Chuck: The capitalist class needs politics in order to protect its 'freedom' to exploit the working class. The working class needs politics in order to abolish this 'bourgeois' freedom. Lark: Marxist simplicity, I'd read 'In Defence of Politics' By Bernard Crick and then think over what you'd written there.
Chuck: I'll pass - I prefer not to read books by people who pull Trotsky's quotes out of context. Why don't you give me a little five minute shake-n-bake: What's Crick's point regarding politics and 'freedom'?
Lark: Doesnt everyone know themselves what it is to be free?
Chuck: My boss would answer that with a big YES!
Chuck: Don't YOU know that 'freedom' in general is a bourgeois selling point? Or do you still think SOCIAL CLASSES ARE IMAGINARY?
Lark: What do you mean by freedom in general?
Chuck: That's what I am asking YOU!
Lark: Do you mean liberty or negative freedom? If you do and they apparently mean nothing to, your a fool, I mean would you trade your place with the political prisoners in Nigeria, China, Cuba or the US? Or does your 'mere' freedom mean more to you than that?
Chuck: ????????????
Lark: Social Classes arent imaginary ...
Chuck: Then why did you say they are imaginary?
Lark: ... and there is a fairly terrible class war going on but anarchist or syndicalist perspectives on class war are better than marxist ones because they where invented by workers themselves not for them by some factory owner and his scrounging mate.
Chuck: Yes, anarchist or syndicalist ideas are better - FOR THE CAPITALISTS! A view of struggle that rejects politics and seeks a separate victory in each workplace engenders isolation and concentrates militant energy into an endless series of isolated actions. As far as working people propagating anarchism, I seem to recall that Bakunin was a rich landowner's son and Kropotkin was a prince, but that's neither here nor there (just like the factory owner and his scrounging mate).
Lark: What is more important at present than your profession or income, with about half the 'grand proletariat' voting for neo-conservativism is what people believe, their culture, than who they are. If you must have a purely marxist one there's Gramsci.
Chuck: A culture isn't simply a belief system. It's an interaction between a belief system and an economy, with the economy being determinant (but not always dominant). You can't ignore the economy's influence on ideology. By the way, "a purely Marxist one" what?
