Radical Chic

[Ol' Dirty]

This really gets me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_chic

I'm a high school student, and my school has an "International Socialist Club." In previous years, we have staged anti-war protests and demonstrated for worker's rights/power. As most of the club members were Seniors, when they left, the club consisted of me and three freshmen.

When I think about how privilaged I actually am to live with clean water, more than enough food and health insurance, I'm filled with a banal teenage angst over how shitty everyone else has it. While kids at my school complain about their iPod is running low on power, thousands of kids are dying of dehydration and diareah.

Even then, teens in highschool will wear a shirt with Korda's Guerrillero Heroico. Most don't really know who he was, but a select few will tell me that he was an Argentinian Communist who fought in the Cuban Revolution. Every so often, I'll wear a shirt with a red star that says "Imagine." And y'know what? Kids will ask me if I got the shirt at Macy's. Fucking Macy's!:cursing:

Many people who wear all of these "revolutionary accessories" are just as bourqoise as their peers. The farthest they actually go is buying FairTrade coffee instead of going to Starbucks, or buying their clothes at a consignment shop as a "show of solidarity" with the working class.:rolleyes:

And I am by no means innocent: I live in a 93% white town near a college campus, shop at the local health food store, smoke weed with my backwards-hat-wearing, Dave Mathews-listening, petit-bourgoise little white friends, and maybe get some adolescent tail. Even though I love to pontificate on the "evils of global capitalism," I'm really just another little reolutionary poseur who hasn't worked a day in his life. I have a poster of Marx in my room, read the Marxist Reader and the infinately better Heretic's Handbook of Quotations to get to sleep. I feel like I'm just dabling in the left to assuage my white guilt, trying to make that nagging sense of injustice shut up for a moment so I can get some peace.

Instead of feeling like a legitamite activist, I feel like a complete dialectical contradiction: the wealthy socialist...

:star3:But hey, that shirt sure looks good on me.:star3: :thumbup1:

How do you feel about this?:confused:

Edit: I just got my first paycheck a few weeks ago... now I can start *****ing and moaning about taxes and wages!

[sunfarstar]

Welcome you to Shanghai, China. We also have many party members and high school students. They are practitioners of communism.

[Il Medico]

I don't think your a poser mate. If you really believe in leftist causes, then being upper working class or petit-bourgeois (middle class) doesn't really matter. You most likely will fall into the working class once your not dependent on your parents. Also, wearing Che shirts is fine. I wish more people knew what he stood for, but 'revolutionary assessories' as you call them, don't make you a fake. I personally have a Cuban beret and a Che shirt (I had to save for it though), and I am at the lower end of the working class. Just be glad you have comrades where you live. Down here a 'Internationalist Socialist Club' would be laughed at. So don't worry, your no fake.;)

[9]

I'd second CaptainJack's statements. Once you are living on your own, I'd imagine you'll probably be working class like most of us here.

[khad]

I will not pass judgment, but I will say that it is heartening to see one so self-reflective.

[which doctor]

You shouldn't worry about fitting your lifestyle to your politics. You live in an affluent country, so it makes sense that you would be affluent yourself. You don't have to be some AK-toting guerilla in the jungle of a peasant background to be an "authentic" communist.

That being said, I don't think you should try to express your political views through your lifestyle either. I always think it's a little strange when people wear che shirts or other political shirts and buy various radical "memorabilia" such as flags, marx/che posters, etc. The revolution isn't something to be fetishized.

[Il Medico]

I'm sorry, you're a total wanker. Also an attention seeking boofhead.
The fact that you listen to Dave Matthews band only seals your fuckheadedness.
This is horribly insulting! Can a mod or admin could give him an infraction?

He was reflecting on a possible contradiction between his lifestyle/ personality and his politics. Such deep thought should be promoted here. You would do best not to post like this again. :thumbdown:

[ls]

Fair play for being honest. Don't think too much of that to be honest, there are probably a lot of peeps that think similarly, as long as your politics are actually alright and you don't really contradict them in a meaningful sense then you should be OK (I stress OK).

[Il Medico]

Fair play for being honest, I don't think that much of that to be honest, there are a lot of people like you that think the same way.
I don't get this post at all. To who an what are you referring Is?:confused:

[ls]

That there are a lot of people who think that they are white petit-bourgeoisie first-worlders, that is all, it isn't really implying anything one way or the other.

[Il Medico]

I'd second CaptainJack's statements. Once you are living on your own, I'd imagine you'll probably be working class like most of us here.
I agree with most of that. However, I think a lot of people here are probably middle class. It seems that way in many peoples post.

EDIT: I thank whatever admin or mod removed that insulting post.

[Rjevan]

I don't think that you're just a wealthy kid who feels rebellious and likes to wear "revolutionary chic", simply out of the reason that you actually think of things like other dying while you're living a comfortable life and obviously care for problems of other people.

Most people who wear Che shirts just for fun and like to present themselves a little rebellious in order to shock their parents and teachers have absolutely no idea what Che stood and fought for and what they are speaking of, plus they don't care much for the topics which we are interested in and would likely confuse Karl Marx with Karl May. This isn't the case with you, you learn and debate and are active in demonstrations and as which doctor said, you don't have throw away all your money and comfort, hang out in the worst slums and suffer and finally built a guerilla troop in order to be a "real" communist. Just think of Engels, his father was a capitalist, so I guess he was a wealthy socialist, too. ;)

And please, get off that white guilt thing. Even in danger of sounding like the idiots at stormfront, there is no such thing like white guilt, in the past there were also white people who fought against racism, fascism, imperialism, capitalism and opression, just because they were overpowered by their government, the army or the capitalists this doesn't mean that they are guilty and you and I are definitely not guilty, we can't be taken responsible for what, e.g. the Nazis did, we would never ever have supported them we are not supporting them now and we would never ever support them. Just because we were born into a wealthy white society doesn't automatically make us guilty, being ignorant about racism, etc. or even supporting it is, what makes one guilty.
Maybe you could argue that your iPod-friends are in some way guilty for being ignorant about the problems of others who suffer but nobody can expect you to burn your goods and live in a cave and suffer, just because others suffer. But one could expect that people realise these problems and try to help solving them, no matter in what way, and if it's just going on a demonstartion. And this is what you do.

[bcbm]

petit-bourgeois (middle class)

These are not interchangeable terms.

[Killfacer]

:lol: fair enuff. I echo LS's sentiments.

[ZeroNowhere]

These are not interchangeable terms.Actually, I do recall Engels using them as such. Still, he didn't have the income-based class analysis to deal with.

Anyways, not engaging in wage-labour doesn't mean that you can't be a 'real' Marxist. If we glorified wage-labour, we wouldn't be calling for its abolition.

[DreamWeaver]

Well you talk the talk, now it might be time to walk the walk. Get organised! Beat up nazi's, light a couple banks on fire or bomb a police station. The world is what you make it son ;)

[ZeroNowhere]

Well you talk the talk, now it might be time to walk the walk. Get organised! Beat up nazi's, light a couple banks on fire or bomb a police station. The world is what you make it son ;)Or better yet, beat your head against a wall.

[Uppercut]

I wish my school had a socialist club...but most people in my school are dumbasses.

[Ol' Dirty]

People are raising good points. I really can't control where I'm coming from, and the white guilt thing doesn't make any sense. I'm mixed anyway. I'm just irritated by being asked if my red star shirt is from Macy's. That's simultaneously hilarious and terifying.


I wish my school had a socialist club...but most people in my school are dumbasses.

Word up. High school=bullshit. :thumbup:

And, to clarify, I don't listen to DMB. I actually have a friend who worked at a fast food store that he stopped at, and apparently Dave Mathews is a real dick. His music is also very shitty. Like green shit with corn chunks.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I know what you mean MuigiKalash. I to tend to avoid the petit-bourgeois elements of my school, but when I am having to walk around with them for some reason or another I do feel really guilty and sick to the stomach. So I know exactly what you mean. As others have said I am sure when we leave home and are living by ourselves then I'm sure this feeling of angst will dissipate.

[Klute77]

When your a teenager nobody expects you to have it all figured out but the fact that you are educating yourself through reading and activisim is so much more than many young people do. It's good that you question yourself and your motives. If we don't challenge ourselves and allow others to challenge us then our thinking can become narrow and fixed and I think that stands for people of all ages. Ultimately it's impossible to change where you are from and hard to alter those around you but you can change yourself and who you are does have an effect on the world around you.

I'll probably be blasted for quoting Dylan but you could listen to this Bob Dylan song called My Back Pages, it's a pretty good take on things.

Half-cracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.