World Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

[french frank]

Yes, the binary reference was meant to illustrate that opposites are language-defined; I was trying to illustrate how absolutes of this nature have been related to matters of class when speaking simplistically in terms of ruling class vs. working class, which we are often criticised for doing. I could have said roles are often treated reductively to concentrate on one aspect of a person's identity, but would have been putting my own points at cross-purposes, which I now see I was on the way to doing in emphasising class as being primary!

I think there are two kinds of 'opposites' e.g. tidy v untidy and tidy v not tidy, or more interestingly, believe v disbelieve and believe v. not believe. But I rushed to a couple of my linguistic text books when you mentioned dualistic and although I couldn't immediately track the quote I wanted, it was something to the effect that 'categorisation' is one of the most basic cognitive processes. Not apple v. not apple, but apple v orange or banana or melon &c. These may finally reduce to something like 'gay' as the most important factor of someone's identity (or Jewish) but that will have involved discarding many other self-identifying factors (Black, university educated, female, English and so on). And I wonder how many people self identify primarily by class? Why would political theorists do so nowadays? That's a genuine question, not rhetorical or denying anything. More enlightenment, self-improvement

[Serial_Apologist]

I think there are two kinds of 'opposites' e.g. tidy v untidy and tidy v not tidy, or more interestingly, believe v disbelieve and believe v. not believe.

I would think the problem with that is that non-existence can not by definition be proved, whereas black or white exist, but only as absolutes in the conceptual realm. However...

But I rushed to a couple of my linguistic text books when you mentioned dualistic and although I couldn't immediately track the quote I wanted, it was something to the effect that 'categorisation' is one of the most basic cognitive processes. Not apple v. not apple, but apple v orange or banana or melon &c.

I would argue categorisation to be secondary in the cognitive process, following after direct apperception. One sees the object: the thinking process involving language then comes in to say: "tree". This becomes so spontaneous we think of it as "natural" - which, in a way, it is, given that the capacity for abstraction has been arrived at through evolution. After which what type of tree, whether deciduous or coniferious, etc. Category arises initially from occupational relationship: e.g. soil to a civil engineer in terms of amounts needing shifting and levelling; to a horticulturalist suitable growing qualities. More basic is distinguishing the moving from the stationary, developed very early on, before basic language skills - possibly because of the importance for the organism's safety to distinguish what might threaten. The moving object stands out against the static background, and this is prioritised in the order of perception.

These may finally reduce to something like 'gay' as the most important factor of someone's identity (or Jewish) but that will have involved discarding many other self-identifying factors (Black, university educated, female, English and so on). And I wonder how many people self identify primarily by class? Why would political theorists do so nowadays? That's a genuine question, not rhetorical or denying anything. More enlightenment, self-improvement

This is why class is such a political issue! At one time I think it was easier to self-identify by class because social delineation was so self-evident. Today it is often a matter of nostalgia, and, for many white working class people a matter of regret which the political Right has been quick to exploit: your class doesn't matter to them on high any more because they are more interested in getting votes from people who self-define by identity, who have usurped what was once a way of life with different communitarian norms and values. In our time it is not difficult to distinguish the ruling class (that old term haut bourgeoisie) from the middle class of professionals and managers, by dint of the income and property gap. It is more difficult to say what can be done about it when politics is so much at sea, when it is not in the pockets of the rich. It is also so much easier to put blame on sectors of society closer to hand, even when were those very sectors to fall obediently into compliance it would make not one jot or tittle of difference to the amount of spending on remediation for society's main ills, which would still be there. For these are very difficult assumptions for the Left to penetrate - which is partly a fault of the Left for overlooking the wealth of new disciplines and knowledge which lend texture to a deeper understanding of class power as exercised through stereotyped ideas, part of a process of ideological trickle-down and self-attributing in accordance with the kind of person the system the richest profit by the most needs in order to keep in his or her place!

[french frank]

Will think on More Ideas & Theory than Holocaust, but interesting.

[Serial_Apologist]

Will think on More Ideas & Theory than Holocaust, but interesting.

Like with life generally, all these things "belong together", whether or not they can be boxed into concepts, and how that's been arrived at. I sometimes get an impression from what, admittedly, rather limited reading I've done, that some ancient societies had greater understanding of these things than we do - maybe because so-called civilisation (pace Ghandi) has overburdened our thinking with too much "unfinished business".

[richardfinegold]

It is amazing that in the generations after the War the Germans managed to perpetuate the myth that the Holocaust was the work of a few bad apples and that the rest of the country was clueless. The diaries of individuals like Viktor Klemperer make it absolutely clear that average Germans knew exactly what was going on, and as others have noted here, the sheer logistics required mass participation. I remember reading the transcript of an engineer who designed the ventilation system of the death camps. When queried as to whether he thought there was something unusual about a system that meant to pump gas into, instead of ventilate, shower facilities he acted as if it didn't concern him in the least. He was an engineer, his role was to design the system, it never occurred to him to ask, etc.

[richardfinegold]

To my mind identity politics arise from having group labels attached to people which do not correlate with the actual people concerned, and which may then be adopted defensively by those very people as a form of defiance. I.e. "You say we are queer, whereas we prefer to think of ourselves as individuals - and, as individuals, gays, people of non-heterosexual orientation, who otherwise do not necessarily share any common characteristics". But if you are going to target us for the one facet of our make-up we do have in common, we will therefore band together for collective self-protection. Gays are just one example of other-attributed classifications selectively applied: we could say the same of "jews".

The difference lies in the long history and pre-history of human social evolution. Notwithstanding the Marxist association of the theory, it is generally agreed ( as far as I know) that humans lived without class up to the time when settlements came into being, agriculture was practised, and once the technology was invented for storing against adversity and for future use, somebody had to oversee protecting the surplus while others were out hunting, or waging war. That "somebody" had the spare time to think about things and come up with explanations which then became authoritative; and that person or group of persons thereby acquired the power to become the first ruling class. Class was born, and it has been around ever since in one form or another, as an objective reality, but always in relation to the means of production and the characteristic or "property" invested in something which is not immediately used up, transmogrifying in its character and ability to stay at the top.

And, by virtue of the dualistic character of language, for every "top" there always has to be a "bottom", and, with enough sophistication in the conceptualisation, various intermediary layers or gradations - in this case the class differentiations associated with unequal opportunity and distribution, and the compliants and opportunists who, by benefitting relativistically, act by subterfuge, access to privileged information or wisdom, if that be one's "take", to keep those under orders obedient to the system and those promulgating or upholding its values and practical status quo. This may have to be accomplished by falsely attributing blame to people easily classifiable by some trait or myth, however unfounded or distorted at best, who can thereby be made scapegoats for problems suffered by those less secure than the ruling classes, who are thereby diverted from pinning any blame where it genuinely lies, let alone adducing alternatives beyond matters of immediate rescue. This, together with trust that those obviously clever enough to have got to where they are must surely be qualified to keep us informed in our best interests, and the number of charlatans posing under worthy names throughout history, is probably as much responsible as anything for continuance of belief that this is "the best of all possible worlds". And so we leave where we came in.

If I may summarize: I think that you are saying:
Class distinctions exists in every society, even ones that try to pride themselves on having no such distinctions. Such distinctions may be based on wealth, or belonging to a group that is not favored by the majority, for whatever reason.
Those in power manipulate those distinctions, setting groups off against each other, in order to dilute challenges to their own power, or sometimes to enhance it.
1

[Serial_Apologist]

If I may summarize: I think that you are saying:
Class distinctions exists in every society, even ones that try to pride themselves on having no such distinctions. Such distinctions may be based on wealth, or belonging to a group that is not favored by the majority, for whatever reason.
Those in power manipulate those distinctions, setting groups off against each other, in order to dilute challenges to their own power, or sometimes to enhance it.
1

Yes that's pretty much it - and thanks for taking the trouble to read my post! There are, I feel, perfectly intelligible reasons as to why certain groups are targetted for scapegoating - the cramped thinking about what is constantly reiterated as being important to people's lives, status comparison-making, the need to "keep up" based on capitalist productivity principles applied to the whole of life, and what is interpreted by the media, along with outworn ideas to be getting in the way. I don't believe class distinctions to be necessary for all societies to function. Experiments in the early Kibbutzim reportedly helped participants feel much better about themselves and others where functional roles were rotated, for instance.

[richardfinegold]

Yes that's pretty much it - and thanks for taking the trouble to read my post! There are, I feel, perfectly intelligible reasons as to why certain groups are targetted for scapegoating - the cramped thinking about what is constantly reiterated as being important to people's lives, status comparison-making, the need to "keep up" based on capitalist productivity principles applied to the whole of life, and what is interpreted by the media, along with outworn ideas to be getting in the way. I don't believe class distinctions to be necessary for all societies to function. Experiments in the early Kibbutzim reportedly helped participants feel much better about themselves and others where functional roles were rotated, for instance.

I know quite a few people that have lived, or grown up, on kibbutzim. Many grew up on them and have no wish to return. Others embraced them as experiments in Socialism but eventually left. Many of them have to compete economically, which has led to role specialization as a means of increasing efficiency, thus diluting the ideal.

[Bryn]

I know quite a few people that have lived, or grown up, on kibbutzim. Many grew up on them and have no wish to return. Others embraced them as experiments in Socialism but eventually left. Many of them have to compete economically, which has led to role specialization as a means of increasing efficiency, thus diluting the ideal.

Back in the early 1970s, I knew a French/Israeli Jewish communist ex-soldier, highly proficient in Krav Maga, who had spent some years in a kibbutz. He related how, shortly after his term of national service in the Israeli army, he participated in an Israeli general election and voted for a left-wing candidate of Palestinian heritage. Despite it being nominally secret, his vote was identified and he was swiftly hounded out of the kibbutz.