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The middle class-why do they invade the left? Take GR/SWP/SYUCD for example national |
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 Sunday February 17, 2002 11:53 by UCD's don cortino
 they really piss me off. They have no sense of the class struggle. They are only romantics Why do the middle class invade the left? Take the SWP, Globalise Resistance and Socialist Youth in UCD. Its all full of middle class "chappies" who speak with Dublin 4 accents. They talk of making life better for the working class. Have they ever experienced working class life? Have they ever experienced the struggle to survive for some?The problems of not having enough money to pay the bills. The problems of having to cut back on goods for the home by their parents? The answer is no. They have nearly everything. Their parents have big cars big houses in nice clean areas. They are as far from the working class as is George W. Bush. They have no experience of socialism of proper socialism. What they have learned they have learned from a book or what they are told. They never witnesed the class struggle. They are a hinder to the movement. Middle Class people claiming to be socialist destroy our links to the working class. Imagine sending a middle class D4 speaking "socialist" to a working class area telling the people what they should be doing, they would simply get a "f**k off" reply. Now send a working class person to a working class area to talk to another working class person, they would listen, because they are on the same pathway, they are both part of the class struggle wether the know it or not. |
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Comments (13 of 13)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13So what would you like these "middle class wankers to do"?
Fuck off and Join Ogra Fianna Fail? Start voting the way their mums and dads do? Become part of the problem?
They were born with more money and more opportunties than most, rather than turning their back on people in the first and third world, they're attempting to make things better.
You say they have no experience of socialism? I take it then You have experience of socialism? Where? Cuba?
This reverse snobbery, that the middle class aren't good enough to join in with SWP/GR is damaging and unhelpful, it splits the group and leads to bitter disent.
Fair fucks to anyone who comes from a better off background, they've, by your admission, more to lose in your great revolution.
The middle class stick to the empiricism of left bourgeois intellectuals.
They have very little knowledge of the struggles of the working class and look idoligially at them, as it they are some animal in a zoo to be treated better under their rule.
They hinder development of the left
shut up little boy. the left is an ideology, not about how much money you have. if the working class revolt and take power are they supposed to still be poor and proud. dont be a fool. socialism is about equality, why should you be allowed to discriminate against people who can afford to eat. im not by any means in the ruling class, but any help is good help.
Before attending any protests in the future- demonstrators will have to show with documentation that they have been on the dole for at least six months or they will not be allowed to protest. How do u define middle class- they live in Dublin 4. Or is it only if they use big words like bourgeious. This is one of the most f*cking ridiculous posts i have read on the irish indymedia. It is so frustrating. Not all middle class people are the same, just as not all workers are the same. Don't the middle class work?
Argh.
I get so angry when I hear this f*ck*ng b*llsh*t.
Your retort that u can't send a middle calss chappie down to a working class area to spout politics. Mmm. Does this mean by extention that a man can't talk to women aboput womens rights. Are men to be banned form anti- abortion demos.etc.
Oh god, I just despair.
Don Cortino, i reccommend you get your facts straight before you make such cliched and obviously uninformed rantings to the public.
If you have ever gone to a Global Action meeting in UCD, to get your facts straight, you would know that we dont "talk of making life better for the working class" but rather focus on Global Issues and the unequal divide between rich and poor on this planet.
Why does someone have to be working class to care about the conditions of impoverished people on this planet, be they in Dublin or in Nicaragua? Surely it is more of a challenge to reject a D4 rich life full of daddy's spoils and to redress the distribution of wealth in this world. Why is it such a crime to be middle class and care? You see them as "invading the left" - this is crass sectarianism. How can a better world be created if you think this of people who are genuinely committed to social progression. I am not a member of the SWP or SYUCD, and may not agree with a lot of their ideals, I am not a socialist, yet i admire them for dedication to making the world a better place and place them leagues above members of the KBC.
"Imagine sending a middle class D4 speaking "socialist" to a working class area telling the people what they should be doing, they would simply get a "f**k off" reply. " The fact that you think that UCD socialists would even attempt something like this shows that you havent even bothered to talk to them before judging them as "middle class wankers".
You seem to be taking the stance that you are a bona fide working class socialist, and perhaps you are. Yet you go to UCD and can access the internet. I think you should get off your working class moral high horse when you consider you are attacking members of societies who are working to combat the system that perpetuates the death of thousands of starving children every single day, who are in conditions obviously a lot worse than your own.
"They have no sense of the class struggle. They are only romantics" You are the one being romantic, alienating yourself from others committed to social change because you believe you have the right to.
If you want class struggle, if you want to change the world, then give up your own prejudices against the middle class and work together to build a better future.
I really hate it when people come up with stuff like the middle classes have no right to be socialists. If someone truly wants to make the world a better place for other people rather than just themselves that is never a bad thing.
Before I go on I want to point out that my family is about as poor and working class as you can get in this country. My dad was a binman my mom stayed at home. When I was seven my parents risked everything they had to buy a house in a better area than the corporation estate we lived in at the time. (a good thing seeing as how someone was murdered in the room that was my bedroom a couple of years after we left.) My parents never went out, the first time they went to the cinema since I was born was to see There's Something About Mary, they didnt smoke or drink. Because of crippling mortgage repayments Christmas presents often came from the milk token catalogue.
As for the point made that the working classes will listen to other working class people telling them how to make their lives better, have you ever actually tried? My dad was the shop stewart of his union for years. The people he represented didnt listen to him. When he asked them to stand together they wouldnt. It was always easy for his bosses to bribe or bully people into backing down. My father himself was repeatedly offered promotion in order to encourage the other workers to accept a bad deal. When he refused he was threatened with forclosure on his mortgage (completely illegally) he was assigned the worst tasks. Due to the stress my he got menirs disorder which forced him to retire at 34.
I have no problem with members of the middle classes trying to fight for a better world. But don't think for one minute that you have more to lose by fighting, you don't. Don't dare to patronise us and don't make assumptions that you know where we are coming from.
Recently on a protest I was on it was assumed that the bus driver could change his plans just because we would give him more money. Often during campaigns posters are put up and leaflets are handed out and there is never a thought given to the person who has to get up and clean it all afterwards.
Fight for a better world for people through actions not through glorious speeches and nice ideas. Do it for real.
By working 30 hours a week in a supermarket I went to college. I could turn my back on my past, I nearly did. I see so many of my relatives attempt to erase their childhoods because they have learned to be ashamed of it. And that is the problem. To differentiate us so. We need to work together. The wealthier amoung us need to know what it is actually like when you are poor. They need to listen to peoples comments about living in this world and stop any unconscious romanticising poverty. And we all need to remember that we all benifit from a better world not just the poor. If this world continues the way it is going then even the richest people on it will not be able to live here. Hold together and don't let anyone divide us, especially not ourselves.
The middle class will always be in the left. However it is essential that they are always outnumbered by the working class.
There is no point in having a working class revolution that is led by and predomintaly contains the middle class, if that were to happen we may as well go back to the narodniks.
Thirdly The very existance of the class struggle indicates that the working class will not listen to the middle class. The middle class come of as too snotty, too arrogant. This on many occassions is uncomfortable for the working class.
>>>>>>>
I'm sorry what are you on about? There is no point having a working class revolt containing predomintaly middle class? How can a revolt which is predominatly middle class be called a working class revolt????
Would you mind saying something that is in some way coherant?
>>>>
No the very existance of a class struggle is than some people (a class) have more money and influence than others. How do a class come off as too snotty? It's a broad sweeping and ignorant generalisation. And how is it uncomfortable for the working class??
I'm not sure what second rate sociology text you're reading from, but would not not spouting it here?
Aidan
To say that because of a persons accent and parents financial background that person cannot make an active and helpful addition to the struggle against the right.
The fact that this person has made these comments means that he is supporting class destinction. Which I think is wrong. If people from middle class are not allowed to support the left wing cause then the left wing cause will lose a lot of support and fail.
I take personal offence to these remarks as my parents have a bit of money I live in a middle class housing estate, but I support left wing causes. I have worked in a working class environment and people have acccepted me.
This person is an ignorant fool and I agree with the suggestion of "reverse snobbery" brought up earlier. This persons comments are to the detriment of the movement and should be ignored.
Isn't the clearest distinction of class between those that get a wage for their labour and those that pay others a wage for their labour?
Yes, there's a hierarchy within the "employed". Some are luckier slaves and get paid more for keeping the rest of the rabble under control, whether physically or psychologically. However, some of those slave-drivers don't like it and don't trust a system which will see them out on the street as soon as the real boss has a "compelling fiduciary duty" to the shareholders. Some of those slave-drivers want a clean, fair, ordered world: not the mess and inefficiency that is Capitalism. As long as they realise that there can't be any "good" bosses then they should be welcomed aboard the effort to destroy Capitalism and replace it with non-hierarchical, communistic direct-democracy.
I understand that the poster could be irritated by people that have more money and opportunity co-opting his/her struggle. But that's probably to do with the type of organisation s/he is in: one in which s/he has ceded power to others.
Of course, it could be that s/he actually wandered into one of our meetings ("League for the Self-Abolition of Middle Class Wankers") and got confused when we wouldn't allow her/him to talk as s/he was obviously neither Middle Class nor A Wanker. Sorry about that.
This is exactly what I would never expect to read on a so-called independent site like indymedia... Anytime I expound upon any belief I have as an apparantly left-win type, I hear this arguement from the ill-informed. Reverse snobbery is a fitting term for it. The amount of people who sit around and give out about middle class people thinking they are socialists. Socialism is not something that you must be working class to believe in. Is it fair to discriminate against someone with the same ideologies as yourself on the grounds that they happen to be better off? people have consistantly spoken up about the hypocracy of the middle class so-called socialists, however, shouldn't we all be working against the middle class who don't get up of their asses and do something? Isn't it wonderful that theyre are some well off people not blinded by their privilage who will work for those less fortunate. Tjis kindd of silly bickering is besides the point and the author should be ashamed if he/she truly believes that the left wing movement would be better off without anyone with any kind of wealth. How would anything get done??
Think before you write.
Get your facts straight, Socialist Youth and the Socialist Party are by no means a middle class party. SP/SY are a working class party with real routes in working class communities and the trade unions. Socialist Youth do not have a base amongst University students and never had in the history of the SP. Socialist Youth's members are mainly from young workers and working class secondary students. Please get your facts straight, it's obvious that you are not involved in real politics and prefer to snipe from the sidelines. If you were involved in real politics you would see that SP/SY are not middle class.
I agree with most of the other comments that this was a silly, little, petty article. Having said that I can see where they're coming from. It can be a bit puzzling when you're involved with Socialist and Social Revolutionary movements that are for the empowerment of Workers and the poor and most of the people have what some might call 'Middle Class' accents. But thats not those peoples' fault. Rather its symptomatic of the fact that we're not attracting enough of our target audience namely the Working Class and the poor. But there is far too emphasis on class and on accents. As long as people are committed to fighting for a better world for all I say fair play to them. Anyhow as has already been mentioned people from Upper and Middle Class backgrounds who join Socialist and Left Wing movements actually have a lot to lose because what they are fighting for is for the elimination of the privileges under which they were born and reared.