Read on Twitter
The status economy of the left is based on displays of conformity to the ambient consensus. It is enforced through a protection racket that Ben here seems to endorse: “it would be real shame if people started accusing you of not caring” 1/ https://twitter.com/benburgis/status/1285057117431500802
Ben is telling us that his evaluation criteria for the correct politics is based on avoiding “accusations” of not caring. He is unwilling to interrogate the political logic of a class-only analysis and so he projects bad faith accusations to hide his intellectual cowardice. 2/
The basic claim underlying a class-only analysis is that politicizing non-class categories is negatively correlated with *at scale* working class political mobilization. And that *caring* about minority groups is embedded in the pursuit of a *successful* working class project. 3/
Instead of having the integrity to engage with those claims on their own merit and argue against them if he disagrees he chooses to disgrace himself by propagating the idea that rejecting the politicization of identity means you don’t care about certain people. 4/
Class-only politics is hard. It requires an above toddler-level of comprehension of the world and the possibility of complexity and second order relationships that cast doubt on the child-like thought of: “I’m talking about black people that must mean I’m helping black people” 5/
But I know Ben has the intellectual capacity to navigate these waters. What he lacks is the willingness to expose himself to bad faith accusations from a Left that’s trapped itself in a status economy that demands displays of individual virtue over the pursuit of outcomes 6/
There is no way to dislodge this economy, it is too well developed and too compatible with neoliberal market logic. The Left intellectuals are the ones running enforcement for it, in public, without shame. The Left cannot be redeemed. /end
