are we all snobs?

[ColonelCossack]

Why do we use terms like "bourgeois" and "proletarian", when "capitalist" and "worker" would suffice? Is it because we're all snobs? Or do we want to seem clever next to bourgeois dogs so that we have credibility?

Similarly, why did I just use "terms" and "suffice" when "words" and "be OK" would work just as well? Why does it even matter?

[JustMovement]

mm I think using workers and bosses or capitalists is better. I think part of it is the shit we read is old and they use terms like that, also I think it can be fun to write nicely, like old marxy did.

[ColonelCossack]

true.

[Manic Impressive]

There's a lot of pretentious middle class wankers on this forum. However, there's nothing wrong with trying to use the correct terms when explaining yourself. I find it's worse in philosophy, where they almost speak another language.

[W1N5T0N]

agreed. actually, bourgeoisie is a pretty strechable word...and so is proletarian. In today's society, they sounds a bit too much 19th century.
Workers/bosses makes it a bit more clear.

[ColonelCossack]

I concur... wait, did it again!!!!!!! I mean, I agree. Anyway. i don't think you'd get Arthur Scargill in the miner's strike using words like that, when delivering rousing speeches to the strikers, for example.

[thesadmafioso]

I'm not much for pandering through my language selection. If that happens to open my character to criticism of snobbishness, then that is a sacrifice which I am willing to accept.

[Blackburn]

I forgive the middle class wankerage on this forum, because the conversation is usually intelligent and at least most of us 'feel' the same, on some level about the exploitation that exists in the Capitalist world.

[Tim Finnegan]

"Workers" and "capitalists" will suffice in most instances, but there is some occasional value in "bourgeoisie" and "proletarian". "Bourgeoisie" has particular sociological-legal-political implications absent from "capitalist", and so can be useful in referring to particular incarnations of capitalism in which a private "business class" act as the ruling class (similarly, "nomenklatura" is useful when discussing state capitalism). "Proletarian" is useful because it makes it clear that you are talking about the specifically Marxian understanding of the "worker" as a class, and not in the looser sense of "anyone who works for a wage" on the one hand (which encompasses many "coordinators" and the like) and from petty bourgeois craftspeople on the other.

The "everyday" terms are certainly preferable in general usage, though, because they lack the same abstract, academic air, and so mesh more easily with the lived experience of the working class.

[-marx-]

The best phrase I like that is highly prevalent in Marxism is "On the one hand.... and on the other hand". :D Until I became a Marxist I rarely ever heard this, but since I read/hear it all the time.

[Fopeos]

I think it depends on your audience. When chatting with other Marxists, I'll use proletarian or Bourgeois. If i'm talking to co-workers, i'll use bosses and workers. We don't want to alienate potential allies by using jargon that sounds completely "foreign" to many in the working class.

[praxis1966]

Maybe I'm a little too urban or something, but I've always used the terms "poor folk" and either "rich mufuckers" or "bourgie [pronounced BOO-dgie like in 'bridge'] assholes" when talking to co-workers... Seems to get the point across quite neatly.

[Tim Finnegan]

Missed this bit:


Similarly, why did I just use "terms" and "suffice" when "words" and "be OK" would work just as well? Why does it even matter?
Because, put simply, those words don't mean the same thing. They have nuances that, while not necessarily significant in casual conversation, become more significant when trying to communicate more abstract ideas, and particularly when in writing, a more formal medium by its nature. For example, if I'd written that as "Those words don't mean the same thing, like, so you'll be getting folk all muddled if yer having a fiddly conversation and you go using them all wrong", which is how I'd say it in casual conversation, I wouldn't've made my point very well. ;)

Just try to speak however you speak- contrived informality is not better than contrived formality, and can even be received more negatively because it appears patronising- and if it so happens that you speak differently in different media, or at different times, or to different people, that's fine. Everyone does it, and in many cases throw dialects into the mix, as anyone living in Scotland is well aware (/as aabodie stayin in Scotlan kens richt wiell! ;)). It's natural.

[Hebrew Hammer]

Yes, we're all snobs, it's true.

[hatzel]

I intentionally use crazy-ass language in my writings in order to maintain a Kierkegaardian-Nietzschean air of '"we're the special ones, just you and I, we're the special ones, because we understand" :rolleyes: Perhaps the fact that I'm first a foremost a writer of fiction and poetry has meant that I carry that literary style over to my political, theological and sociological writings. Here on the forum I often post in a much more colloquial register (though some of my posts have a more elevated tone), though I'd never write an article or such in anything other than well-crafted, sometimes overly extravagant language :thumbup1:

...that doesn't, however, mean that I would converse with people in such a fashion :)

[ColonelCossack]

Missed this bit:


Because, put simply, those words don't mean the same thing. They have nuances that, while not necessarily significant in casual conversation, become more significant when trying to communicate more abstract ideas, and particularly when in writing, a more formal medium by its nature. For example, if I'd written that as "Those words don't mean the same thing, like, so you'll be getting folk all muddled if yer having a fiddly conversation and you go using them all wrong", which is how I'd say it in casual conversation, I wouldn't've made my point very well. ;)

Just try to speak however you speak- contrived informality is not better than contrived formality, and can even be received more negatively because it appears patronising- and if it so happens that you speak differently in different media, or at different times, or to different people, that's fine. Everyone does it, and in many cases throw dialects into the mix, as anyone living in Scotland is well aware (/as aabodie stayin in Scotlan kens richt wiell! ;)). It's natural.

hey, I was just making a point about how we as people speak, and wondering why we choose the words that we choose.

[Post-Something]

There are some people on this site who really know what they're talking about and have probably been looking at political situations and reading about them for years if not tens of years. There are some people on this site who are just trying to understand events as they unfold in a marxist way and to learn as much as possible, which is fine. But to be honest, a lot of people on here speak in the most overblown language ever. I mean come on, I'm a student, most people on here are students. We don't really know anything about the world, yet some of the assertions I read thrown about on this site are just hilarious, seriously. Some of the things written in the Gaddafi threads for example, I'd love to see those people say those things to the people over in Libya.

[Desperado]

Similarly, why did I just use "terms" and "suffice" when "words" and "be OK" would work just as well? Why does it even matter?

Irony alarm.

[ColonelCossack]

irony alarm.

neeeee-naaaaaw

[Le Socialiste]

To be honest, that's just the way I write. I use all four terms, and often interchange them when discussing workers' struggles, capitalism, etc. At the same time, though, I can see how some may see this sort of terminology as "elitist" (I personally can't stand that word, ugh...)

All in all, it comes down to personal taste and preference. I prefer to sometimes switch 'capitalist' with 'bourgeois', and 'worker' with 'proletariat'.

[Le Socialiste]

I intentionally use crazy-ass language in my writings in order to maintain a Kierkegaardian-Nietzschean air of '"we're the special ones, just you and I, we're the special ones, because we understand" http://www.revleft.com/vb/we-all-snobsi-t157325/revleft/smilies/001_rolleyes.gif Perhaps the fact that I'm first a foremost a writer of fiction and poetry has meant that I carry that literary style over to my political, theological and sociological writings. Here on the forum I often post in a much more colloquial register (though some of my posts have a more elevated tone), though I'd never write an article or such in anything other than well-crafted, sometimes overly extravagant language http://www.revleft.com/vb/we-all-snobsi-t157325/revleft/smilies2/thumbup1.gif

...that doesn't, however, mean that I would converse with people in such a fashion http://www.revleft.com/vb/we-all-snobsi-t157325/revleft/smilies/001_smile.gif


^ And this.

[ColonelCossack]

I suppose it makes the writing spicy. Terms like "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" are good for talking for other leftists, but if you use them when talking to many (not all) workers they might feel a bit alienated.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

I don't know if folks on this list are familiar with Mikhail Bakhtin?

Bakhtin was a Russian linguist living under Stalin, and he wrote a book about the great French Renaissance satirist Rabelais. Bakhtin's book is a brilliant take-down of the kind of Stalinist "door's-gotta-hang-by-its-hinges" language and thought that people like Rosa (remember her?) used to push on this site.

Bakhtin argues that if anything, a truly popular/revolutionary language is polysemic, it has eighteen ways of signifying and hundreds of words and variations and expressions, just like real people's way of talking: Rabelais has words for sex, and shitting, or fish, that run on for pages. Mostly, he mixes the high and the low, scientific scholarly words and lowlife expressions. This guy was a major scholar whose books sold like hotcakes on the city square. Not to mention that Rabelais is funny - not something I associate with Stalin, or with Rosa for that matter.

That's the kind of revolution in language I can go for.

[praxis1966]

I don't know if folks on this list are familiar with Mikhail Bakhtin?

Actually I'm not, but judging by the rest of your post it sounds to be something right up my alley. I'm actually a bit of a mild linguaphile myself (if you've read any of the abridged film reviews I've written in the L&F forum you may have already noticed this in my attention to dialogue), the humor thereby being a sweetener. Any particular work you would recommend?

[Desperado]

Rosa (remember her?) used to push on this site.


Unfair. There's a world of difference between specialist language and the Wittgensteinian misuse of language Rosa pushed. Wittgenstein never proposed dumbed down language - nor indeed changing language (which Bertrand Russell misunderstood as Wittgenstein's intentions and Wittgenstein duly shot down).

[ColonelCossack]

I'm not saying we should "dumb down" language- I'm just making a point about why we use the words we use. I'm not the advocate of some kind of super-simplified language like in 1984.

[Agent Ducky]

I dunno, I'll use whatever term suits my purposes at the time, althought "capitalist" can refer to one who supports the capitalist system or one who is part of the capitalist class.

[praxis1966]

I dunno, I'll use whatever term suits my purposes at the time, althought "capitalist" can refer to one who supports the capitalist system or one who is part of the capitalist class.

Yeah, that's kind of the reason I eschew use of the term. I'm a real stickler for specificity in language so I tend to dislike terms that can be interpreted multiple ways. In the final analysis, though, a lot of what I say/write depends on circumstance as other respondents have said.

[Principia Ethica]

I'm all for more people understanding and thereby being down with it. . .but I dunno about the dichotomy of worker/boss. A LOT of "bosses" I know are totally part of the working class. They make a little bit more than the regular ole workers. Some people won't understand that it is the difference of class that matters.

I've found the use of class problematic at times. People tend to hear what they want to hear and the "c" word or the "s" word (communism and socialism) have been ingrained n a bad way into many people's heads that they are just LOOKING for some flaw or something to attack. "Class? CLASS? You tellin' me I ain't got class? Who da fukk are you thinking you higher class than me?" Ummmm. . . .yeah, any sort of discourse is difficult after this.

I tend to use words that I know people I'm talking to can relate. "Big business" "corporations" "the greedy fukkas that own every goddamn thing and fukk everyone over to make more". . .or on the other side "people like you and me" "regular ole folks" "or the working man/woman."

So yeah, when someone things about the worker/boss situation and their boss lives in a trailer because that is all he can afford, then it was a wrongly made line that was drawn.