I've never actually understood how "Class Reductionism" makes sense as a form of exclusion. The Working Class is the broadest coalition of people one can imagine designated only by the description of being a worker, whereas Race is constructed concept that describes nothing of content other than an arbitrarily aspect of appearance, nothing more.
I completely agree. It occurs to me that one clue that class awareness is most dangerous to the system is that while there are examples of any number of performative "racial justices" in media, corporations and government there are never any examples of what could be called "class justice". Seems to me that this tells us which they are more afraid of, and which has more chance of changing the system.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 It's why we have a "Senate" instead of a "House of Nationalities" like the Soviet Union did. The Supreme Soviet acted like a kind of Workers House of Representatives, whereas the House of Nationalities allowed for proportional representation of all different types of ethnic origin in the Union and could draft laws for solving problems for the various Nationality within the Union borders; it wasn't some "Participation Trophy" of inclusion.
@@noheroespublishing1907 I am not sure I can agree with you there my friend. Even in Federalist 10 Madison clearly calms property owners fears of democracy by explaining that it is not a danger to their wealth and power because society is and has forever been riven by faction. Diversity is a ruling class ideology that they use to their advantage. Christian Parenti talks about this with Katie Halper in "'Diversity' Is a Ruling-Class Ideology with Christian Parenti" So from the very beginning encouraging factionalism in the majority has been a strategy to prevent or disrupt class analysis and work.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Stalin's points on Nations within borders of states would disagree with you, your not creating division by acknowledging the cultural points and conditions of people; it's part of the material conditions people are living under. Faction only really takes place when the Class Interests are in conflict, social differences can be worked through, economic Interests cannot.
@@noheroespublishing1907 That is more or less what I was saying. Since the founding of the US the owner class has recognized that "social differences" can be weaponized to prevent us from realizing we live in a class war. Certainly social differences can be solved but because they serve the interests of the owner class they will not be as long as their class exists.
If more Americans read Professor Reed instead of idiots like Robin DiAngelo we'd have a whole lot less confusion and a much stronger and more unified working class in this country.
All respect to Reed, but this seems actually sort of a weird and out of touch argument, at least for today, but probably always. The obvious point that comes to mind is that sexual and racial politics often are actually divisive, overblown and distracting, and many of their claims are not very solid or even clearly libertory. Reed seems to be conflating the outright denial that there are issues not reducible to the directly economic, with the denial of them being positively, politically tied to whatever demographic we declare has it worse. But the politics that are not subsumed under class struggle are generally not better off being seen as sexual or racial. For example, violence against women is a made up divisive issue, there is just domestic violence, r-pe, beatings and so on. It affects everyone, particularly the working class. In other cases they should be subsumed under general universal rights and freedoms.
Can it be said that racial politics were always overblown? I’m American, that’s definitely not the case for my country. Can it be said for sex, specifically women being oppressed as women, always being overblown? Again, as an American who knows the history of feminism in their own country, I can’t see how that can be said. I could say the same things for sexuality/gender ID, knowing the history. I can’t say that these cases are always the same in all countries histories, though I CAN say that the notion that the divisiveness is the fault of the people engaged in racial justice politics, or any of these other ID, as opposed to the fault of the laws/norms/systems/etc which put any group in a position of oppression in the first place, is almost unfathomable to me… at least not coming from anyone serious about left politics. To be fair to you, you didn’t claim that, but it’s definitely implicit in your comment. I say all this as someone who’s not in the least a radlib, or as loud about ID based oppression as radlib types, so this isn’t coming from someone who is more focused on these ID based justice issues, or who is some hardcore intersectional feminist (not to say I find intersectionality, in general, or feminism, in general, as useless, now or historically). I think the issue that Reed would probably have with your comments is the issue that I have with them: it seems like a pretty grossly ahistorical point, especially considering the fact that you imply these ID based issues were probably always “overblown and distracting”. If at the end of the day the reality is that some aspects of someone’s oppression are rooted in aspects of their identity (race, sex/gender, sexuality, and so on), then why should it matter if political action to do something about it is divisive? Obviously being divisive shouldn’t be a goal of the tactics, but also if someone finds it divisive that a black person wants to not be legally discriminated against on the basis of their race, or a woman wants the right to vote, or a lgbtq+ person doesn’t want to be arrested for “moral indecency”, why is that not their problem, and a reflection of their ignorance (at best), but instead the problem of the people advocating for their human rights? I get this perspective *to some degree,* but ONLY if we’re talking the present, specifically where one is basically being race/ID reductionist, and especially where one is being dogmatic. I think that’s the whole point of the discussion, that’s Reed’s big issue, but I absolutely can’t comprehend saying, “AND, even historically, any emphasis of “identity politics” has been a problem because it’s too divisive, and can’t we just be honest that it’s all overblown and distracting”, or something like that, and I can’t do it because it’s a perspective that either ignores or is ignorant of the reality of why any of these ID based movements ever came into being in the first place. That, or it might be certain religious views leading you to that conclusion? Please, you tell me, I’d like to understand where you’re coming from. None of this is meant to be hostile, I just don’t get how you come to the conclusion Reed is out of touch, especially based on your comment. Sorry for the length..
@@nikolademitri731 There's way too much to respond to in that. As you implied I am a leftist. Everything I said applies to the US, and is what I expect a working class mass left wing movement when it arises, will notice. Having looked at feminism, as the most extreme example (it's like anti-semitism for gender)- it isn't true, can't be left wing , and it isn't materialist. To be clear, that doesn't mean women weren't/aren't oppressed (so were/are men), it doesn't mean that feminism (like capitalism, catholicism or stalinism) never accomplished anything worth preserving. But oppressed, relative to who and what? Also, how much of that is important to how this society functions, and how much of it is even a main issue facing people? Does it show up at the top of polls? Let's imagine that women are like East Indian Americans, or diabetics, or child math prodigies, or most of any other demographic. Issues may face them, instances of oppression or marginalization. How does that make them any different than the people in general? The unending list of identities (that there is no neutral point from which to judge the power dynamics between.) How is dealing with these as special cases helpful? On the opposite hand there is the idea that women are not just facing barriers in specific ways like any other gender, but actually systematically oppressed relative to men, perhaps by men, as a group , as feminists claim. And in a politically crucial (for capitalism) way, as marxist feminists claim. Shouldn't we ask if that is even possible, and if so, if it is true? What does it mean if it isn't? Well, it leads us into more strange and divisive ideas like reproductive freedom is a women's issue, as if all people don't need that. Or domestic violence is , when it's not and affects all people. Meanwhile, contradictorily homelessness and police violence are class but not male issues. We can go down the list of so much we have lost by lying about it in terms of that make class thought impossible. For example if you think r-ape is a women's issue, you can't deal with class (for many reasons, but r-pe law wordings, juvi and prison spring 1st to mind). When you say you know the history, I see that as a red flag. I learned the same history, it's just a narrative. With race you can make a good argument for history, with sex - how can the history even matter? Are there female neighborhoods or nations? Are women a group? How does sexism pile up intergenerationally, if sexes share bank accounts, fridges, and households? It turns out feminism isn't true, women are not systematically oppressed by men, or underprivileged relative to them. The point I was making and make here is, there is a mythology which stands in for getting up to date with what is going on. Reed is saying, idpol is having a fetishized relationship with these myths. I am saying that it IS these myths. There is proof that the capitalist exploit the workers because unlike feminism, we have receipts. It's not an identity, it's an objective crucial process.
Adolph Reed is always a pleasure
Class matters!
Thank you for this talk and the shout out to the liberation of Palestine Professor Reed and the organizers of this lecture.
I've never actually understood how "Class Reductionism" makes sense as a form of exclusion. The Working Class is the broadest coalition of people one can imagine designated only by the description of being a worker, whereas Race is constructed concept that describes nothing of content other than an arbitrarily aspect of appearance, nothing more.
I completely agree.
It occurs to me that one clue that class awareness is most dangerous to the system is that while there are examples of any number of performative "racial justices" in media, corporations and government there are never any examples of what could be called "class justice".
Seems to me that this tells us which they are more afraid of, and which has more chance of changing the system.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 It's why we have a "Senate" instead of a "House of Nationalities" like the Soviet Union did. The Supreme Soviet acted like a kind of Workers House of Representatives, whereas the House of Nationalities allowed for proportional representation of all different types of ethnic origin in the Union and could draft laws for solving problems for the various Nationality within the Union borders; it wasn't some "Participation Trophy" of inclusion.
@@noheroespublishing1907 I am not sure I can agree with you there my friend. Even in Federalist 10 Madison clearly calms property owners fears of democracy by explaining that it is not a danger to their wealth and power because society is and has forever been riven by faction.
Diversity is a ruling class ideology that they use to their advantage.
Christian Parenti talks about this with Katie Halper in "'Diversity' Is a Ruling-Class Ideology with Christian Parenti"
So from the very beginning encouraging factionalism in the majority has been a strategy to prevent or disrupt class analysis and work.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Stalin's points on Nations within borders of states would disagree with you, your not creating division by acknowledging the cultural points and conditions of people; it's part of the material conditions people are living under. Faction only really takes place when the Class Interests are in conflict, social differences can be worked through, economic Interests cannot.
@@noheroespublishing1907 That is more or less what I was saying. Since the founding of the US the owner class has recognized that "social differences" can be weaponized to prevent us from realizing we live in a class war.
Certainly social differences can be solved but because they serve the interests of the owner class they will not be as long as their class exists.
Finally something I can be proud of my alma mater for
"Yes and..." thinking
ah yes, improv class dialectics
is there a text for this somewhere? it looks like he's reading. i'd love to be able to read through and share it as a text. thank you!
He's reading his article from the New Republic - "The myth of class reductionism"
@@fp8901 oh great, thank you!
17:20
53:00 tyler cohen totally missed the point
Stunning
I wish we could convince Prof. Reed to run for the US senate or Governor.
If more Americans read Professor Reed instead of idiots like Robin DiAngelo we'd have a whole lot less confusion and a much stronger and more unified working class in this country.
Who names their son Adolph? How old is he?
People forget how integral this guy was to the Sanders campaign, and how serious a communist he is.
He’s not coming out of left field at all
Sanders, the Apartheid 'israel' supporter? LOL
Can't fast talk and use big words bro. Keep it simple. Great vid.
All respect to Reed, but this seems actually sort of a weird and out of touch argument, at least for today, but probably always. The obvious point that comes to mind is that sexual and racial politics often are actually divisive, overblown and distracting, and many of their claims are not very solid or even clearly libertory. Reed seems to be conflating the outright denial that there are issues not reducible to the directly economic, with the denial of them being positively, politically tied to whatever demographic we declare has it worse. But the politics that are not subsumed under class struggle are generally not better off being seen as sexual or racial. For example, violence against women is a made up divisive issue, there is just domestic violence, r-pe, beatings and so on. It affects everyone, particularly the working class. In other cases they should be subsumed under general universal rights and freedoms.
Can it be said that racial politics were always overblown? I’m American, that’s definitely not the case for my country. Can it be said for sex, specifically women being oppressed as women, always being overblown? Again, as an American who knows the history of feminism in their own country, I can’t see how that can be said. I could say the same things for sexuality/gender ID, knowing the history. I can’t say that these cases are always the same in all countries histories, though I CAN say that the notion that the divisiveness is the fault of the people engaged in racial justice politics, or any of these other ID, as opposed to the fault of the laws/norms/systems/etc which put any group in a position of oppression in the first place, is almost unfathomable to me… at least not coming from anyone serious about left politics. To be fair to you, you didn’t claim that, but it’s definitely implicit in your comment.
I say all this as someone who’s not in the least a radlib, or as loud about ID based oppression as radlib types, so this isn’t coming from someone who is more focused on these ID based justice issues, or who is some hardcore intersectional feminist (not to say I find intersectionality, in general, or feminism, in general, as useless, now or historically). I think the issue that Reed would probably have with your comments is the issue that I have with them: it seems like a pretty grossly ahistorical point, especially considering the fact that you imply these ID based issues were probably always “overblown and distracting”. If at the end of the day the reality is that some aspects of someone’s oppression are rooted in aspects of their identity (race, sex/gender, sexuality, and so on), then why should it matter if political action to do something about it is divisive? Obviously being divisive shouldn’t be a goal of the tactics, but also if someone finds it divisive that a black person wants to not be legally discriminated against on the basis of their race, or a woman wants the right to vote, or a lgbtq+ person doesn’t want to be arrested for “moral indecency”, why is that not their problem, and a reflection of their ignorance (at best), but instead the problem of the people advocating for their human rights?
I get this perspective *to some degree,* but ONLY if we’re talking the present, specifically where one is basically being race/ID reductionist, and especially where one is being dogmatic. I think that’s the whole point of the discussion, that’s Reed’s big issue, but I absolutely can’t comprehend saying, “AND, even historically, any emphasis of “identity politics” has been a problem because it’s too divisive, and can’t we just be honest that it’s all overblown and distracting”, or something like that, and I can’t do it because it’s a perspective that either ignores or is ignorant of the reality of why any of these ID based movements ever came into being in the first place. That, or it might be certain religious views leading you to that conclusion? Please, you tell me, I’d like to understand where you’re coming from.
None of this is meant to be hostile, I just don’t get how you come to the conclusion Reed is out of touch, especially based on your comment. Sorry for the length..
@@nikolademitri731 There's way too much to respond to in that. As you implied I am a leftist. Everything I said applies to the US, and is what I expect a working class mass left wing movement when it arises, will notice. Having looked at feminism, as the most extreme example (it's like anti-semitism for gender)- it isn't true, can't be left wing , and it isn't materialist. To be clear, that doesn't mean women weren't/aren't oppressed (so were/are men), it doesn't mean that feminism (like capitalism, catholicism or stalinism) never accomplished anything worth preserving. But oppressed, relative to who and what? Also, how much of that is important to how this society functions, and how much of it is even a main issue facing people? Does it show up at the top of polls?
Let's imagine that women are like East Indian Americans, or diabetics, or child math prodigies, or most of any other demographic. Issues may face them, instances of oppression or marginalization. How does that make them any different than the people in general? The unending list of identities (that there is no neutral point from which to judge the power dynamics between.) How is dealing with these as special cases helpful?
On the opposite hand there is the idea that women are not just facing barriers in specific ways like any other gender, but actually systematically oppressed relative to men, perhaps by men, as a group , as feminists claim. And in a politically crucial (for capitalism) way, as marxist feminists claim. Shouldn't we ask if that is even possible, and if so, if it is true? What does it mean if it isn't? Well, it leads us into more strange and divisive ideas like reproductive freedom is a women's issue, as if all people don't need that. Or domestic violence is , when it's not and affects all people. Meanwhile, contradictorily homelessness and police violence are class but not male issues. We can go down the list of so much we have lost by lying about it in terms of that make class thought impossible. For example if you think r-ape is a women's issue, you can't deal with class (for many reasons, but r-pe law wordings, juvi and prison spring 1st to mind).
When you say you know the history, I see that as a red flag. I learned the same history, it's just a narrative.
With race you can make a good argument for history, with sex - how can the history even matter? Are there female neighborhoods or nations? Are women a group? How does sexism pile up intergenerationally, if sexes share bank accounts, fridges, and households? It turns out feminism isn't true, women are not systematically oppressed by men, or underprivileged relative to them.
The point I was making and make here is, there is a mythology which stands in for getting up to date with what is going on. Reed is saying, idpol is having a fetishized relationship with these myths. I am saying that it IS these myths. There is proof that the capitalist exploit the workers because unlike feminism, we have receipts. It's not an identity, it's an objective crucial process.
Reed is the Thomas Sowell of the Left
race first
^^^😂😂😂 😢
How do you win a race with no finish line
don't race@@surelles
thanks!