Conservatism was rich people telling small business owners that taxes are theft & govt bureaucrats are a ruling class.
"National" conservatism is @AmericanAffrs cryptofascists telling rural workers & small business owners that the ruling class is urban workers & PMC kids in DSA.
"National" conservatism is @AmericanAffrs cryptofascists telling rural workers & small business owners that the ruling class is urban workers & PMC kids in DSA.
While it is perhaps salutary that the right has discovered class exists -- if only because it allows public discussion to finally approach honesty -- all it has to offer by way of class analysis is scapegoats. Immigrants. "The [middle] managerial overclass." Pick your outgroup.
Actually understanding class society, however, & thus how we've gotten to this point, requires understanding who's making the production and investment decisions, and who must suffer the consequences without a say.
This, needless to say, remains beyond the ability of "natcons."
This, needless to say, remains beyond the ability of "natcons."
Telling how this article, a supposed pearl in the necklace of the new right-wing econ, only briefly mentions by way of parenthesis that the "offshoring" which devastated the working classes of both the cities & the countryside was orchestrated by the big owners -- & like this: 
It's philistine to assert that gentrification, a complex phenomenon occurring in multiple stages over long periods of time, is simply the "replacement" of the billionaires by "their" (???) downwardly upper-middle-class kids.
But it's also convenient, since the elision allows you to draw attention away from the real masters of production and investment, in favor of attacks on a vague cultural "elite" ("overclass," lol) of hipsters vs. the based & noble hicks.
Unfortunately for our would-be economist, various facts get in the way of his feelings on this subject.
The cultural divide between town and country, while not unimportant, is not the class structure of society.
The professionals don't rule society; the big absentee owners do.
The cultural divide between town and country, while not unimportant, is not the class structure of society.
The professionals don't rule society; the big absentee owners do.
The fact that there are, rather than a monolithic proletariat, a number of working classes divided by labor (manufacturing, service, transportation, & care work) and identity (race, gender, etc), does not mean you can substitute culture for class or one set of workers for rulers.
Hell, Lind’s proposed class structure doesn’t even do a better job than the most vulgar Marxisms of explaining intra-class income divides.
To get his overclass, he has to divide it into an upper stratum & a lower stratum; whats worse, the former blurs managers into billionaires.
To get his overclass, he has to divide it into an upper stratum & a lower stratum; whats worse, the former blurs managers into billionaires.
The model isn't very good for much of anything, in fact, except dressing up the old alt-right canards of "Cultural Marxism," "replacement," "social justice warriors," etc. in a more respectable sociological garb.
It's a mask for what's going on, not an explanation of it.
It's a mask for what's going on, not an explanation of it.
This essay is a symptom of a wider disease.
A coherent "national conservative" line is beginning to develop which sees an exclusively urban & PMC Left (pro-immigration & anti-tradition/nationalism) opposed to the true interests of the workers -- especially rural and white ones.
A coherent "national conservative" line is beginning to develop which sees an exclusively urban & PMC Left (pro-immigration & anti-tradition/nationalism) opposed to the true interests of the workers -- especially rural and white ones.
The purpose of this line is twofold.
First, it's a way of getting *ahead* of the socialists, coopting parts of our economic programme (especially planning) for a nationalist project. Neoliberalism's failure has become apparent to everyone; they want to fix it before we do.
First, it's a way of getting *ahead* of the socialists, coopting parts of our economic programme (especially planning) for a nationalist project. Neoliberalism's failure has become apparent to everyone; they want to fix it before we do.
Second, it's a way of getting into *bed* with socialists. Many socialists -- frustrated by the authoritarian excesses of identitarians, or just more conservative on social issues -- have become doctrinaire anti-woke class reductionists. Natcons want to seduce them to the right.
(This tendency by rightists to seek a synthesis between the far left and far right for the purposes of recruiting leftists, incidentally, is called red-brownism. It's a common part of fascist history. See below for a history with some examples.)
libcom.org/library/invest…
libcom.org/library/invest…
But the point, at any rate, is that the model is simply not a true description of the world.
You don't need to be a right-winger on social issues or a class reductionist to be critical of identitarianism. I just did it here, and I'm neither.
You don't need to be a right-winger on social issues or a class reductionist to be critical of identitarianism. I just did it here, and I'm neither.
And socialism today isn't a bunch of PMC wokescolds in cities. It's a class coalition -- small, incipient, but growing -- between workers of all stripes (rural, urban, factory, service) and the downwardly mobile wing of the PMC to expand democracy & foil the big owners & bosses.
Now, it's a simple fact that other class coalitions, rooted in other politics, are possible. And part of the reason one would invent a model like this, with its warped view of the present moment, is to bring *those* coalitions into being.
That's why we must oppose it vigorously.
That's why we must oppose it vigorously.
What's really at stake is the future of democracy itself.
Are our current problems because we had to much of it -- or too little?
Will authoritarians be given even more tools -- nationalist-traditionalist indoctrination, planning -- or will they be beaten & power decentralized?
Are our current problems because we had to much of it -- or too little?
Will authoritarians be given even more tools -- nationalist-traditionalist indoctrination, planning -- or will they be beaten & power decentralized?
Yet it must be said: the natcons' ability to spread their memes so successfully is a product of the Left's failures.
The little Left magazines, after all, have written much illiterate nonsense themselves on the class system & PMC -- who do you think the natcons copied it from?
The little Left magazines, after all, have written much illiterate nonsense themselves on the class system & PMC -- who do you think the natcons copied it from?
The vulgarization, rather than popularization, of ideas by e.g. Barbara Ehrenreich and Eric Olin Wright as part of intra-Left disputes has done a lot of damage to our ability to tell what the hell is even going on with the class system today -- and given our enemies fodder.
The question of what the social classes actually are today, how they've evolved, what the professional-managerial class is, and what it has to do with socialism are vitally important to big questions for the movement.
They await anything like an adequate analysis.
They await anything like an adequate analysis.
