Are Communists Classists?

[Comrade #138672]

I started to wonder whether communists were classists when I read the following quote:


"Functioning separately, movements to overcome racism, sexism, classism, and authoritarianism fail. Functioning together and sharing aims and methods, they can succeed." - Robin Hahnel

Even though communists are for a classless society, they need to overthrow the upper class in order to establish communism. To to do that, they need to discriminate against the upper class, before they can overthrow them. Wouldn't this make communists classists?

Yes, the upper class also discriminates against the lower class. However, does this justify counter-classism? Personally, I would say yes. But being a classist could be a weakness that the upper class will exploit to make communism look bad. They would say, "Look, they discriminate against us. They're just like racists. They're jealous of our wealth and suffer from envy. They want us to share in their misery."

[Regicollis]

I don't want to discriminate against the upper class - I just want to stop giving them more wealth and power than anyone else.

[Ostrinski]

Yes, I'd say we are. Insofar as we understand that the true expression of consciosness of class identity is the pursuit of political power.

[pluckedflowers]

The important point is that class is not an essential attribute. Being a capitalist is not like being a Black American, a Woman, a Jew, etc. One is only a capitalist because he owns capital, which he uses to accumulate further capital and exercise power over the rest of society. We don't aim to discriminate against them, we aim to take away the source of their power.

[Peoples' War]

We are evil "reverse" classists.

The assertion that we are classist is absurd. Was it racist for blacks in apartheid South Africa to want to overthrow the white racist regime?

[Positivist]

Yea "classism" is qualitatively different than racism or sexism, and is really nothing more than the pursuit of ones own self-interest extended to people with similar interests as the result of their relation to productions. This pursuit is the basis of all of history and society.

[Le Socialiste]

If one is guided solely by one's hatred for the bourgeoisie, sure. Of course, it would be better to acknowledge the core material realities surrounding this opposition, including why it is we believe their overthrow to be necessary. If we're just screaming "rich man bad!" it'll achieve very little in terms of raising conscious awareness, as opposed to outlining the fundamentals of capitalism's structural antagonisms and effects on the broader world/population. We may be classists in the sense that we see the usurpation of political power on the part of the working-class against the bourgeoisie as a good thing, but seeing as it's more of a leading into the end goal (not the end goal in and of itself), classism can and often is a bit ridiculous - albeit understandable. I'll certainly feel uneasy or even remotely hostile in the presence of those who are clearly well off and in a state of privilege, but my frustration has more to do with how they got there and what they must do to maintain said position, than any hatred for the individual (or class) themselves. After all, in a class society every class must inevitably operate within what is in its general interest (the proletariat, being in a "subordinate" role to the ruling-class, often perpetuates ideas stemming from the latter, but nowhere should it be assumed that such interactions are devoid of conflict or antagonisms).

[RedAtheist]

People our society "discriminates" against: murders, rapists, fascists, racists, pedophiles, abusers, wannabe dictators, etc.

I'm happy to add exploiters to the list. Of course capitalists need to exploit workers in order to make a profit and thus the system of capitalism is the primary enemy, but this does not mean that what capitalists do is morally acceptable, especially if they try to re-establish the old order after a revolution.

Contrary to what some libertarians might think, this is not an issue of jealosy. I don't think I'd get much satisfaction at all from a life spent accumulating capital. It strikes me as highly dull and unfufiling.

[Zealot]

Yes, we are. This should not be anything new. Problem?

[ComingUpForAir]

Marxists don't blame people as individuals, they attack the institutions that shape individuals and groups via the Dialectic.. hence I don't think we discriminate at all -- I don't hate the 1%, I just hate the system the produces dramatic inequalities of wealth. People aren't to be blamed except as products..this is not to say that there aren't obnoxious, shallow, over-privileged snoots who need to be swept off the globe, it's just that there's a broader picture to look at. When i became a Marxist I had a lot more energy because I stopped hating people an starting loving humanity..all of humanity.. I wouldn't even want the pope to die... I want the pope to be dethroned, though.

[ВАЛТЕР]

I'm a classist. I have hatred against the exploiter in the same way a black slave had hatred for his master. Not because he is white, but because he is his master.

[Die Neue Zeit]

We are evil "reverse" classists.

The assertion that we are classist is absurd. Was it racist for blacks in apartheid South Africa to want to overthrow the white racist regime?

Hey, I like that term Reverse Classism!

[Yuppie Grinder]

I readily and proudly admit to being classist. I hate parasitic elements in the economy, I hate exploiters. I don't care if that offends some braindead liberal on the internet.

[RedMaterialist]

Even though communists are for a classless society, they need to overthrow the upper class in order to establish communism. To to do that, they need to discriminate against the upper class, before they can overthrow them. Wouldn't this make communists classists?



That is absolutely correct. Communists are classists (terrible word) and want to dominate and destroy the capitalist class. When that happens all classes will cease to exist because there will be no class left to suppress. As explained by that great communist, Karl Marx, in the Communist Manifesto.

[rednordman]

Was it racist for blacks in apartheid South Africa to want to overthrow the white racist regime?well I wouldn't be surprised if they did in fact use that sort of rhetoric to justify their own apartheid regime. and too think at large part of the west still cooperated with them until its collapse...

[Blackbird123]

Yes

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

They would say, "Look, they discriminate against us. They're just like racists. They're jealous of our wealth and suffer from envy. They want us to share in their misery."
But class isn't and cannot be treated as a permanent feature of one's identity. In fact, it does not correspond to their identity at all--one's class is primarily a social and economic position, it is not genetically inherent like skin color or deeply embedded in consciousness as sexual preference/identity. Identity politics and "classism" cannot be so easily conflated.

Using your logic, racists could just as easily say that those who vigorously oppose racism are just as "racist" as they are--in that they will brook no tolerance of those who are intolerant. In my opinion such a stance is self-defeating. Perhaps it could be related somewhat to a Nietzschean idea, which regards all truth claims are nothing more than the "will to power"; when the Enlightenment, in its struggle against religion, unmasked these power relations, Nietzsche simply turned this technique back upon the Enlightenment. This idea is, in my opinion, one of the ideological roots of the right wing conceptions of "Liberal fascism".

That having been said, my point is that you could literally turn the tables on any argument in this way, but it must not be used lightly. Granted, it can be very valuable, but in this case it is not. In adopting this line of logic you run the risk of blurring distinctions in a way that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to take a principled stance without in some way fatally contradicting themselves. This "eye for an eye" stance may really make us all blind at the end of the discussion.

[Камо́ Зэд]

In a sense, maybe Communists are classists in that the Marxist analysis of the progression of history is that it is the proletarian class alone that will be responsible for the advent of the post-capitalist epoch. In another sense, though, Communists ultimately seek, through revolutionary proletarian socialism, to eliminate class. Work against racism typically acknowledges that the divisions between races are fundamentally social, rather than biological, and so can be eliminated through the transformation of society. And while sex clearly has a biological basis, much of sex and sexual identity is also social, and so inequalities and antagonisms in this regard can be eliminated as well through the transformation of society.

[jookyle]

It's not so black and white as yes or no. The goal, obviously, to end the idea of classes. But, to get there, we need the dictatorship of the proletariat first, which is quite clearly classist, as during this period, one class has direct dominane over the other. However, this does not make communists classists even if you want to say the tactic is classist because the bigger picture is to end classes.

[Lucretia]

According to this line of thinking, class is a cultural category like race and gender. Therefore we should be multicultural and accept the capitalists as they are, lest we become "classist."

The Marxist would respond, of course, that class isn't *just* a cultural category, but a social mechanism by which power is derived from and reinforces control of productive property, such that a tiny minority of the population uses class power to savagely oppress and deprive the vast majority. It is on that basis that we should consider the appropriate cultural meanings associated with capitalists and proletarians, and how "multicultural" we should be in treating both as equally legitimate ways of being a class.

[amedbadawi]

yes

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It's kind of an absurd question. A class simply relates to a series of social relationships and recognition of property rights. It would seem that "classism" arises in the very inception of "class" as a concept, and that on the contrary the leftwing revolution is meant to end classism by ending the very distinction itself.

Also, many people on the far left have been the kids of well to do lawyers, aristocrats and businessmen so it's hardly like any supposed "class prejudice" overrides personal choice. Otherwise, Engels would have never become a part of the socialist movement.

[Thirsty Crow]

I started to wonder whether communists were classists when I read the following quote:


Even though communists are for a classless society, they need to overthrow the upper class in order to establish communism. To to do that, they need to discriminate against the upper class, before they can overthrow them. Wouldn't this make communists classists?

Oh the proliferation and transformation of the concept of discrimination.

I don't really care whether someone calls me a "classists". I don't think that all bourgeois men and women are scum (that would actually approcah moralism), but I do think that their continued enrichment depends on the domination over and exploitation of the working class - but I draw political and not moral conclusions from that.

[Ravachol]

I started to wonder whether communists were classists when I read the following quote:


Just a sidenote, you might not want to get too much into Hahnel, Parecon and the whole Z-Communications thing. Parecon's economics and politics are a terrible form of self-managed capitalism imo.



Even though communists are for a classless society, they need to overthrow the upper class in order to establish communism. To to do that, they need to discriminate against the upper class, before they can overthrow them. Wouldn't this make communists classists?


What does 'discriminate' mean in this context? As in, 'those communists exercise institutional oppression against the bourgeoisie to deprive them of participation in society'? I'd wish...

Besides, it's not like communists applaud the working class as an identity (though the bulk of leftists wrongly do). The proletarian condition is a yoke, it's a condition that only makes sense when it's oriented towards it's own self-abolition, from which communism springs as a real movement.



But being a classist could be a weakness that the upper class will exploit to make communism look bad.


To whom? I doubt such arguments will appeal to anyone but a handful of well-to-do liberals. The kids in the banlieus and the bangladeshi garment workers (to take a few stereotypical examples) sure as hell ain't gonna care.


Besides, being a communist entails not so much being 'against the bourgeoisie' as a collection of individuals (though fuck 'em, they can go die in a fire) but being against the class relation they form one pole of. This relation goes deeper then just shouting 'off with their heads' while refusing to recognize capitalism is a social relation, not so much between individuals, but a relation between classes spread out over the entire social field.

[Rational Radical]

Please,the Bourgeoisie will make communism/anarchism look bad because it's a threat to their economic and political power not because we were "discriminate" towards them. Our class has been deceived into thinking that capitalism is only compatible with human nature,humans are naturally selfish and that if we work hard will have better social mobility,thus justifying our exploitation and I think that alone deserves the formation of a deep seated hatred,along with the other atrocities committed to accumalate capital. We need to remind our class as much as we can that this is a clas war and they're the class enemies,it'll benefit humanity in the long run.

[Marxaveli]

If me wanting to end exploitation, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, imperialism, and the million other vices of Capitalism makes me 'discriminatory' toward the ruling class, if that is the charge, I stand guilty. And I make no apologies about it - as a matter of fact, fuck them and the horse they rode in on. I have nothing but contempt for them, all of them.

That being said, the Revolution should be carried out as an act that is beneficial to our class interests, and not as an act of revenge. But I ain't gonna sit here and sugarcoat my feelings either: I still do hate Capitalism, and Capitalists, with the utmost intensity.

[kuriousoranj]

No, I'm a classistist, as I am a racistist, and a sexistist.

EDIT: Never mind, it was a poorly crafted double negative. The oppressor of the oppressive and all that shtick, y'know.

[The Jay]

No, I'm a classistist, as I am a racistist, and a sexistist.


Either there is a language barrier, a decency barrier, or both. I'm leaning towards your not meaning what you wrote, but you may wish to edit that post.

[The Jay]

Just a sidenote, you might not want to get too much into Hahnel, Parecon and the whole Z-Communications thing. Parecon's economics and politics are a terrible form of self-managed capitalism imo.

I know it's a side note but I'm starting to think that there needs to be a thread on this.

Without bourgeois social relations - capitalists and proletarians - there is no capitalism. The heaviest argument you could raise against PARECON is that it is Market Socialist, but not Capitalist at all. It could even be argued that the anarchists in Spain '36 and/or deleonists favor market socialism for advocating vouchers.

My point is that mislabeled it and demonized it for the wrong reasons. Disagree with PARECON all you want. I personally favor de-centralized planning, but recognize participatory economics for what it is.



What does 'discriminate' mean in this context? As in, 'those communists exercise institutional oppression against the bourgeoisie to deprive them of participation in society'? I'd wish...If only, right? What would such a thing be called I wonder? Hmm. I shall call it a dictatorship of some sorts. One of a class over another. Dictatorship of the Proletariat? Na, not catchy enough. I'll get back to you.