be it from me to say you have any moral imperative to engage in materially impactful activism. It’s just extremely frustrating reading you complain about the futility of other people’s recuperated rhetoric when you deliberately engage in exactly the same thing.