Marxist Says OWS Is Not 99% vs. 1%, But A Group Which Thought It Was Entitled To Be Part of the 1% Now Disappointed To Find Out It's Not

Wow, this damn Marxist has an interesting point!

And so does the man quoted by Rod Dreher.

(Ba-dum-dum.)

In social theory, OWS is best understood not as a populist movement against the bankers, but instead as the breakdown of the New Class into its two increasingly disconnected parts. The upper tier, the bankers-government bankers-super credentialed elites. But also the lower tier, those who saw themselves entitled to a white collar job in the Virtue Industries of government and non-profits — the helping professions, the culture industry, the virtueocracies, the industries of therapeutic social control, as Christopher Lasch pointed out in his final book, The Revolt of the Elites.

That's very canny, and it explains why the OWS is so anti-homeless, and calls the homeless "posers:" Because this isn't about the downtrodden, or the true underclass at all. It's about people who thought that a college degree in nonsense was a guaranteed ticket to the upper class (or just below it -- the upper middle class, "merely" $200,000 per year in salary but a great job with plenty of nonpecuniary benefits to make up for that paltry salary), and now find out, no, not so much.

Your colleges, your professors... they lied to you.

There's also another schism: Those who don't want to be raped versus those who wish to rape.

posted by Ace at 01:55 PM

| Access Comments