this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
88 points (100.0% liked)
chapotraphouse
13789 readers
631 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
These American institutions keeping them in check are also fundamentally liberal-reactionary institutions that should not be defended by leftists. Attacking Harvard and Columbia and higher ed/research funding does suck for many reasons but it's not an attack on "the working class" by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is firing government bureaucrats. The only admin actions that really constitute attacks on the working class are the ongoing attempts to destroy the NIH and the postal service as well as the trade war. Even then, it's not as clear cut as "rich vs. poor". Hedge fund managers and MNCs have been some of the most vocal opponents of the trade war so far. Many of those opposing the university and research cuts are highly privileged, at least in terms of social and cultural capital.
Peter Turchin predicted all of this. It's elite overproduction and intra-elite conflict to a t. Bourgeois solidarity is broken (at least to some degree). That's how you have a cabinet full of billionaires and mega-multi-millionaires starting beef with other billionaires. On a lower but still important level, you have ideologues like Bannon and Rufo and BAP playing their own roles as counter-elites. When things get bad, the rich don't hesitate to eat their own. It's poor people being used as cannon fodder on both sides and poor people suffering the collateral damage.
Barring a geopolitical black swan like Canada invading the US, the Republicans are going to lose in the midterms and probably lose 2028. But it doesn't matter as the game has fundamentally changed. Intractable polarization, delegitimization of central authority, increasing incidence of stochastic terror, etc. Newsom might win in 2028 but it'll hardly matter.
Most of what's coming isn't Trump's doing, he's just the messenger. We started down this path after WWII, Nixon and Reagan stayed the course despite increasing pressure, and Obama put the nail in the coffin.
You contradict yourself. And how are government ‘beaureacrats’ not part of the working class?
OP is oversimplifying a complex situation. I don't see any contradiction in my remarks.
Government bureaucrats can be part of the working class, but this depends on your definition of bureaucrat. I wouldn't consider an NIH scientist to be a bureaucrat, but some would. Most bureaucrats I would consider to be part of the professional managerial class, which should be analyzed separately from the working class due to their reactionary interests.
The working class is comprised of everyone whose relationship with the means of production is at its core selling their labor. That's it. There's no reason to split hairs about who's PMC or not. The fundamental and likely difference between a judge and the clerical worker under that judge is that the judge likely makes enough money and comes from a social background that makes them a shareholder of american capitalism.
Anything more than that and you'll be talking past each other because you're thinking of bankers who were turned into department heads and they'll be thinking of middle income administrators. Meanwhile DOGE is spends its days firing park rangers and such. Dismantling a state institution isn't good or bad on the condition that its staffed by capitalists or not. It's good or bad on the basis of the policy that is being attacked. This being the US, everything outside of spending on the military or Israel is under attack.
The PMC are more akin to cops. Their wage is earned through facilitating capitalist governance/violence. A social services worker doesn't produce a marketable commodity or value for capitalists the same way a waiter or factory worker do—instead they play a role as a relief valve for the contradictions of capitalism.
There’s a very strict definition of working class, and even when you stretch the definiton of labor aristocrat, some middle manager at the SSA is not it, and that’s most of the tens of thousands who were fired.
This is not a complex situation. You said it yourself, ‘When things get bad, the rich don't hesitate to eat their own. It's poor people being used as cannon fodder on both sides and poor people suffering the collateral damage.’