Dear Ari & Co
I totally agree and this was precisely my point. And for all the good intentions of keeping a civilized tone on this forum, we are civilized enough not to have to deal with tone-policing either. Thanks to Ted for pointing that out. Now, let's dare to think this issue though fully. Here is a thought experiment. OK?
Can we agree that we want class to disappear or become irrelevant? Can we agree that we want race to disappear or become irrelevant? Can we agree that we want genders to be given equal opportunity and then empowered to decide what to prioritize as respective outcomes of that equality? And that we wish for genders to be equally strong and collaborate? So as to which gender you are born into becomes, again, irrelevant?
This means we remove the narcissistic obsession with identities and differences to be replaced by a class struggle proper. A struggle based on empowerment and not on entitlement. A storytelling about the road upward to the heroic and not downward into the abysmal. You see, I don't believe that people are nearly as complex and/or sophisticated as they themselves think. I believe people are rather simple and utterly predictable once you've studied Freud. That's precisely why I like them. Without pretentions.
So maybe "labour" was too limited a term coming from Marx, well then "contribution" is the term proper. Credit Marx for that. Because that was what he meant. Not a single tribe ever fosters its children to be anything other than contributing adults. What would the alternative be? Identity politics' obsession with keeping victims passivized forever as cry-bullies at The Great Tit of the state and the media? No way. Which is why Marxism and identitarianism are incompatible. And which is why identitarianism is just identitarianism. Without a class analysis overriding everything else, why would there be any difference between the cuckoo's next called "The Identity Left" and the cuckoo's nest called "The Identity Right"? They are both each other's perfect abjects. Caharlottesville literally left no space for any third alternative since Rousseau ruled both camps and class was never part of the equation.
Other than that, I hope Ted Byfield writes his own books instead of poking fun about other writers' calendarian priorities. Especially because he is absolutely right. The postmodernist left has resigned into the falsehood of matrichal pacifism. Its total and utter lack of phallic passion is exactly why philosophers like Land and me have turned our backs on it with such a vengeance. My question is then whether Byfield sees himself as first executioner of people he merely dislikes in a Robespierrian vendetta justified by a purification of the population toward a Rousseuian infantile innocence (Pol Pot did that well and if anybody was a Rousseuian he was, Pol Pot even did his PhD on Rousseau).
If so, Byfield will soon have thousands of Portland hipsters joining his ranks when Charlottesville really magnifies in North America. I'm sure Antifa makes sure his books become bestsellers in no time at all. Or else Byfield is seriously interested in Marxist violence firmly focused on using whatever means necessary to go after the class oppressors of our time, because then that is a book I would be happy to publish myself. He should then regard me as a loyal and listening ally and not as a foe.
Because I like Byfield's desire for phallus a lot, the question, as Freud would say, is where he chooses to direct it. But contrary to Land, I still count on diplomacy to work. I still want the priests to build religious ritual places rather than design military drawing tables. Although time is running short. But pacifism is dead and over and should never have been a leftist axiom to start with. Here Byfield is thoroughly correct. Never castrate a culture more than absolutely necessary. Once we deal with the infantilization of the left we can also open a whole new tool box toward proper empowerment.
So while Byfield has decided not be interested in my ideas based on his dislike of my personality, I pay no attention to his personality but am frankly and sincerely interested in his ideas. You say violence. Then I must ask in return: The Rousseauian variety of ressentiment, or the Marxist variety of empowerment? Or have I misunderstood that there ever was a difference? Because to me it makes a hell of a difference. Like the difference between planned violence or threats thereof and the blind variety where today's social justice warriors are bound to end up soon. It's about to become Paris vs Versailles 1789 all over again. Then because of the printing press, this time because of the internet. My question to Byfield is what we are going to do inside Paris once Versailles has burned down?
Best intentions
Alexander Bard
The primacy of identity has transmorphed class struggle into
ressentiment politics. Generation identity is the bastard child of the
failed alterglobalisation movement. If at a time when poverty is the
source of wealth you insist on denying the economy matters, you sure
inhabit culture, but it's a culture of denial.