My boyfriend and I fight constantly over politics

[GLF]

Okay, my live in boyfriend who is much older than me (he's 57 and I'm 35) fight constantly over politics. I'm bisexual and he's a gay man, and his sexuality is extremely important to him which is something I can understand. He is from an era where gays were treated like total shit (and in many cases still are). I can understand his passion. Me though, it's not something I care about for myself. I view all underprivileged people, of all races/genders/walks of life, as my people without caring more or being more loyal to LGBTQ just because I'm included. I understand why people do - and I don't expect people to be entirely selfless when they're fighting for themselves. But it's just not something that I myself care more about. If anything I care the most about black people and the least about straight white men...but still, even then, I care very much about them all (working class people). But for my boyfriend, it's obvious that he cares SO much about that one issue to the point that he says I'm a self-hater just because I don't obsess over it as much as he does.

Today we get into a big fight on the way the back from my drug treatment center (I take methadone and he sometimes drives me - an hour away), because of the sanctuary city issue. Okay, so obviously I believe that deporting people is racist and evil and that it's wrong. He agrees. But when I challenged him - as I challenge myself all the time - he flipped totally out. All I was doing was critiquing him (and myself) on the idea of civil disobedience as it pertains to the sanctuary cities defying federal law vs Kim Davis defying federal law. I simply pointed out that in both instances it's people who feel very strongly about something and believe they are working for the forces of good. This was just self-critique - but instead of giving me the difference...what it makes it different...he flipped totally out on me. WTF? I know that it's completely different. One is justified and the other is not. But why? He can't answer, nor does he want to answer it. He got angry. He has no marxist grounding...it's all feeling with him. And to be honest, he's a much better person than myself. He's a very good person inside and I love him very much. But it still doesn't make it easier to live with. He thinks I'm challenging him all the time when I'm just trying to apply critical thinking about various matters that are important to both of us.

Another thing we disagree on is when it comes to social justice and the State. To be very basic and to the point, his idea is that the working classes should make more money (say, 50k a year), middle class should make more (say, 75k a year), and the people at the top should make much less (say, 100k a year). In his mind, this still provides incentive for people to be as productive as possible, and there will be tons of money left over to rebuild the country and provide basic needs. Private enterprise is okay - just heavily regulate them. Me, on the other hand, I want to shoot the fuckers at the top and take all their shit for the rest of us (that's being very crude and hyperbolic, but still more or less accurate). He thinks my views are repugnant. Totally repugnant.

Lastly, he believes in retribution. Punishment for crime. Like the white supremacist in Oregon who stabbed those two men. He thinks the guy should be shot right now - no trial or anything (because it's a waste of money - there's witnesses). I can understand his sentiment and I fucking despise racists. But at the same time, I don't believe in punishing people. I think the guy, like all "criminals", should be rehabilitated with the hope of maybe one day being disavowed of his mental sickness and reintroduced into society. My boyfriend thinks that's wrong. "People like that can NEVER be reintroduced", he says. I think it depends on diagnosis and a what a doctor has to say about his chances...it may take a decade or more, if at all. But nope! Shoot him now, says my boyfriend.

Sometimes it makes life really hard and we clash all the time. And it's every single time we talk politics (and I like talking politics...but regardless, it comes up a lot). He became so angry that after we got home he stormed off to his bedroom, put his fan on, and went straight to bed (it's morning). Do you guys have any advice on how you deal with a partner that may have different political views than yourself, or maybe they are more extreme or less extreme? How do you recommend getting by without clashing? How do you recommend finding common ground?

[ckaihatsu]

You're probably not going to like my answer, but I would say that you're *mixing* scales of social involvement and insisting on bringing your (revolutionary) political identity into your personal life. I'm not saying that your boyfriend is *correct* in any way -- I agree with *your* stances over his -- but it's going to boil-down to the relationship vs. your (and his) identity based on politics ('identity politics'). (See on the following political spectrum.)


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals



http://s6.postimg.org/6omx9zh81/3_Ideologies_Operations_Fundamentals.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/cpkm723u5/full/)


Here's my opinion, at a past thread:





([O]ne should *compartmentalize* one's political activity away from one's personal life, the same as we *have* to do with work vs. home.)

(Politics happens at much greater scales than one's experiential life and surroundings, anyway.)

The Maoist Cult Next Door

https://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/196586-The-Maoist-Cult-Next-Door


History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle



http://s6.postimg.org/44rloql0x/160309_History_Macro_Micro_politics_logistic.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/r686uhkod/full/)


---


On the political content itself:





Another thing we disagree on is when it comes to social justice and the State. To be very basic and to the point, his idea is that the working classes should make more money (say, 50k a year), middle class should make more (say, 75k a year), and the people at the top should make much less (say, 100k a year). In his mind, this still provides incentive for people to be as productive as possible, and there will be tons of money left over to rebuild the country and provide basic needs. Private enterprise is okay - just heavily regulate them. Me, on the other hand, I want to shoot the fuckers at the top and take all their shit for the rest of us (that's being very crude and hyperbolic, but still more or less accurate). He thinks my views are repugnant. Totally repugnant.


Note that this framework of his is ultimately in service of the *state* -- if the nation is doing okay then all of the *means* to that end are somehow justified, according to nationalism. (Not to mention that this salary-tiering approach is based on *market exchange values* and not on any scale of humaneness or value-to-society.)

The nationalist worldview is sheer idealism because it assumes that there could somehow be a firewall between the private sector and the public sector -- so that all 'national surplus' would be *ignored* by the private sector and not-demanded as welfare for the rich and/or for the compensation of sagging balance sheets.





Lastly, he believes in retribution. Punishment for crime. Like the white supremacist in Oregon who stabbed those two men. He thinks the guy should be shot right now - no trial or anything (because it's a waste of money - there's witnesses). I can understand his sentiment and I fucking despise racists. But at the same time, I don't believe in punishing people. I think the guy, like all "criminals", should be rehabilitated with the hope of maybe one day being disavowed of his mental sickness and reintroduced into society. My boyfriend thinks that's wrong. "People like that can NEVER be reintroduced", he says. I think it depends on diagnosis and a what a doctor has to say about his chances...it may take a decade or more, if at all. But nope! Shoot him now, says my boyfriend.


The problem with this view, of course, is that it's fundamentally *elitist* -- it presumes that there could / would be some kind of specialist 'guardians' to make correct, final, binding decisions for all of society.





Plato's political philosophy has been the subject of much criticism. He was highly critical of democracy and believed in an aristocracy ruled by philosopher-kings. His political philosophy has been commonly labelled as totalitarian.[1]




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_political_philosophy


This typical specialization / political-commodification dynamic would effectively *disempower* the vast majority of people in such a society because then it *wouldn't matter* whether a population was familiar with social developments (news), or not -- the aristocratic Guardian elite would be doing all government-type administration regardless.

[GLF]

Thank you, Ckaihatsu. You're correct in what you say and it is a tough pill to swallow...my politics are very much wrapped up in the core essence of who and what I am and it is very hard to separate the two. Nonetheless, there is wisdom in what you say, and as someone way more versed in political theory than myself, I take it very seriously - that's not puffery, I mean it. And of course all your graphs and schematics are helpful and a real boon to this site IMO.

Also, thank you for the political explanations/analysis and the reference to the other thread. I'll soak it up and hopefully learn something useful moving forward. (I wish I could give you rep but it says I have to spread it around.)

[ckaihatsu]

Thank you, Ckaihatsu. You're correct in what you say and it is a tough pill to swallow...my politics are very much wrapped up in the core essence of who and what I am and it is very hard to separate the two. Nonetheless, there is wisdom in what you say, and as someone way more versed in political theory than myself, I take it very seriously - that's not puffery, I mean it. And of course all your graphs and schematics are helpful and a real boon to his site IMO.

Also, thank you for the political explanations/analysis and the reference to the other thread. I'll soak it up and hopefully learn something useful moving forward. (I wish I could give you rep but it says I have to spread it around.)


No prob -- thanks for the appreciation.

The disclaimer here is that you don't *have* to agree with me, of course -- it's my own opinion on relationships in-the-abstract, not a hard-science analysis, and I claim nothing more of it.

Hope it goes well, take care.

[Fellow_Human]

Honestly, I think you should give it a rest. You don't really disagree on... anything fundamental. If you're otherwise satisfied with your relationship, it would be a real pity if you two allowed such trivial squabbles to stand between you.


([O]ne should *compartmentalize* one's political activity away from one's personal life, the same as we *have* to do with work vs. home.)

(Politics happens at much greater scales than one's experiential life and surroundings, anyway.)

This false dichotomy is a capitalist invention and a bourgeois tactic of obfuscation.

In reality, society is built on interpersonal relations. The large-scale interests of whole classes are reduced to the personal interests of individuals. There's no "macro" without the "micro." As long as we live in society, as social beings, everyone is indirectly connected to everyone else, everything affects everyone, everything we do has a social and thus political context. The personal *is* political.

No previous mode of production or subsistence differentiated between "home and work," personal and societal, economic and political, political and religious, etc.

There were no grounds for that. After all, there had never been any formal separation of a "private sector" from a "public sector." Bands of hunter-gatherers were extended family members that made their subsistence together. Slaves lived where they worked, and so did serfs for the most part. Craftspeople made craftworks at home. Family members worked on the field together. All land was ultimately owned by the sovereign, and lords were only profiting off it with his permission. Production was mostly home and community-based.

Aristotle et al. used the concept of "the state as a family" to justify tyranny in both the state and the family.

Then came capitalism. Separating business from the personal allows the businessman to leave one's conscience at the door when entering the workplace. Nothing personal, just business. Exploitation, predation, back-stabbing, imperialism and pushing the world to the verge of environmental catastrophe are all fair game, because this is business, and business has to be ruthless. I'm your boss, not your mother.

Moreover, this false dichotomy is a vehicle of patriarchal oppression:


In showing how civilization, as opposed to prehistoric society, came to oppress women, Engels wrote:

The same cause which had ensured to the woman her previous supremacy in the house—that her activity was confined to domestic labor—this same cause now ensured the man’s supremacy in the house. The domestic labor of the woman no longer counted beside the acquisition of the necessities of life by the man; the latter was everything, the former an unimportant extra.


Engels regarded the division of social life into public and private spheres as key to the devaluation of women. But the sharp distinction that Engels describes became decisively true only under capitalism, when production was moved out of the home—an indication of the greater alienation under capitalism compared to previous class societies.


The family as economic unit not only fills the capitalists’ fundamental need for the reproduction of labor power, but the family-based division of labor also enables capitalism to keep down the social wage: public services like child care, education and health care. To the degree that workers accept the myth of the family as a private refuge from their jobs and dealings with their bosses, no matter how bad things really get in reality, they are restrained from making demands on the state for social needs. Whatever needs are not met at home become the failure of the individual family, especially the wife, rather than the bosses.


[Martha] Gimenez specifically derides Engels’ “reliance on descriptive, non-Marxist categories.” She disputes his “notion of the family as the “economic’ unit of society, as the molecule of which society is composed” as superficial, “a typical nineteenth-century sociological truism alien to the Marxist problematic."

Nevertheless, the study of the empirically observable level of social reality is not outside the purview of historical materialism; if Engels is to be criticized on this point, it is because he did not link this ’visible’ element of “society’ with its underlying determinants. It is the case that, at the level of social and market relations, the family is an economic unit to the extent that it is an ideologically mystified mechanism that regulates people’s access to the means of production, to the means of subsistence, and to the goods and services produced in its context by its members. As long as the family continues to operate as an economic unit, ’society’ does not assume responsibility for its members except under limited circumstances; distribution and consumption are organized in ways that presuppose family membership and specific relations between the family and the ’economy’ which severely restrict women’s lives and opportunities.


Although Engels did not consistently carry out the Marxist analysis of the proletarian family as the economic unit of society, Gimenez’ critique offers no alternative on this score. She accepts the family as economic unit only “at the level of social and market relations,” not at any fundamental level. This is not simply because of Engels’ lack of historical specificity. Gimenez misunderstands the role of the family because she overlooks the underlying historical drive of production, the attempt by human beings to overcome scarcity in qualitatively changing ways. Production in conditions of scarcity means that exploitation is the determinant within each given social system. So the key to the family under capitalism is its specific relation to exploitation.

Gimenez doesn’t see exploitation as central and therefore doesn’t examine the economic role of the family at that level. At a secondary level she does recognize its economic role: it regulates “access” to the means of production, but its basic structural function is to serve as a cover for society’s failure to assume responsibility for distribution and consumption. Central to her conception is that the family is an economic unit only to the extent that it is an “ideologically mystified mechanism” designed for this function of concealment. However, the ideological mystification of the family is indeed the surface. If Gimenez’ understanding allowed her to probe the family to its actual fundamental level, she would see that ideological mystification stems from the real mystification, the fetishism of commodities inherent in capitalist exploitation.

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/womenPR34.html

[ckaihatsu]

Honestly, I think you should give it a rest. You don't really disagree on... anything fundamental. If you're otherwise satisfied with your relationship, it would be a real pity if you two allowed such trivial squabbles to stand between you.





([O]ne should *compartmentalize* one's political activity away from one's personal life, the same as we *have* to do with work vs. home.)

(Politics happens at much greater scales than one's experiential life and surroundings, anyway.)





This false dichotomy is a capitalist invention and a bourgeois tactic of obfuscation.


It's a *real* dichotomy in the sense that we all have to live within this current context of a capitalist political economy which *causes* this societal schism that you go on to describe at length.

You began your post with your advice to GLF to 'give it a rest', which is *implicitly* compartmentalization, while he already expressed that he would be *reluctant* to do so (post #3):





[M]y politics are very much wrapped up in the core essence of who and what I am and it is very hard to separate the two.


I don't disagree -- I *agree* -- with the *empirical* aspect of what you're stating here, FH, but, unfortunately, in the process -- as I've just posited -- the *implications* of this social reality make for messiness in people's present-day personal lives because the dichotomy / schism empirically exists. We cannot *pretend* that primitive communism still exists, and attempt to socialize as if society is one big 'soup'. Matters of domestic vs. professional contexts *do* exist for everyone, as you've explained in your post.


---





In reality, society is built on interpersonal relations. The large-scale interests of whole classes are reduced to the personal interests of individuals. There's no "macro" without the "micro." As long as we live in society, as social beings, everyone is indirectly connected to everyone else, everything affects everyone, everything we do has a social and thus political context. The personal *is* political.


I'm sorry, but I can't agree -- I'll remain open to discussion around this and whatever else, but 'interpersonal relations' are not all qualitatively the same. I'd say you're missing the forest / plains / savanna for the trees / plants / grasses.

What you're describing is more like *primitive communism*, or a future fully-automated socialist society of social relations, rather than present conditions under capitalism.

The 'macro' exists as historically-emergent *institutions* (government / business / societal / whatever) that *transcend* the individual scale because any particular 'snapshot' of them -- specific compositions of them by specific individual participants -- are not nearly as deterministic / important as the institutions' continued existence over decades and centuries.

The working class' collective objective interest for socialist revolution *transcends* more-granular personal interests for this-or-that customized 'flavors' of personal-selective consumption. The *making* of mass revolution requires individuals to focus on their *collective*, non-personally-distinct interests as the aggregated *proletariat* entity, to overcome the bourgeois collective entity -- this is decisively a consciously 'political' process, and not an everyday 'social' one.





No previous mode of production or subsistence differentiated between "home and work," personal and societal, economic and political, political and religious, etc.

There were no grounds for that. After all, there had never been any formal separation of a "private sector" from a "public sector." Bands of hunter-gatherers were extended family members that made their subsistence together. Slaves lived where they worked, and so did serfs for the most part. Craftspeople made craftworks at home. Family members worked on the field together. All land was ultimately owned by the sovereign, and lords were only profiting off it with his permission. Production was mostly home and community-based.


Duly noted, but this does not describe our *current* social reality.





Aristotle et al. used the concept of "the state as a family" to justify tyranny in both the state and the family.

Then came capitalism. Separating business from the personal allows the businessman to leave one's conscience at the door when entering the workplace. Nothing personal, just business. Exploitation, predation, back-stabbing, imperialism and pushing the world to the verge of environmental catastrophe are all fair game, because this is business, and business has to be ruthless. I'm your boss, not your mother.


Okay, you're using *negative* / critical examples here, which is fine, of course, but I just mentioned a *positive* instance of compartmentalization-by-scale (lifestyle - logistics - politics) (diagram at post #2) -- namely, mass movements.





Moreover, this false dichotomy is a vehicle of patriarchal oppression:





In showing how civilization, as opposed to prehistoric society, came to oppress women, Engels wrote:

The same cause which had ensured to the woman her previous supremacy in the house—that her activity was confined to domestic labor—this same cause now ensured the man’s supremacy in the house. The domestic labor of the woman no longer counted beside the acquisition of the necessities of life by the man; the latter was everything, the former an unimportant extra.

Engels regarded the division of social life into public and private spheres as key to the devaluation of women. But the sharp distinction that Engels describes became decisively true only under capitalism, when production was moved out of the home—an indication of the greater alienation under capitalism compared to previous class societies.




The family as economic unit not only fills the capitalists’ fundamental need for the reproduction of labor power, but the family-based division of labor also enables capitalism to keep down the social wage: public services like child care, education and health care. To the degree that workers accept the myth of the family as a private refuge from their jobs and dealings with their bosses, no matter how bad things really get in reality, they are restrained from making demands on the state for social needs. Whatever needs are not met at home become the failure of the individual family, especially the wife, rather than the bosses.




[Martha] Gimenez specifically derides Engels’ “reliance on descriptive, non-Marxist categories.” She disputes his “notion of the family as the “economic’ unit of society, as the molecule of which society is composed” as superficial, “a typical nineteenth-century sociological truism alien to the Marxist problematic."

Nevertheless, the study of the empirically observable level of social reality is not outside the purview of historical materialism; if Engels is to be criticized on this point, it is because he did not link this ’visible’ element of “society’ with its underlying determinants. It is the case that, at the level of social and market relations, the family is an economic unit to the extent that it is an ideologically mystified mechanism that regulates people’s access to the means of production, to the means of subsistence, and to the goods and services produced in its context by its members. As long as the family continues to operate as an economic unit, ’society’ does not assume responsibility for its members except under limited circumstances; distribution and consumption are organized in ways that presuppose family membership and specific relations between the family and the ’economy’ which severely restrict women’s lives and opportunities.

Although Engels did not consistently carry out the Marxist analysis of the proletarian family as the economic unit of society, Gimenez’ critique offers no alternative on this score. She accepts the family as economic unit only “at the level of social and market relations,” not at any fundamental level. This is not simply because of Engels’ lack of historical specificity. Gimenez misunderstands the role of the family because she overlooks the underlying historical drive of production, the attempt by human beings to overcome scarcity in qualitatively changing ways. Production in conditions of scarcity means that exploitation is the determinant within each given social system. So the key to the family under capitalism is its specific relation to exploitation.

Gimenez doesn’t see exploitation as central and therefore doesn’t examine the economic role of the family at that level. At a secondary level she does recognize its economic role: it regulates “access” to the means of production, but its basic structural function is to serve as a cover for society’s failure to assume responsibility for distribution and consumption. Central to her conception is that the family is an economic unit only to the extent that it is an “ideologically mystified mechanism” designed for this function of concealment. However, the ideological mystification of the family is indeed the surface. If Gimenez’ understanding allowed her to probe the family to its actual fundamental level, she would see that ideological mystification stems from the real mystification, the fetishism of commodities inherent in capitalist exploitation.




https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/womenPR34.html


Agreed.

[TomLeftist]

GLF: I totally side with you and understand you. From an altruist, leftist and even progressive christian and progressive religious moralist point of view, we should love all humans, and accept their mistakes, etc. But from a realist point of view, dealing with toxic people is not a piece of cake. Even the self-help church priest Joel Osteen, said in one of his speeches that we should love toxic people but from a far distance. And we should get away from toxic negative people. Even the book "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene said in one of its laws that we should get away from negative people, from depressive people that are full of negative mental states and that kill our motivation toward a better world.

The French Thinker La Bruyere, even went further, he said that all the problems of humans are caused by humans, not being able to be alone most of the time. People specially in nations like USA where there is a lot of group-narcissism, family-narcissism and individual-narcissism are not a piece of cake. Even the oppressed working class are full of arrogance, vanity, pride, silence, social phobia, agora-phobia (fear of being in open spaces), personality disorders. And that's why for leaders of the radical extremist left of the USA to see a rise in popularity in the radical left, because US workers and even many poor non-workers behave like if they are rich middle class people who live in nice neighborhoods just like the professional middle class of USA (doctors, lawyers etc) live in nice neighborhoods.

Even poor workers, the workers of Walmart, the workers of Mcdonalds, the workers of supermarkets tend to behave in an arrogant way as a sort of ego-boosting and because of a utopian crazy dream ingrained in their minds, of thinking that if they work hard at Walmarts, Mcdonalds etc. they some day will get to be business mananegers of Walmarts, and the place where they work. That's why the US poor classes are so angry all the time, and wear an angry frawn face, depressed, with zero happiness on their facial expressions. Because they think that they will be business owners, some day, but they feel angry because they sense and see that day will never come. What will actually happen is that workers with time get fat, sick, ugly, depressed because all that repressed blocked anger, will pay them back and sooner or later they will get out of the fantasy in which they live (Like Chris Hedges who claimed that most US poor citizens live in a fantasy) and will land on their real-reality, which is a shitty life, living in houses made with cheap material, with 1 bathroom for the whole family, unable to pay bills, smoking a lot, eating a lot, getting fat depressed and weak.

And breaking the ice with the mess that the majority of poor oppressed workers are is almost impossible, because like I said they think that they will be rich soon but they get angry and live a constant permanent anger, because even if they work 12 hours a day, they will never experience a rise in their living standards, a progress physically (achieving a better body as a result of a rational scientific way of life (which is impossible in the USA because US workers live like in a hell, without even being able to eat low calorie healthy foods), mentally, spritually (learning how to play piano, guitar etc)

So this shitty life of about 70% of the USA population who are banned from participating in the life and pleasures of the top 30% (30% who oppressed the 70%) is one of the main powerful motives of why most US workers, US poor people who are about 70% and live a terrible life, at the same time reject the helping hand of leftist parties, they even reject the Green Party. The most radical they get is voting for progressive social-democrats (Like Bernie Sanders) and that's only a few.

That's why it is hard to deal with people in America, the brains and spirit of americans has been literally destroyed, by a life of working all day (from morning to bedtime, 365 days per year. Who the hell in other countries can cope with this hell, in USA one of the worst countries to live in in the whole world)

That's why people have to be careful who they deal with, because the majority of US citizens are totally destroyed mentally and spiritually and are literally unable to behave in a loving, moralist, altruistic way. In other words (Life in USA is so painful, physically painful in fact, so exhausting that it is impossible for a regular american to have a loving attitude toward others). Trhat's why there is so much loneliness in the USA, because the majority of US citizens are victims of the painful life that they are subjected from being born until death


Okay, my live in boyfriend who is much older than me (he's 57 and I'm 35) fight constantly over politics. I'm bisexual and he's a gay man, and his sexuality is extremely important to him which is something I can understand. He is from an era where gays were treated like total shit (and in many cases still are). I can understand his passion. Me though, it's not something I care about for myself. I view all underprivileged people, of all races/genders/walks of life, as my people without caring more or being more loyal to LGBTQ just because I'm included. I understand why people do - and I don't expect people to be entirely selfless when they're fighting for themselves. But it's just not something that I myself care more about. If anything I care the most about black people and the least about straight white men...but still, even then, I care very much about them all (working class people). But for my boyfriend, it's obvious that he cares SO much about that one issue to the point that he says I'm a self-hater just because I don't obsess over it as much as he does.

Today we get into a big fight on the way the back from my drug treatment center (I take methadone and he sometimes drives me - an hour away), because of the sanctuary city issue. Okay, so obviously I believe that deporting people is racist and evil and that it's wrong. He agrees. But when I challenged him - as I challenge myself all the time - he flipped totally out. All I was doing was critiquing him (and myself) on the idea of civil disobedience as it pertains to the sanctuary cities defying federal law vs Kim Davis defying federal law. I simply pointed out that in both instances it's people who feel very strongly about something and believe they are working for the forces of good. This was just self-critique - but instead of giving me the difference...what it makes it different...he flipped totally out on me. WTF? I know that it's completely different. One is justified and the other is not. But why? He can't answer, nor does he want to answer it. He got angry. He has no marxist grounding...it's all feeling with him. And to be honest, he's a much better person than myself. He's a very good person inside and I love him very much. But it still doesn't make it easier to live with. He thinks I'm challenging him all the time when I'm just trying to apply critical thinking about various matters that are important to both of us.

Another thing we disagree on is when it comes to social justice and the State. To be very basic and to the point, his idea is that the working classes should make more money (say, 50k a year), middle class should make more (say, 75k a year), and the people at the top should make much less (say, 100k a year). In his mind, this still provides incentive for people to be as productive as possible, and there will be tons of money left over to rebuild the country and provide basic needs. Private enterprise is okay - just heavily regulate them. Me, on the other hand, I want to shoot the fuckers at the top and take all their shit for the rest of us (that's being very crude and hyperbolic, but still more or less accurate). He thinks my views are repugnant. Totally repugnant.

Lastly, he believes in retribution. Punishment for crime. Like the white supremacist in Oregon who stabbed those two men. He thinks the guy should be shot right now - no trial or anything (because it's a waste of money - there's witnesses). I can understand his sentiment and I fucking despise racists. But at the same time, I don't believe in punishing people. I think the guy, like all "criminals", should be rehabilitated with the hope of maybe one day being disavowed of his mental sickness and reintroduced into society. My boyfriend thinks that's wrong. "People like that can NEVER be reintroduced", he says. I think it depends on diagnosis and a what a doctor has to say about his chances...it may take a decade or more, if at all. But nope! Shoot him now, says my boyfriend.

Sometimes it makes life really hard and we clash all the time. And it's every single time we talk politics (and I like talking politics...but regardless, it comes up a lot). He became so angry that after we got home he stormed off to his bedroom, put his fan on, and went straight to bed (it's morning). Do you guys have any advice on how you deal with a partner that may have different political views than yourself, or maybe they are more extreme or less extreme? How do you recommend getting by without clashing? How do you recommend finding common ground?

[Fellow_Human]

You began your post with your advice to GLF to 'give it a rest', which is *implicitly* compartmentalization, while he already expressed that he would be *reluctant* to do so (post #3):

Hm, I guess you're right. I didn't think of it as compartmentalization when I suggested that GLF should avoid dwelling on subjects that are divisive yet irrelevant -- but then again, it's only his relationship that they're irrelevant for, not society.


Matters of domestic vs. professional contexts *do* exist for everyone, as you've explained in your post.

Perhaps with the exception of some farmer families. Then there are those who run family businesses, those who work from home, rentiers who don't work, etc., but their livelihood cannot be made without the direct or indirect involvement of strangers.


I'm sorry, but I can't agree -- I'll remain open to discussion around this and whatever else, but 'interpersonal relations' are not all qualitatively the same. I'd say you're missing the forest / plains / savanna for the trees / plants / grasses.

The relationship between coworkers, or an employer and an employee, can be as much of an interpersonal relationship as between cousins, or an uncle and a nephew. The truth is that the line between friendship and networking is sometimes blurry. The greatest advantage that the children of wealthy families have is not the wealth but the connections (and insider perspective).

I'd go as far as to argue that class struggle itself is impossible without personal interests. While not all calculated actions are made out of considerations of material interests/gain by individuals, it *is*, for most people, the prime motive of action outside the intimate, amical-familial sphere (which *is*, however, intertwined with the transactional). Without this factor, the last of the bourgeois might as well surrender one's power voluntarily -- and we know *that* ain't gonna happen.

[ckaihatsu]

Hm, I guess you're right. I didn't think of it as compartmentalization when I suggested that GLF should avoid dwelling on subjects that are divisive yet irrelevant -- but then again, it's only his relationship that they're irrelevant for, not society.


I'm not sure what you mean by tacking-on the last part -- 'it's only his relationship that they're irrelevant for, not society.'

If we're using the perspective of the individual, it wouldn't matter *who* the individual / boyfriend is, the point would be that compartmentalization is the correct approach (mostly -- these are admittedly gray / complex dynamics).

This subject matter isn't about society as a whole.


---





Matters of domestic vs. professional contexts *do* exist for everyone, as you've explained in your post.





Perhaps with the exception of some farmer families. Then there are those who run family businesses, those who work from home, rentiers who don't work, etc., but their livelihood cannot be made without the direct or indirect involvement of strangers.


I'll still maintain that the time one spends at work activities is / will-be qualitatively distinct and different from the time one spends for oneself, regardless of the *physical* context.

I don't understand the significance of 'their livelihood cannot be made without the direct or indirect involvement of strangers'. It seems to be a non-sequitur.


---





In reality, society is built on interpersonal relations. The large-scale interests of whole classes are reduced to the personal interests of individuals. There's no "macro" without the "micro." As long as we live in society, as social beings, everyone is indirectly connected to everyone else, everything affects everyone, everything we do has a social and thus political context. The personal *is* political.





I'm sorry, but I can't agree -- I'll remain open to discussion around this and whatever else, but 'interpersonal relations' are not all qualitatively the same. I'd say you're missing the forest / plains / savanna for the trees / plants / grasses.





The relationship between coworkers, or an employer and an employee, can be as much of an interpersonal relationship as between cousins, or an uncle and a nephew.




The truth is that the line between friendship and networking is sometimes blurry. The greatest advantage that the children of wealthy families have is not the wealth but the connections (and insider perspective).


Yes -- I have no contention here, and this is a good example of where there is clear *overlap* between / among the 3 levels-by-scale (personal - logistical - political).





I'd go as far as to argue that class struggle itself is impossible without personal interests.


Yeah, I *don't* agree on this point, though -- you're making it sound something like a lottery ticket, as though some revolutionaries are 'gambling' on their own political involvement and in seeing proletarian revolution within their lifetimes in order to see an improvement in their own lives down-the-line.

I've never thought of my own revolutionary politics as being *personal* -- rather, it's more of a 'camp' that I'm de-facto *in*, due to my objective material interests as being one of the working class (relationship to means of mass production). My *personal* interests are in getting paid, having a decent standard of living, etc. -- more 'logistical' rather than 'political' -- so in this case there *isn't* overlap among the categories-by-scale of 'politics - logistics - life/style'.





While not all calculated actions are made out of considerations of material interests/gain by individuals, it *is*, for most people, the prime motive of action outside the intimate, amical-familial sphere (which *is*, however, intertwined with the transactional). Without this factor, the last of the bourgeois might as well surrender one's power voluntarily -- and we know *that* ain't gonna happen.


Again, I'm sorry, but I just can't relate to this sentiment -- and I'd welcome a *clarification* of your micro-to-macro reasoning here: How does one's own *personal* material interests correlate, exactly, to the *large-scale* societal dynamic of class struggle, directly -- ? (See the 'History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle' diagram at post #2.)

[Fellow_Human]

I'm not sure what you mean by tacking-on the last part -- 'it's only his relationship that they're irrelevant for, not society.'

If we're using the perspective of the individual, it wouldn't matter *who* the individual / boyfriend is, the point would be that compartmentalization is the correct approach (mostly -- these are admittedly gray / complex dynamics).

This subject matter isn't about society as a whole.

I suppose that *is* compartmentalization. The question of capital punishment, for example, has little relevance for GLF's personal relationship and much relevance for society, or for politics if you will.


I'll still maintain that the time one spends at work activities is / will-be qualitatively distinct and different from the time one spends for oneself, regardless of the *physical* context.

I'm not sure the distinction is so categorical for someone who enjoys their work. Also, not everyone works 9 to 5. For some professionals, the line between work and play isn't so clear when, instead of working 9 to 5, they work at irregular times, random times of the day, perhaps from a variety of places.

For the farmer, the distinction between work and home/family is again blurry by virtue of working where one lives, especially if working together with loved ones, as is often the case for farmers. And they can work at any time of the day or night.


I don't understand the significance of 'their livelihood cannot be made without the direct or indirect involvement of strangers'. It seems to be a non-sequitur.

A subsistence agriculturalist, for example, wouldn't rely on buyers or market exchange to survive. Their household can therefore be self-sufficient in a sense, though not completely, in a way that a proletarian or bourgeois household cannot.


Yeah, I *don't* agree on this point, though -- you're making it sound something like a lottery ticket, as though some revolutionaries are 'gambling' on their own political involvement and in seeing proletarian revolution within their lifetimes in order to see an improvement in their own lives down-the-line.

Here you are equating class struggle with revolution. Revolutions are only a *part* of class struggle. They are events in history, whereas the class struggle itself is an ever-ongoing process ("sometimes overt, sometimes covert").

Not all revolutionary socialists believe in a need to instigate revolution as soon as possible at any price. Most socialists, including Marx and Engels, have believed that revolutions occur organically, and that until then, the socialist task is to "work for the enlightenment and unity of the proletariat," i.e. agitate, educate, organize.

On the other hand, look at Trump supporters. What they wanted most was to "shake things up," to reshuffle the deck in hopes of getting a better hand, as it were. Clearly, there *are* those who feel that disruptive change is within their interests. Disruptive change has always been favored more by those who are at the bottom than those who are at the top because, from the top, the only direction you can go in is downwards. Also, revolutionary zeal has always been strongest among the youth, while people tend to grow more cautious as they get older, since there is less to gain from upheaval.

When revolutions occur, it is very often because the protesters' material situation is dire, and that *is* a personal matter.


I've never thought of my own revolutionary politics as being *personal* -- rather, it's more of a 'camp' that I'm de-facto *in*, due to my objective material interests as being one of the working class (relationship to means of mass production). My *personal* interests are in getting paid, having a decent standard of living, etc. -- more 'logistical' rather than 'political' -- so in this case there *isn't* overlap among the categories-by-scale of 'politics - logistics - life/style'.

Again, I'm sorry, but I just can't relate to this sentiment -- and I'd welcome a *clarification* of your micro-to-macro reasoning here: How does one's own *personal* material interests correlate, exactly, to the *large-scale* societal dynamic of class struggle, directly -- ? (See the 'History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle' diagram at post #2.)

Well, first of all, obviously, one doesn't have to belong to a certain class to believe a certain ideology or support certain politics. But for those socialists who are workers, the political is quite personal, in it that legislation against union busting, for example, could have effect on their ability to organize, and thus their living standards. Things like the 2-day weekend, 8-hour workday, paid vacation, parental leave, minimum wage, safety regulations, etc., have been won by the labor movement in the course of class struggle, and they have direct effect on workers' personal living standards.

I think this is fairly straightforward and don't see much need for any further clarification.

I understand that you will point out that protecting and strengthening the interests of labor within capitalism is not the same as replacing the capitalist system entirely, but the question then is whether the former does anything to further the cause of the latter.

[TomLeftist]

Fellow: Thanks a lot for your great post. You are right about the behaviour patterns of the older oppressed sectors compared to the behaviour of the younger oppressed. Like you said, the older oppressed tend to shift a little bit to the right-wing, and I think that's why many older oppressed support social-democrat leftist options like Democracy Now of Amy Goodman, The Russia Today News, Commondreams, Counterpunch, Truthout, Information Clearing House, The Green Party, The Nation Magazine, Alternet, Thinkprogress, Free Speech TV, Link TV, Socialist Alternative (which is a little bit social-democrat with Khama Sawant), Cornel West, Tavey Smiley, The Socialist Party of USA, and even the Socialist Equality Party of USA, which is a party that defends marxism, but at the same time, they seem to me too soft, too moralists, too pacific, too pro-elections, and too anti-violence.

I used to write comments and participate in the comments section of their news website WSWS and many people there said that I was too violent. I don't understand why the left of USA is so anti-violence. I remember that Evo Morales and the oppressed natives of Bolivia protested with dinamites in their hands. And in USA even professional marxists are too anti-violence, too anti-fighting (And Marx him self who was a realist said that there is no change at all, 0% change thru elections and diplomatic moralists, peacful means like elections. Marx said that real changes can only happen with the use of weapons, of one class fighting against another class. One sector of society fighting against another sector.

But even professional leftists like Gregory Lucero of the Revolutionary Students Union is too reformist. I remember once, that he thought that I was a CIA US government shill, because I told him that Karl Marx said that in order to see socialism in USA, there would be a need of a sort of internal war inside of USA of the leftists and oppressed using modern weapons against the armed forces of the right-wing sectors of the country. Because that is the real painful ugly truth. That it is impossible to see socialism thru elections. That's why Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador etc. are still social-democratic nations (Capitalist nations with a human face) and not workers-dictatorships (real socialism, the stage between the end of capitalism and the begining of anarchist-communism.

So like I said, the left of the USA and even many radical marxist leftists are too pacific, too anti-violence, too anti-weapons, and they should be the opposite, violent, immoral, illlegalists in order to see socialism some day in USA



I suppose that *is* compartmentalization. The question of capital punishment, for example, has little relevance for GLF's personal relationship and much relevance for society, or for politics if you will.



I'm not sure the distinction is so categorical for someone who enjoys their work. Also, not everyone works 9 to 5. For some professionals, the line between work and play isn't so clear when, instead of working 9 to 5, they work at irregular times, random times of the day, perhaps from a variety of places.

For the farmer, the distinction between work and home/family is again blurry by virtue of working where one lives, especially if working together with loved ones, as is often the case for farmers. And they can work at any time of the day or night.



A subsistence agriculturalist, for example, wouldn't rely on buyers or market exchange to survive. Their household can therefore be self-sufficient in a sense, though not completely, in a way that a proletarian or bourgeois household cannot.



Here you are equating class struggle with revolution. Revolutions are only a *part* of class struggle. They are events in history, whereas the class struggle itself is an ever-ongoing process ("sometimes overt, sometimes covert").

Not all revolutionary socialists believe in a need to instigate revolution as soon as possible at any price. Most socialists, including Marx and Engels, have believed that revolutions occur organically, and that until then, the socialist task is to "work for the enlightenment and unity of the proletariat," i.e. agitate, educate, organize.

On the other hand, look at Trump supporters. What they wanted most was to "shake things up," to reshuffle the deck in hopes of getting a better hand, as it were. Clearly, there *are* those who feel that disruptive change is within their interests. Disruptive change has always been favored more by those who are at the bottom than those who are at the top because, from the top, the only direction you can go in is downwards. Also, revolutionary zeal has always been strongest among the youth, while people tend to grow more cautious as they get older, since there is less to gain from upheaval.

When revolutions occur, it is very often because the protesters' material situation is dire, and that *is* a personal matter.



Well, first of all, obviously, one doesn't have to belong to a certain class to believe a certain ideology or support certain politics. But for those socialists who are workers, the political is quite personal, in it that legislation against union busting, for example, could have effect on their ability to organize, and thus their living standards. Things like the 2-day weekend, 8-hour workday, paid vacation, parental leave, minimum wage, safety regulations, etc., have been won by the labor movement in the course of class struggle, and they have direct effect on workers' personal living standards.

I think this is fairly straightforward and don't see much need for any further clarification.

I understand that you will point out that protecting and strengthening the interests of labor within capitalism is not the same as replacing the capitalist system entirely, but the question then is whether the former does anything to further the cause of the latter.

[Fellow_Human]

You are right about the behaviour patterns of the older oppressed sectors compared to the behaviour of the younger oppressed. Like you said, the older oppressed tend to shift a little bit to the right-wing, and I think that's why many older oppressed support social-democrat leftist options


And Marx him self who was a realist said that there is no change at all, 0% change thru elections and diplomatic moralists, peacful means like elections. Marx said that real changes can only happen with the use of weapons, of one class fighting against another class. One sector of society fighting against another sector

Even Marx can be said to have grown somewhat more cautious in his later life. After his death, there were often spats between the younger die-hard revolutionaries like Rosa Luxembourg and the older "centrists" of Orthodox Marxism like Karl Kautsky, not to mention the outright reformist Eduard Bernstein, who was basically the father of social democracy.

[ckaihatsu]

I suppose that *is* compartmentalization. The question of capital punishment, for example, has little relevance for GLF's personal relationship and much relevance for society, or for politics if you will.


Thanks for the acknowledgement.





I'm not sure the distinction is so categorical for someone who enjoys their work. Also, not everyone works 9 to 5. For some professionals, the line between work and play isn't so clear when, instead of working 9 to 5, they work at irregular times, random times of the day, perhaps from a variety of places.

For the farmer, the distinction between work and home/family is again blurry by virtue of working where one lives, especially if working together with loved ones, as is often the case for farmers. And they can work at any time of the day or night.


Okay, I won't quibble -- again this is all within a larger 'gray-area' context among the three 'levels', by scale.





A subsistence agriculturalist, for example, wouldn't rely on buyers or market exchange to survive. Their household can therefore be self-sufficient in a sense, though not completely, in a way that a proletarian or bourgeois household cannot.


Oh, okay.





Here you are equating class struggle with revolution. Revolutions are only a *part* of class struggle. They are events in history, whereas the class struggle itself is an ever-ongoing process ("sometimes overt, sometimes covert").


Okay.





Not all revolutionary socialists believe in a need to instigate revolution as soon as possible at any price. Most socialists, including Marx and Engels, have believed that revolutions occur organically, and that until then, the socialist task is to "work for the enlightenment and unity of the proletariat," i.e. agitate, educate, organize.

On the other hand, look at Trump supporters. What they wanted most was to "shake things up," to reshuffle the deck in hopes of getting a better hand, as it were. Clearly, there *are* those who feel that disruptive change is within their interests. Disruptive change has always been favored more by those who are at the bottom than those who are at the top because, from the top, the only direction you can go in is downwards. Also, revolutionary zeal has always been strongest among the youth, while people tend to grow more cautious as they get older, since there is less to gain from upheaval.

When revolutions occur, it is very often because the protesters' material situation is dire, and that *is* a personal matter.


Okay, good point.





Well, first of all, obviously, one doesn't have to belong to a certain class to believe a certain ideology or support certain politics. But for those socialists who are workers, the political is quite personal, in it that legislation against union busting, for example, could have effect on their ability to organize, and thus their living standards. Things like the 2-day weekend, 8-hour workday, paid vacation, parental leave, minimum wage, safety regulations, etc., have been won by the labor movement in the course of class struggle, and they have direct effect on workers' personal living standards.


Okay, yes.





I think this is fairly straightforward and don't see much need for any further clarification.

I understand that you will point out that protecting and strengthening the interests of labor within capitalism is not the same as replacing the capitalist system entirely, but the question then is whether the former does anything to further the cause of the latter.


I think you just explained the linkage in your previous segment there. (More empirical / economic workers power equates to more of a *political* presence in overall society.)

[The Idler]

Your most important identity is as a human being, socialism is not about having people having identities as 'socialists'. Socialism is rational.

[BIXX]

I'm gonna swing away from the general trend in this thread, and say that your politics ought to come first. I'm not saying be intolerant of disagreement (finding total cohesion in another human being is incredibly rare), but that if the relation makes a negative impact on your politics, your priority, as a combatant in the war against capital, falls one the side of your politics. Do you find the relationship has a tendency to force you to hold your tongue for political reasons? Do the arguments tend to result in stonewalling, general dominative practices by one or both of you?


He thinks my views are repugnant. Totally repugnant.

This, for me, is the center of the issue. This to me, points that maybe there is a deeper respect issue going on. You and I have no connection, and I agree with him (though for different reasons) that your views are repugnant. But the thing is, I'm not dating you. I don't have to show you empathy. Part of dating someone is accepting their differences, caring about them, and caring about their differences. I don't buy the idea that love is unconditional, because love is based around the person who you love, which comprises everything about them, including their viewpoints. Sure, you can disagree. But seeing someone's views as repugnant is to see part of them as repugnant. And I guess, to me, that isn't love.

I'm not saying break up by the way. I'm saying you should have a very serious discussing regarding not the politics themselves, but a conversation about what they mean to you and why your views are important to you, and why you feel the way you do abut his reaction to your politics, which are an essential part of you.

[Johnnyred]

I'm sorry you both disagree. It can be hard when one partner differs politically from the other. My Grandparents somehow managed it. One set had a Tory married to a Socialist. The other set had a Liberal married to a Tory. Generally they didn't talk politics, but when they did they always apologised if they upset each other afterwards.

I am not saying that it is easy, but I would suggest patience. Speak about your beliefs when you can in a gentle manner. Don't argue or push him away. Let him know why you feel as you do, and why those views are as much a part of you as your eyes or your heart. I believe that we are each on a journey, and we get where we are politically at different times. He might get where you are at some point or he might not.

Do you love each other? If you do, you'll work around this. I know couples who have (not just my grandparents), and I hope you can too. :)