Sometimes when a socialist is lil’ booj/labor aristocracker, I see this canard used to console them that just because they’re a part of an exploiting class doesn’t mean that they can’t be a traitor to that class and aid the revolution. A similar sentiment is expressed when someone brings up that Engels, Lenin, and Mao all came from priveleged backgrounds, or when someone brings up the clapback that Zhou Enlai made against Kruschev. However, I really can’t shake the feeling that that’s just copium, especially in the context of the imperial core.
When not invested into making more money, the income of this strata goes into consuming treats. So, so many treats. Services like Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, and Steam are high powered treat beams aimed directly at their brains. On top of this, the places people own their own homes (or rent, but they make enough income that they don’t need to worry about not making rent) are invariably in white flight crackerburbs and gentrified parts of cities; I like to call such places the crackersphere.
Considering being an actual communist requires being among the masses, this presents a pretty big issue for would-be communists within the crackershpere. How is one supposed to relate and build comradery with proletarians when they share none of their struggles? Not many are willing to give away their things and become proletarians themselves. Hell, the most famous living socialist in the Great Satan is currently a millionaire parasocial treatboy.
If this post seems kind of half cooked and rambly, that’s because it is. This is a thought that’s been haunting my mind for awhile now.
Edit: I’ve read all of the responses to this post so far and you’re all right. I definitely have a lot of Christian idealism I’ve yet to purge from my mind, and it’s an individualist lens that ignores how to figure out how to collectively change material conditions in favor of individual moral pissing contests that are as connected to reality as debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. This logic, if taken to its extreme, results in the kind of left deviationism perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.
While this is a point often used as a purity test, I think I posted this as more of a call for help. The atomization and alienation of this society is literally driving me insane.
I’ve been thinking of writing a critique of the Settlers thesis, but I’ll try to reply with some thoughts here.
Communism is “from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.” Entertainment and food are needs. An immense amount of competing commodities produced with only ‘taking advantage of needs to get money’ in mind is not necessary. Capitalism perpetually creates more and more use values but each can make less profit. We get cheaper and cheaper goods yet have to work more and more. Living in the US sucks for a lot of people. That’s why we have Trump. “Everything is fine” doesn’t make sense to millions of Amerikans living paycheck to paycheck. The problem is how they explain this suffering. If they understand the problem inherent with working for a wage to produce commodities then they can seize power and build a more rational society. If they find immigrants a good enough explanation then they’re nothing but bootlickers.
A lot of leftists are intellectuals. Their class interests are opposed to the bourgeoisie and proletariat. If they understand what’s actually wrong with capitalism instead of succumbing to the moralism of their own elitist outlook then they can learn to communicate the necessary understanding for realizing working class interests rather than preaching about their “duty” to own up to all the evil in the world.
The “cope” is thinking our problem is that people are just “too well off.” There are many worse off countries that are less revolutionary. We need to criticize the errors in our movement so that we can be ready when the next crisis hits (and it will). “The masses” need to know that they don’t have to endlessly consent to different bosses.