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Class consciousness is entirely too intellectual and nerdy to ever be popular, you'll never convince someone swayed by bumper stickers to read and thoughtfully

Class consciousness is entirely too intellectual and nerdy to ever be popular, you'll never convince someone swayed by bumper stickers to read and thoughtfully consider your 500-word ultra-concise argument for it. "Vibes" and populism drive voter behavior. Cheap populist messages will always resonate at least as well as even an ultra-simplified "it's all of us versus the owners of capital". Us vs. Them is what populism is, but getting the right Them according to class consciousness is really hard (and it'll constantly be at risk of someone subverting it to something else, probably "the Jews and other child-sacrificing Evil Cultists in their sway" because it's usually that for some stupid fucking reason). Even Bernie had to settle for the shitty and inaccurate "the 1%" to get even a little traction with class consciousness on a mass scale. Right now outright conspiratorial thinkers are ascendant and doing the usual thing of being some of the elites (the capitalists) we should all be against, while painting everything as the fault of other elites (how are they differently elite? Well, follow their stupid threads of "evidence" and you always end up at blood libel, truly, it's so consistent that it's boring)

dudefeliciano 2y ago
> Class consciousness is entirely too intellectual and nerdy to ever be popular, well yea, and Marx is a taboo, nothing new there. Those ideas can be repackaged though, in a way that won't make people foam at the mouth because of the "communist sounding words" (thinking of gary's economics for example). I agree with what you said, it's easier to package an "Anti-something" message, as we see with all the anti-immigrant messaging in the US and Europe, the Anti-Billionaire movement still has not gained even a fraction of the traction though.
- lynx97 2y ago
  Well, I dont remember any "immigrants for the poor" movements. But I know from personal experience that Lions Club and Rotary people actually sometimes do something useful for the poor with their money... Given that context, do you really not understand that you shouldn't bite the hand that might feed you? Immigrants are never going to feed the poor and disadvantaged. The oh-so-bad-and-evil rich people might at least sometimes.
  - dudefeliciano 2y ago
    Immigrants are a net positive contributor to the welfare and pension system in the EU, they are statistically very likely to be the literal hand that feeds you when you will be old and in need of care. I never said rich people are bad and evil, just that they should pay their fair share. For their own good too, to live in a more harmonious society, but maybe this is better.
    - lynx97 2y ago
      Let me expand a bit on this. I personally think it is a very bad sign for our society that we are about to outsource the responsibilities around caring for the elderly to (mostly) female workers from neighboring countries to save a few bucks. Personally mostly because I find the prospect of a language barrier in care horryfing. I don't want to imagine how it must feel for those we already subject to this treatment to be cared for by someone who barely understands your language. In that context I find it hard to feel cozy about the future of care being "solved" by using immigrant workforce. Regarding pensions, all I can do is hope the statistics you are refering to are actually true. The cases I know about are heavily blocked on the language barrier when it comes to finding a "good" job. The best positive example I can think of are construction workers where it seems to work quite well that one or two guys speak the local language well enough to translate/coordinate with the rest of the crew. But most other cases of immigrants I know are actually pretty much blocked on the language issue. Only some are talented enough to learn a new language fluently in a few years, and some languages are actually pretty hard to learn. I count me in on that group. If I had to learn a new language at my age, I would probably do very badly. I didn't even pick up enough spanish during a 2 month trip through south america to do any interesting conversation. It would probably take me years to be able to respond to a random sentence from a native speaker of anything other then english and my native language. You might be able to survive with just English in the tech industry. But in pretty much every other industry, especially service, it is hard to find a job without good language skills. So most of the examples in that area that I am currently thinking of actually ended up depending on the welfare state for income instead of contributing to the pension system.
      - 2y ago

dudefeliciano 2y ago

> Class consciousness is entirely too intellectual and nerdy to ever be popular, well yea, and Marx is a taboo, nothing new there. Those ideas can be repackaged though, in a way that won't make people foam at the mouth because of the "communist sounding words" (thinking of gary's economics for example). I agree with what you said, it's easier to package an "Anti-something" message, as we see with all the anti-immigrant messaging in the US and Europe, the Anti-Billionaire movement still has not gained even a fraction of the traction though.

lynx97 2y ago
Well, I dont remember any "immigrants for the poor" movements. But I know from personal experience that Lions Club and Rotary people actually sometimes do something useful for the poor with their money... Given that context, do you really not understand that you shouldn't bite the hand that might feed you? Immigrants are never going to feed the poor and disadvantaged. The oh-so-bad-and-evil rich people might at least sometimes.
- dudefeliciano 2y ago
  Immigrants are a net positive contributor to the welfare and pension system in the EU, they are statistically very likely to be the literal hand that feeds you when you will be old and in need of care. I never said rich people are bad and evil, just that they should pay their fair share. For their own good too, to live in a more harmonious society, but maybe this is better.
  - lynx97 2y ago
    Let me expand a bit on this. I personally think it is a very bad sign for our society that we are about to outsource the responsibilities around caring for the elderly to (mostly) female workers from neighboring countries to save a few bucks. Personally mostly because I find the prospect of a language barrier in care horryfing. I don't want to imagine how it must feel for those we already subject to this treatment to be cared for by someone who barely understands your language. In that context I find it hard to feel cozy about the future of care being "solved" by using immigrant workforce. Regarding pensions, all I can do is hope the statistics you are refering to are actually true. The cases I know about are heavily blocked on the language barrier when it comes to finding a "good" job. The best positive example I can think of are construction workers where it seems to work quite well that one or two guys speak the local language well enough to translate/coordinate with the rest of the crew. But most other cases of immigrants I know are actually pretty much blocked on the language issue. Only some are talented enough to learn a new language fluently in a few years, and some languages are actually pretty hard to learn. I count me in on that group. If I had to learn a new language at my age, I would probably do very badly. I didn't even pick up enough spanish during a 2 month trip through south america to do any interesting conversation. It would probably take me years to be able to respond to a random sentence from a native speaker of anything other then english and my native language. You might be able to survive with just English in the tech industry. But in pretty much every other industry, especially service, it is hard to find a job without good language skills. So most of the examples in that area that I am currently thinking of actually ended up depending on the welfare state for income instead of contributing to the pension system.
    - 2y ago