White trash

[Dimentio]

I cannot understand why a large segment of the proletariat is often made ridicule of.

I am of course referring to those (mostly white) poors who are living in trailer parks, vote for or support GWB, drinks beer, are fanatical evangelicals/UFO-believers/Elvis worshippers, and are viewed as typical reactionary racist rednecks/right-wingers/inbred farmers.

It is no secret that the group in the USA which is most caricatured by the liberal establishment and by progressive intellectuals (and left-wingers in general) as reactionary/rasist/sexist/backward is in fact a part of the proletariat.

How do it come that it has been ok for so long to mock "white trash", when "white trash" in fact are one of the victims of the US capitalist system?

Of course alcoholism, racism and prejudices is existent in white trash communities, but the same thing applies for black and latino communities. Yet, in popular left-wing sentiment, white trash is not seen as having revolutionary potential.

http://www.asmp-mountainwest.com/members/images/waldron/white-trash-port-big.jpg

[jake williams]

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, and the truth is this has been a very difficult issue for me personally that's really just hell all the time, moral-intellectual wise.

I don't know, it's tricky. The truth is there is an identifiable, albeit approximate and complex, population with a great deal of the characteristics highlighted, and in a lot of ways they really are difficult, if not repulsive. And yes, they are in a lot of ways economic victims. And yes, they're a frequent target of intellectuals, and they themselves are quite often deeply anti-intellectual, which is a problem, but sort of understandable...

And it's all really complicated and difficult, and I don't know how to respond to it.

[Dimentio]

The gangs in L.A are anti-intellectuals as well, but it tends to be socio-economic issues when the uglier sides of their situation are sticking the bourgeoisie society.

I believe that White Trash could harbor and do harbor anti-capitalist sentiments.

[jake williams]

The gangs in L.A are anti-intellectuals as well, but it tends to be socio-economic issues when the uglier sides of their situation are sticking the bourgeoisie society.
Could you clarify? I just genuinely don't understand what you mean here.


I believe that White Trash could harbor and do harbor anti-capitalist sentiments.
I think they tend to harbour broadly anti-elitist sentiments, whatever the perceived "elite" happens to be, but as I understand it, and the truth is I just don't know all that much about this all, there's very little political and economic (and a few other kinds we might mention) education among this particular group, and it's extremely rare, I think, that it's specifically "anti-capitalist". And I don't just mean "they're not using the right word", it's not just an articulation thing, it's just genuinely a different set of ideas and feelings.

Partly it's a whole political organization thing.

[blackstone]

I cannot understand why a large segment of the proletariat is often made ridicule of.

I am of course referring to those (mostly white) poors who are living in trailer parks, vote for or support GWB, drinks beer, are fanatical evangelicals/UFO-believers/Elvis worshippers, and are viewed as typical reactionary racist rednecks/right-wingers/inbred farmers.

It is no secret that the group in the USA which is most caricatured by the liberal establishment and by progressive intellectuals (and left-wingers in general) as reactionary/rasist/sexist/backward is in fact a part of the proletariat.

How do it come that it has been ok for so long to mock "white trash", when "white trash" in fact are one of the victims of the US capitalist system?

Of course alcoholism, racism and prejudices is existent in white trash communities, but the same thing applies for black and latino communities. Yet, in popular left-wing sentiment, white trash is not seen as having revolutionary potential.

http://www.asmp-mountainwest.com/members/images/waldron/white-trash-port-big.jpg


I for one, would ridicule any man, white or black, wearing short shorts as this fellow

[Great Helmsman]

Excuse me, proletariat? The overwhelming majority of Americans (and the rest of the First World) are nothing of the sort. The white trash are not revolutionary because it's not in their clAss interests. There's nothing wrong with opposing the most reactionary segment of the labour aristocracy.

[kromando33]

They are the not the proletariat comrade, they are not the urbanized industrial workers, instead they are the middle-lower classes who Marx explained about in the Manifesto, most are reactionary, thus the religious-right influence and are basically rural peasants.

[Great Helmsman]

Unlike these types, peasants can be a legitimately revolutionary force. The white trash's aggressive pro-war, anti-immigrant, and anti-minority reactionism is a reflection of just how terrified they are about losing out on their share of the superprofits.

[kromando33]

The peasantry (and middle-lower classes) can be a revolutionary class, as was proven in the Russian, Chinese and African revolutionary struggles, but as Marx put out even if they assist in the proletarian revolution, this is only because after the revolution they will themselves become a proletarian. So as long as the peasants want to become revolutionary proletarians it's fine, it's not so good if they want to preserve their own rural conditions and resist industrialization after the revolution, in such a case they would likely become a bourgeois ally in post-revolutionary class struggle, so yeah a proletarian party must be careful in such arrangements.

The semi-modern phenomenon of the 'Country Party' or 'Rural Party' is a good example of how the bourgeois state has been able to mobilize the most reactionary and conservative elements of the rural class, and thus poison society with their backwardness and try to isolate the progressive proletariat.

[Dimentio]

Excuse me, proletariat? The overwhelming majority of Americans (and the rest of the First World) are nothing of the sort. The white trash are not revolutionary because it's not in their clAss interests. There's nothing wrong with opposing the most reactionary segment of the labour aristocracy.

Most white trash are unemployed or seasonly hired people who are sitting on the bars or gas stations in dixieland, arguing with strippers, swearing over minorities and driving rusty cars.

I cannot understand what share they have in the super-profits.

"Pa', what is the death tax?"

[BobKKKindle$]

Excuse me, proletariat? The overwhelming majority of Americans (and the rest of the First World) are nothing of the sort. The white trash are not revolutionary because it's not in their clAss interests. There's nothing wrong with opposing the most reactionary segment of the labour aristocracy.

Lenin's position on the Labour Aristocracy is unclear. In 'The Collapse of the Second International' Lenin describes the LA as 'an infinitesimal minority of the proletariat and the working masses' and yet in 'The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination' Lenin argues that the working masses have no interest in maintaining the imperialist system and derive no benefits from the exploitation of oppressed nations, suggesting that the LA does not exist, or, as in the case of the first quote, is so small as to be of minor significance - 'Imperialism is forcing the masses into this [class] struggle by sharpening class antagonisms to an immense degree, by worsening the conditions of the masses both economically—trusts and high cost of living, and politically—growth of militarism, frequent wars, increase of reaction, strengthening and extension of national oppression and colonial plunder.' Whatever Lenin's final conclusions, it is clear that he did not view the LA (if it exists) as a reason to regard a large section of the working masses as always reactionary. Clearly, your argument has no theoretical basis.

Although conservative ideas are prevalent amongst this group, this is partly because Socialists have, in the past, only organised in urban centres, such that the growth of evangelicalism and support for imperial expansion poses a pressing need to change strategy and devote more organisational resources to rural communities. These reactionary ideas are ideological in nature; i.e. they maintain a false consciousness and do not represent the class interests of this group.

[BobKKKindle$]

I've been thinking about the Labour Aristocracy in the Oppressor Nations and have come to the conclusion that the interests of agricultural producers may be in conflict with the interests of peasants in the developing world, such that agricultural producers in the developed world have an interest in maintaining the status quo. My reasoning is thus; The system of agricultural subsidies and restrictions on the import of foreign foodstuffs (known as the Common Agricultural Policy in the European Union) allows agricultural producers to retain their traditional existence, whilst at the same time denies peasants in the oppressed nations an export market for their goods and, when surplus production is 'dumped', drives down domestic prices, resulting in a loss of income. Were it not for this system, agricultural producers would be unable to withstand the market competition of peasants in the oppressed nations, who are able to produce foodstuffs at a lower cost, and so would eventually become part of the proletariat.

Thus it would appear there is an antagonistic relationship between these two groups. I've never thought about this before now...

If this analysis is correct, should we argue for the elimination of existing agricultural policies, knowing this would undermine the conditions of agricultural producers and possibly alienate this group from Socialist politics? Is there anyone that denies the existence of an antagonistic relationship?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Even the proletariat are not immune to criticism. Fanatical evangelism, anti-intellectualism and a generally reactionary mindset are not good things. The problems arise when people like Great Helmsman say things like:


Excuse me, proletariat? The overwhelming majority of Americans (and the rest of the First World) are nothing of the sort. The white trash are not revolutionary because it's not in their clAss interests. There's nothing wrong with opposing the most reactionary segment of the labour aristocracy.

The idea that "white trash" are somehow part of the labour aristocracy is immensely laughable, especially from someone posting from Canada* of all places. Not to mention immensely hypocritical.

People like the above damage the movement much worse than the occasional mocking of rednecks. They characterise the entire working class as reactionary, redneck or otherwise, at the same time living right in the middle of the sort of countries they claim to hate.

(*Or should that be KKKanada, you MIMite fuck?)

[A.J.]

I cannot understand why a large segment of the proletariat is often made ridicule of.

I am of course referring to those (mostly white) poors who are living in trailer parks, vote for or support GWB, drinks beer, are fanatical evangelicals/UFO-believers/Elvis worshippers, and are viewed as typical reactionary racist rednecks/right-wingers/inbred farmers.

It is no secret that the group in the USA which is most caricatured by the liberal establishment and by progressive intellectuals (and left-wingers in general) as reactionary/rasist/sexist/backward is in fact a part of the proletariat.

How do it come that it has been ok for so long to mock "white trash", when "white trash" in fact are one of the victims of the US capitalist system?

Of course alcoholism, racism and prejudices is existent in white trash communities, but the same thing applies for black and latino communities. Yet, in popular left-wing sentiment, white trash is not seen as having revolutionary potential.

http://www.asmp-mountainwest.com/members/images/waldron/white-trash-port-big.jpg

I don't think any of what's called the "white trash" are proper ordinary proletarians. They're made up of the petty-bourgeoisie/lower-middle class and lumpenproletariathttp://www.mltranslations.org/US/Rpo/classes/classes4.htm

That's why they're not considered to have any revolutionary potential......

"The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
"The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue."

Nay more, this strata of society often provides the mass base of support for fascist movements. Dig this....

"Fascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital. Fascism tries to secure a mass basis for monopolist capital among the petty bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat......" Theses on Fascism, the War Danger and the Tasks of the Communist Parties; 13th Plenum Executive Committee of the Comintern, December 1933

[Great Helmsman]

Lenin's position on the Labour Aristocracy is unclear. In 'The Collapse of the Second International' Lenin describes the LA as 'an infinitesimal minority of the proletariat and the working masses' and yet in 'The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination' Lenin argues that the working masses have no interest in maintaining the imperialist system and derive no benefits from the exploitation of oppressed nations, suggesting that the LA does not exist, or, as in the case of the first quote, is so small as to be of minor significance - 'Imperialism is forcing the masses into this [class] struggle by sharpening class antagonisms to an immense degree, by worsening the conditions of the masses both economically—trusts and high cost of living, and politically—growth of militarism, frequent wars, increase of reaction, strengthening and extension of national oppression and colonial plunder.' Whatever Lenin's final conclusions, it is clear that he did not view the LA (if it exists) as a reason to regard a large section of the working masses as always reactionary. Clearly, your argument has no theoretical basis.

Lenin was talking about the situation in Russia where the labour aristocracy was small at the time. But both Engels and Lenin criticized, and ultimately dismissed, the revolutionary potential of the labour aristocracy in the capitalist-imperialist countries.
Engels to Marx:
"The English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy, and a bourgeois proletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world, this is, of course, to a certain extent justifiable."
and Lenin:
"The petty-bourgeois democrats in the capitalist countries, whose foremost sections are represented by the second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, serve today as the mainstay of capitalism, since they retain an influence over the majority, or a considerable section, of the industrial and commercial workers and office employees who are afraid that if revolution breaks out they will lose the relative petty-bourgeois prosperity created by the privileges of imperialism."

Remember this was almost 100 years ago, so back then there may have been a case to be made where workers in the imperialist countries had something to gain from revolution, but not today. Today almost all first world 'workers' are employed in unproductive sectors of the economy, and the wages paid to them are higher than the value of their labour. Any global redistribution of wealth is going to leave most of those in the imperialist countries worse off (at least in the short-term).


The idea that "white trash" are somehow part of the labour aristocracy is immensely laughable, especially from someone posting from Canada* of all places. Not to mention immensely hypocritical.

People like the above damage the movement much worse than the occasional mocking of rednecks. They characterise the entire working class as reactionary, redneck or otherwise, at the same time living right in the middle of the sort of countries they claim to hate.

(*Or should that be KKKanada, you MIMite fuck?)
I've suspected for awhile that this forum acts as a cover for white nationalists/fascists, and now I have had my suspicions confirmed. I don't have a personal problem with confused communists who think the first world is ripe revolutionary material, but dissenting ideas must be a little too scary for you. Just a suggestion: perhaps the 'Rev'left 'Commie' KKKlub volk might find themselves more at home over at some openly white nationalist site?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I've suspected for awhile that this forum acts as a cover for white nationalists/fascists, and now I have had my suspicions confirmed.

You've made your libellious accusation, now prove it.

Your IP number is not a fucking secret, and you're deluded if you think it is. Besides, if you were truly that concerned about about some fascist knocking down your door and beating seven shades of shit out of you, you'd use a proxy.

Now, either you're too stupid to know how to use one, or you don't really care, and are merely putting up a front because someone revealed your disgusting hypocrisy.

Which would you prefer to be? A dumbass or a hypocrite?

Furthermore, I am personally insulted that you consider me a closet fascist. I have revealed only your country, and Canada being a pretty big country, anyone wanting to physically harm you has got a lot of searching to do.

And as for me coming over and beating you senseless, as much as you deserve it, in the first place I don't want to, and even if I could be bothered to tan your hide I wouldn't be able to afford to, on account of being too poor to afford the flight.

Which reminds me, where is all the wealth and material riches I'm supposed to be getting off the backs of the 3rd world people? I haven't seen a penny of it. Oops, so much for being a member of the "labour aristocracy".


I don't have a personal problem with confused communists who think the first world is ripe revolutionary material, but dissenting ideas must be a little too scary for you.If I wanted to shut you up, I'd have suspended your account indefinately. As it happens, I'm perfectly happy to rip your hypocritical lying bullshit to shreds.

PS: Lose the persecution complex. It only serves to make you look more pathetic than you are.


Just a suggestion: perhaps the 'Rev'left 'Commie' KKKlub volk might find themselves more at home over at some openly white nationalist site?Again, put some proof behind your libellious crap, or be forever considered an untrustworthy lying cumstain.

[Great Helmsman]

You've made your libellious accusation, now prove it.

Your IP number is not a fucking secret, and you're deluded if you think it is. Besides, if you were truly that concerned about about some fascist knocking down your door and beating seven shades of shit out of you, you'd use a proxy.

Now, either you're too stupid to know how to use one, or you don't really care, and are merely putting up a front because someone revealed your disgusting hypocrisy.

Which would you prefer to be? A dumbass or a hypocrite?

Furthermore, I am personally insulted that you consider me a closet fascist. I have revealed only your country, and Canada being a pretty big country, anyone wanting to physically harm you has got a lot of searching to do.

And as for me coming over and beating you senseless, as much as you deserve it, in the first place I don't want to, and even if I could be bothered to tan your hide I wouldn't be able to afford to, on account of being too poor to afford the flight.

Which reminds me, where is all the wealth and material riches I'm supposed to be getting off the backs of the 3rd world people? I haven't seen a penny of it. Oops, so much for being a member of the "labour aristocracy".

If I wanted to shut you up, I'd have suspended your account indefinately. As it happens, I'm perfectly happy to rip your hypocritical lying bullshit to shreds.

PS: Lose the persecution complex. It only serves to make you look more pathetic than you are.

Again, put some proof behind your libellious crap, or be forever considered an untrustworthy lying cumstain.
I've never made it a secret that I live in an imperialist nation. But you feel that it's appropriate to dance around and point this out as if that is somehow a mark against me. If I was living in the third world, you can bet I wouldn't waste my time with this shit.

Not only do you consider it acceptable to out people to try and score cred with your fake-leftist friends, you advance a social-fascist line that puts the interests of the privileged above the majority. Sorry, higher wages for first world 'workers' isn't going to resolve any of the latent contradictions of the capitalist-imperialist system.

Whenever a communist brings up the nature of the labour aristocracy, there's a rush to discredit the notion that FW workers are bought off. Trotsykism is the prevailing ideology around here because it comforts the insecurities in the FW 'communist' movement. In fact, Revleft is doing a much better job wrecking revolutionary potential than I could ever hope to.

But go on, call me a MIMite (I've never had anything to do with MIM) or a "cumstain." If this helps you sleep at night, go right ahead.

[Dimentio]

I don't think any of what's called the "white trash" are proper ordinary proletarians. They're made up of the petty-bourgeoisie/lower-middle class and lumpenproletariathttp://www.mltranslations.org/US/Rpo/classes/classes4.htm

That's why they're not considered to have any revolutionary potential......

"The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
"The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue."

Nay more, this strata of society often provides the mass base of support for fascist movements. Dig this....

"Fascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital. Fascism tries to secure a mass basis for monopolist capital among the petty bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat......" Theses on Fascism, the War Danger and the Tasks of the Communist Parties; 13th Plenum Executive Committee of the Comintern, December 1933

And Harlem or South L.A gangsters are also lumpenproletariat, yet they are seen as a legitimate force to agitate to.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I've never made it a secret that I live in an imperialist nation. But you feel that it's appropriate to dance around and point this out as if that is somehow a mark against me.

It is, because you're one of those people supposedly "benefitting" from the exploitation of the 3rd world, making you a non-revolutionary reactionary by the standards of your own self-professed ideology.


If I was living in the third world, you can bet I wouldn't waste my time with this shit.

Doubtless you would be too busy trying to survive to subscribe to the idiotic ideology that you do.


Not only do you consider it acceptable to out people to try and score cred with your fake-leftist friends, you advance a social-fascist line that puts the interests of the privileged above the majority.

Quotes supporting this assertion, please.


Sorry, higher wages for first world 'workers' isn't going to resolve any of the latent contradictions of the capitalist-imperialist system.

I don't believe that I claimed that it would. Of course, if you have quotes to the contrary, I will admit that I was wrong.


Whenever a communist brings up the nature of the labour aristocracy, there's a rush to discredit the notion that FW workers are bought off.

Whenever creationists bring up intelligent design, there's a rush to discredit the notion that all living things were created. Passion in defence of the facts does not change the facts.


Trotsykism is the prevailing ideology around here because it comforts the insecurities in the FW 'communist' movement.

I'm not a Trot, which should be obvious to anyone with a degree of reading comprehension.

Neither are the Hoxhaists, the Marxist-Leninists, the anarchists and all the other representatives of the different ideologies that populate this board. Trotskyism is not the "prevailing" ideology on this board and your attempts to say it is so only demonstrate how truly ignorant you are.


In fact, Revleft is doing a much better job wrecking revolutionary potential than I could ever hope to.

That's because your idea of "revolutionary" is to be a self-hating ideologue. Others have different, considerably more accurate ideas of what it means to be a revolutionary.


But go on, call me a MIMite (I've never had anything to do with MIM) or a "cumstain." If this helps you sleep at night, go right ahead.

Not being a member of MIM does not prevent you from sharing their moronic ideas. And I call you names because I get a measure of your maturity that way, which seems to be the same as that of a 14-year-old who thinks they know everything.

I also notice that you failed to substantiate your assertions like I asked you to.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

[fmlnleft]

I think that so called "white trash" people are not aware with revolutionary ideals. But if they did know about about these type of ideas, I still wouldnt think that they would have an interest. I know quite a few of people like that. I live in Central Oregon, and there are places where there are only "white trash or Redneck" people. I really dont like calling those names but its like the only way that they are identified. I dont mean to offend.

[Dimentio]

I think that so called "white trash" people are not aware with revolutionary ideals. But if they did know about about these type of ideas, I still wouldnt think that they would have an interest. I know quite a few of people like that. I live in Central Oregon, and there are places where there are only "white trash or Redneck" people. I really dont like calling those names but its like the only way that they are identified. I dont mean to offend.

There was an Italian social rebel in the 19th century who killed of land-owners, took their money and gave it to the poors. He also massacred first of may celebrators for being "godless traitors of the king of the Two Sicilies".

Rednecks are the modern equivalent to the medieval and pre-industrial peasant populations.

[which doctor]

I find this thread rather sickening, all the people saying the "white trash" are not proletarian. There just as much of the problem of classism as the bourgeoisie. The white trash are a vary oppressed group of people, certainly revolutionary. They are proletariat or lumpen proletariat. I don't think I've ever met a petty-bourgeois white trash. In fact, it's the moralist petty-bourgeoisie who are the most critical of the white trash.

[Cmde. Slavyanski]

The problem is that historically, "white trash" has been easily rallied to the cause of the bourgeoisie, usually due to religion. Of course the term white trash being used by non-whites doesn't help either, because it disassociates the term with its very class-based origins. The reason why these people aren't reached is because the liberal elitists don't make any effort to reach these people, they are so stuck on identity politics. That is why it is essential that Communists reach these people, because the liberals won't even try.

[kromando33]

Just for clarification on this topic, I will quote the part of the Manifesto I am sure we are all refering to:

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

[Cencus]

Workers of the World unite, as long as you aren't ileducated and poor.

Why not instead of pouring scorn on the lowest sections of western society get out there and educate them?

[Ismail]

The main issue I see with the "brought off by the First World" claim (although the entire Three Worlds Theory is social-imperialist) is that it seems to confuse a culture not used to real workers struggles with the actual workers being too well off to actually agree to such things. A worker is still a worker, and his/her quality of life remains lower than that of the bourgeois. Health and so on is still related to conditions outside of their control. (e.g. if it is an exploiting nation then workers usually won't be dying in the streets or employing 11-year olds to do hard labor) The worker is still subject to wage slavery and even in the US many still work hard to get decent food on the table and hope that their paycheck doesn't go awry.

All it takes is for a worker to realize these things, and to expose the dictatorship of the bourgeois in society. Then they will join or at least be sympathetic.

[jake williams]

Workers of the World unite, as long as you aren't ileducated and poor.

Why not instead of pouring scorn on the lowest sections of western society get out there and educate them?
Well part of the problem is the rank anti-intellectualism, the pride in being uneducated that makes it very difficult to educate them.

[Holden Caulfield]

Most white trash are unemployed or seasonly hired people who are sitting on the bars or gas stations in dixieland, arguing with strippers, swearing over minorities and driving rusty cars.



i though this post was becuase he didnt like people taking the piss outa these guys?
the choice of pic doesnt help either

[Cencus]

Well part of the problem is the rank anti-intellectualism, the pride in being uneducated that makes it very difficult to educate them.

Talk to people in a language they understand, don't overcomplicate matters. The anti-intellectualism is part of the defence people build when you are poorly educated and at the bottom of the scrapheap, you're not gonna win em all over, but rejecting the some of the most shat upon people outta of hand is just silly.

I'm British so have no experience of American white trash, but there plentry that would fall into that catagory over here, talk to them on thier level, use issues that will interest them and you'll pick up a few converts

[jake williams]

Talk to people in a language they understand, don't overcomplicate matters. The anti-intellectualism is part of the defence people build when you are poorly educated and at the bottom of the scrapheap, you're not gonna win em all over, but rejecting the some of the most shat upon people outta of hand is just silly.

I'm British so have no experience of American white trash, but there plentry that would fall into that catagory over here, talk to them on thier level, use issues that will interest them and you'll pick up a few converts
I tend to agree a lot with what you're saying - although of course on one level it's certainly condescending, however accurate or appropriate it might be, to refer to "their level". And I don't want to blame them entirely for their general anti-intellectualism, of course, and it is obviously in many ways a response to economic stratification.

But look, we can't just ignore all the absurd and important beliefs about Christ and the Rapture and fags and so forth.

[Cmde. Slavyanski]

Anti-intellectualism is fostered by the "Republican noise machine" in the US, where dissenters and left-wingers of all kinds are portrayed as rich, "Ivory Tower liberals", trying to needless complicated matters that should be solved by good ol' fashioned common sense as they call it. Unfortunately there are a few who actually fit this profile, and they are used as examples by the right-wing pundits. Morris Berman and Michael More come to mind.

[jake williams]

Anti-intellectualism is fostered by the "Republican noise machine" in the US, where dissenters and left-wingers of all kinds are portrayed as rich, "Ivory Tower liberals", trying to needless complicated matters that should be solved by good ol' fashioned common sense as they call it. Unfortunately there are a few who actually fit this profile, and they are used as examples by the right-wing pundits. Morris Berman and Michael More come to mind.
While the Fox Populists are obviously absurd, the existence of an American "liberal" community which is elitist and bourgeois and stewing in its own benevolence, it's not totally a myth or insignificant. Just because the reaction to them isn't any better doesn't mean these problems with the skeletal American "mainstream left" go away.

And Michael Moore? He's working class semi-populist who's sold out a lot to the mainstream, he ain't "liberal" in the meaningful sense at all.

[TC]

Excuse me, proletariat? The overwhelming majority of Americans (and the rest of the First World) are nothing of the sort. The white trash are not revolutionary because it's not in their clAss interests. There's nothing wrong with opposing the most reactionary segment of the labour aristocracy.


I agree (provided that 'white trash' refers to farmers and not lumpenproletariat).

It should also be pointed out that white american farmers (as opposed to migrant agricultural workers in america, many of whom aren't recognized as american) normally own their own buisness (or rather the patriarch of the family does). Not even the most liberal trotskyist concept of 'proletarian' would include them.

Moreover the fact that 98 percent are family owned gives rise to a particular form of pre-capitalist, feudal reactionary ideology. These farmers, middle aged and old white men who inhereted their property, have an interest in maintaining dominion over their depedent wives, children and grand children, and because these are rural populations who don't provide employees to the major capitalists , the tension between the capitalist interest in consumer and employment autonomy including female workers, and the patriarchal pre-capitalist interest in maintaining financial depedence and female domestic servants (i.e. 'homemakers') is less than on the coasts and cities because the major capitalists don't need a massive work force in the countryside. This in turn allows the patriarchal pre-capitalist ideology of the agricultural mode of production to go unopposed, and thats why you get these pre-industrial reactionary positions in areas dominanted by agriculture or animal husbandry.

If there is any further doubt in anyones minds however, not only are white farmers (or rather, the patriarchal family farm owner) free producers and not proletarian or peasentry, their prices are fixed by the federal government with massive farm subsidies that pay them vastly more than the value of their products in order to protect them as *reactionary* political constituents against the more socially advanced urbanized population on the coasts and cities. These subsidies of course come from the surplus on the investment of major international capitalists from exploited labour abroad.

The major capitalists therefore buy them off as political allies against the domestic hyperexploited populations (the black and hispanic and lumpenized white populations in the cities) with the profit they make off the back of third world labour.

This is the reality. Sentimentalizing farmers because photos of big strong white men who work with their hands evokes a sort of faux-communist identification that dates back to soviet propaganda posters leads to bad politics and ignorant and unmaterialist claims about what their real relationship to the economy and political structure involves.


http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB12/EIB12c.pdf?

[Dimentio]

There is a vast rural population of poors. No one is referring to the self-owning farmers as "white trash". White trash are those who are living at trailer parks or in shackles.

[Great Helmsman]

@NoXion: I'm not going to waste my time by responding to personal attacks or identit. If you have a cogent argument for why the white trash, or the rest of the FW 'workers' for that matter, are revolutionary material, please make it and drop the posturing. As far as I'm concerned, there's no difference between a Trotskyist who parrots a FW worker line, and a Marxist-Leninist or anarchist who does the same. That's the rubbish social fascist line that needs to be discarded by communists.


The main issue I see with the "brought off by the First World" claim (although the entire Three Worlds Theory is social-imperialist) is that it seems to confuse a culture not used to real workers struggles with the actual workers being too well off to actually agree to such things. A worker is still a worker, and his/her quality of life remains lower than that of the bourgeois. Health and so on is still related to conditions outside of their control. (e.g. if it is an exploiting nation then workers usually won't be dying in the streets or employing 11-year olds to do hard labor) The worker is still subject to wage slavery and even in the US many still work hard to get decent food on the table and hope that their paycheck doesn't go awry.

All it takes is for a worker to realize these things, and to expose the dictatorship of the bourgeois in society. Then they will join or at least be sympathetic.
Even if workers in the FW produced (which very few do in practice), there's still the problem of them being paid more than what their labour is worth. How do you explain that any global redistribution of wealth is going to leave almost everyone in the FW worse off in the short-term? False consciousness isn't enough to explain why we haven't seen any meaningful progress by these people. I suggest that there is a real material basis for their hostility to communism. Even before anti-communism caught on in the United States, there was a great deal of hostility by the white majority toward the radical ideas that immigrants from Eastern Europe brought over. Those who had already been in America, including the mainstream craft unions, were not receptive to the socialism of the IWW. Some even saw it as a threat to their privilege.
Just because the labour aristocracy is not revolutionary material at this moment, doesn't mean that they might not be at some point in the future when living conditions worsen in the West and they find themselves encircled by the anti-imperialist forces. But communists are internationalists, and until such a time we shouldn't pretend that those in the FW need more, especially when we know on which side they stand.

[Cmde. Slavyanski]

The problem is where do you draw the line? Some people assume that Europe is automatically first world, when in fact many Eastern European countries are terribly exploited(Poland for example, Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine). Of course if you were to go to Russia and observe Moscow or St. Petersburg, you might think people have a relatively decent life(unless you look at how much they work, how much time it takes to commute, and the cost of living). Russia exploits immigrants from FSU nations like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Ukraine, and yet its own people are exploited by small nations like South Korea and Turkey(this tends to be not only economic but sexual exploitation as well).

The fact is that their is something like a ladder among nations. You can generally always find a nation of people poorer than others.

[kromando33]

Well part of the problem is the rank anti-intellectualism, the pride in being uneducated that makes it very difficult to educate them.
Exactly.
When we are talking about the lumpenproletariat, it's not a matter of choice in their bad educational levels, criminality and general hooliganism, if you have seen the 'Chavs' in Britain or the 'bogans' here in Australia, you would think nothing else other than they are the scum of society. Russia also has this phenomenon with racist and nationalist groups and also general gangism.

[Zurdito]

firstly, can we be clear that "white trash", like all cultural phenomenon, is a cross-class phenomenon.

Some people who may be called "white trash" are petty borugeois, some are lumpens, and some are proletariat: to us as marxists, it's a worhtless term, and we should never use it unless citing an example of subjectivity.

As to why they are hated, simple: the liberals recognise that the third world is exploited and opressed. They recognise that blacks and latinos in the US are exploited and opressed. They need to blame someone. But as they reject class war against the bourgeoisie, there needs to be a blame placed on the wider society. As most US society is white working class - and as with all masses of a society they have often chauvinistic attitudes to immigrants and ethnic minorities - this mass of people gets the blame. Identified as the most aggressively chauvinistic cultural group is the "white trash". Therefore, this myth is very useful to liberals.

Now, as for whether they have revolutionary potential or should be treated as an enemy: if you, like me, believes that the working class of the first world has revolutionary potential (and if you don't believe that I don't consider you a marxist, so let's not even debate it here), then you should ditch any notion of "hite trash", and instead use Marxist i.e. economic and not cultural, terms to define the American working class (not necessarilly "poors" - "poor" and workers are not synonymous, and neither does being "poor" make you a worker, many petty-bourgeois or lumpens are poor).

Finally, even if someone is a lumpen or petty-bourgeois, we should not ridicule them, because we aim to liberate these people as well, and persuade them to follow the working class movement. Some, maybe most, will choose to be our enemies, but we should oppose them on principled grounds and not chauvinsitic grounds.

[Anarchist Freedom]

Tell the rednecks to get a damn job and stop marrying their cousins.

[Dimentio]

Tell the rednecks to get a damn job and stop marrying their cousins.

Imagine if that had been written about Latinos in South L.A?

Or about Algerians i Paris?

[RedAnarchist]

Tell the rednecks to get a damn job and stop marrying their cousins.

That is what we call a stereotype. Do you know what that word means?:rolleyes:

[mikelepore]

Two comments.

The characterizations on TV about people who living in trailers (no teeth, commit incest, etc.) is a stereotype that was made up by comedians. In fact, buying mobile homes is a way to move upward financially for people who used to have no other choice but to rent apartments.

Use of the term "white trash" should not be encouraged because of its racist connotations. It refers to white people who "don't seem to know what color they are", they live in broken shacks and act illiterate "like the black people."

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well part of the problem is the rank anti-intellectualism, the pride in being uneducated that makes it very difficult to educate them. Well, skip Jeff Foxworthy and the millionaire "Get-er-Done" guy and focus on real workers who actually want an alternative to poverty and the alienation of work under capitalism.

People say black workers in the US are "too ignorant" and that's why they are poor (according to conservatives) or "apathetic" ([or what they used to call lazy] according to white liberals). The reality is bad schools and little job prospects means there's really no point to school - that's the reality for poor whites and blacks, not anti-intellectualism for the sake of anti-intellectualism.

When people see that studying politics and history can help them build a collective way out, then there's a point to intellectualism.

[Winter]

I cannot understand why a large segment of the proletariat is often made ridicule of.

I am of course referring to those (mostly white) poors who are living in trailer parks, vote for or support GWB, drinks beer, are fanatical evangelicals/UFO-believers/Elvis worshippers, and are viewed as typical reactionary racist rednecks/right-wingers/inbred farmers.

It is no secret that the group in the USA which is most caricatured by the liberal establishment and by progressive intellectuals (and left-wingers in general) as reactionary/rasist/sexist/backward is in fact a part of the proletariat.

How do it come that it has been ok for so long to mock "white trash", when "white trash" in fact are one of the victims of the US capitalist system?

Of course alcoholism, racism and prejudices is existent in white trash communities, but the same thing applies for black and latino communities. Yet, in popular left-wing sentiment, white trash is not seen as having revolutionary potential.



I think that they do have as much potential as anybody else that is part of the working class. I think that these people have been so beaten with propaganda that their view of reality is completely skewed. A majority of these type of people are strong supporters of nationalism ( mostly in republican form ) and are in fact anti-intellectuals.

But let's look at the reasons why they are anti-intellectuals. The thought of a god creating the world in 6 days and america as always being the good guy is comforting to them. It's alot more simple than over examining things and actually educating themselves. I would say that they are the victims of bourgeois powers. These are the obedient slave laborers that they want.

But as stated above, it's impossible to classify these people in one group. Some may be lumpenproletariats whereas others are proletariats. But a good question to ask is why are lumpenproletariats in that class in the first place?

I would argue that these people are victims by the bourgeois system and the only way to break them out of there world views would only come about on the verge of revolution, mainly due to self preservation. The media is so powerful in shaping the opinions and making us think in simple categories when it comes to certain subjects.

One would be best to get through to these "white trash" folks by simplifying Marxism as the rich vs. the poor.