You're right. It's just hard to muster up empathy for people who voted for the racism; they liked the racism in Trump's campaign. They voted to hurt other people, especially marginalized communities. Now they realize that whiteness will not protect them, either. But will they band together with non-white communities for overwhelming collective change? That's never happened before in the history of the United States.
But capital works overtime at stirring up dissension among workers, and the dearth of scholarship like this study by Boswell et. al. over the last twenty years leaves people with a sense of hopelessness.
Yes. There have been specific occasions of racial solidarity within the historical labor movement in the US. But collective white solidarity en masse with marginalized groups has never happened. Whiteness is designed as a zero sum game whereas people racialized as white can only “win” at the expense of others, namely Black and brown people. I hope that these white farmers and their ilk can find a new identity for their whiteness—one outside of causing harm to others.
This is and always has been a class war- think of the civil war. Who needed enslaved people to run their plantations? And who actually fought on the battlefield? The aim is to keep us divided, regular folks fighting each other to take the focus off of the true offenders- those who would exploit regular, hardworking people and their labor. This is still the case. Any and all differences are exploited by the wealthy to keep us fighting each other. Race, religion, political orientation, sexual orientation etc etc. If we join to fight against them, regular working people become a threat. Unions have always been viewed as a threat for that reason. Don’t let their greed turn us against each other. The farmers are not the enemy.
I was disgusted by the more liberal educated US talking heads laughing at farmers and calling them ‘Cletus’ etc. Yes, they are reaping what they’ve sowed, but, it doesn’t help the overall cause of labor class! Truly just further division. I say this as a non American who also feels a sense of schadenfreude, however, losing farmers just further emboldens corporations and strengthens their grip.
Farmers are largely white, deeply indebted for land and agricultural equipment including, of course, at least one late model, V8, 4-wheel-drive pickup with no load in it most of the time. Many rely on central government for their year-on-year cash, by means of "crop insurance" and other programs. The farmer thinks he is in the bourgeoisie, although he can't pronounce the word, doesn't know what it means, and recoils in christian horror at the suggestion of "wokeness".
The farmer is a racist; maybe not a highly vocal one, and the fascist media play him like a harp. He is not the bougeouis, libertarian champion that he thinks he is, but is, as you suggest, just another worker beholdin' to the capitalist "man". Do we need to enlist this farmer in the class struggle? What about the MAGA stooge counter demonstator? I dunno, but I don't think so. We'll have to FAFO, I guess.
At this moment, farmers still consider themselves somewhat capitalist or bourgeois. They are not with the working class, and I fully understand that. However, we do need farmers because, by definition, they are part of the working class and we need to unite them all.
The reason why they are not with the working class is that they are still holding so-called property, which they don’t understand is actually owned by the government or big corporations. That is where we need to educate them.
However, farmers are definitely ignorant to some extent. A lot of them, unfortunately, are not well educated. So it is very hard to talk with them about the ideas we are discussing here. The easiest way to help them understand the benefit of standing with the working class is to offer them what they don’t have.
Most farmers need land. Right now, many still have land, but it is being bought up by corporations. So we are not yet at the stage where farmers are willing to stand with the working class. But with corporations buying more and more land, the end of capitalism is being expedited. Once the farmer is out of land, once the farmer becomes an employee of the corporations, they will realize they are just the same as we are.
This is a very generalizing attitude that has been cited by many as a major reason Democrats lost the election. It is more importantly an attitude that prevents bridges from being built. The working class is not homogeneous. There are millions of conservative Christians in the working class. Many of them undoubtedly are farmers. You shoot yourself in the foot when you laugh at their suffering. Schadenfreude is not an effective moral or political policy.
Neil, you are so right. If people wish to mock the farmers for reaping what they sowed, then they have no further to look than themselves to see that this entire society, rife with corruption and greed, is what they have sowed. Americans pretend that Donald Trump is an anomaly when in fact he represents our society better than any president. He's the most grassroots president in that sense, a real mirror to that society we ALL have had a hand in creating. A "me first" society. That is the chain we have to break if we are to set ourselves free.
You're right. It's just hard to muster up empathy for people who voted for the racism; they liked the racism in Trump's campaign. They voted to hurt other people, especially marginalized communities. Now they realize that whiteness will not protect them, either. But will they band together with non-white communities for overwhelming collective change? That's never happened before in the history of the United States.
There have been times when racial solidarity effected meaningful change in this country, especially in the context of the labor movement. See for example https://books.google.com/books/about/Racial_Competition_and_Class_Solidarity.html?id=wAAmU74dSrwC
But capital works overtime at stirring up dissension among workers, and the dearth of scholarship like this study by Boswell et. al. over the last twenty years leaves people with a sense of hopelessness.
Yes. There have been specific occasions of racial solidarity within the historical labor movement in the US. But collective white solidarity en masse with marginalized groups has never happened. Whiteness is designed as a zero sum game whereas people racialized as white can only “win” at the expense of others, namely Black and brown people. I hope that these white farmers and their ilk can find a new identity for their whiteness—one outside of causing harm to others.
This is and always has been a class war- think of the civil war. Who needed enslaved people to run their plantations? And who actually fought on the battlefield? The aim is to keep us divided, regular folks fighting each other to take the focus off of the true offenders- those who would exploit regular, hardworking people and their labor. This is still the case. Any and all differences are exploited by the wealthy to keep us fighting each other. Race, religion, political orientation, sexual orientation etc etc. If we join to fight against them, regular working people become a threat. Unions have always been viewed as a threat for that reason. Don’t let their greed turn us against each other. The farmers are not the enemy.
I was disgusted by the more liberal educated US talking heads laughing at farmers and calling them ‘Cletus’ etc. Yes, they are reaping what they’ve sowed, but, it doesn’t help the overall cause of labor class! Truly just further division. I say this as a non American who also feels a sense of schadenfreude, however, losing farmers just further emboldens corporations and strengthens their grip.
Farmers are largely white, deeply indebted for land and agricultural equipment including, of course, at least one late model, V8, 4-wheel-drive pickup with no load in it most of the time. Many rely on central government for their year-on-year cash, by means of "crop insurance" and other programs. The farmer thinks he is in the bourgeoisie, although he can't pronounce the word, doesn't know what it means, and recoils in christian horror at the suggestion of "wokeness".
The farmer is a racist; maybe not a highly vocal one, and the fascist media play him like a harp. He is not the bougeouis, libertarian champion that he thinks he is, but is, as you suggest, just another worker beholdin' to the capitalist "man". Do we need to enlist this farmer in the class struggle? What about the MAGA stooge counter demonstator? I dunno, but I don't think so. We'll have to FAFO, I guess.
At this moment, farmers still consider themselves somewhat capitalist or bourgeois. They are not with the working class, and I fully understand that. However, we do need farmers because, by definition, they are part of the working class and we need to unite them all.
The reason why they are not with the working class is that they are still holding so-called property, which they don’t understand is actually owned by the government or big corporations. That is where we need to educate them.
However, farmers are definitely ignorant to some extent. A lot of them, unfortunately, are not well educated. So it is very hard to talk with them about the ideas we are discussing here. The easiest way to help them understand the benefit of standing with the working class is to offer them what they don’t have.
Most farmers need land. Right now, many still have land, but it is being bought up by corporations. So we are not yet at the stage where farmers are willing to stand with the working class. But with corporations buying more and more land, the end of capitalism is being expedited. Once the farmer is out of land, once the farmer becomes an employee of the corporations, they will realize they are just the same as we are.
This is a very generalizing attitude that has been cited by many as a major reason Democrats lost the election. It is more importantly an attitude that prevents bridges from being built. The working class is not homogeneous. There are millions of conservative Christians in the working class. Many of them undoubtedly are farmers. You shoot yourself in the foot when you laugh at their suffering. Schadenfreude is not an effective moral or political policy.
This is BRILLIANT. +10! Naive americans don't grasp what this acute commenter states:
THE GOAL OF CAPTALISM IS TO REDUCE ALL HUMAN INTERACTION TO THE CASH NEXUS.
Wealth concentration is self- aggregating. The more it happens, the MORE AND MORE it happens.
When you mock the losers in a Capitalist asset grab, you are helping the #ConcentrationOfWealth, which has been going on for 30-50 years.
Neil, you are so right. If people wish to mock the farmers for reaping what they sowed, then they have no further to look than themselves to see that this entire society, rife with corruption and greed, is what they have sowed. Americans pretend that Donald Trump is an anomaly when in fact he represents our society better than any president. He's the most grassroots president in that sense, a real mirror to that society we ALL have had a hand in creating. A "me first" society. That is the chain we have to break if we are to set ourselves free.
🎶Come on people now
smile on your brother (🤨)
everybody get together
or we’re all going down.🎵
We’re going to get awfully hungry. I’ll go live with my kids in Spain or my cousin in Australia…