When The Lady On The Checkout Is Your Class Enemy
From the Socialism 101 Reddit, a question of crushing import:
Are cashiers working class? I know this sounds like it should be obvious, but think about it. Cashiers do not produce any commodities. Under a non-capitalistic society, nobody would do what they do. In fact, their job is almost more like a cop. They keep commodities away from people and demand that you pay a fee to the bourgeois to access them. And if you refuse, they will use the violence of the state against you by reporting you to the authorities for shoplifting. So how are they, in a Marxist analysis, working class?
Yes, it’s real, or was, until deleted for attracting attention from unclean heathens. And needless to say, earnest rumblings ensued. You do, I think, have to marvel at the thought of someone going through life continually scanning for class enemies, obstructers of the Great Proletarian Revolution, and concluding that checkout assistants have just made the list.
Note the line,
Under a non-capitalistic society, nobody would do what they do.
Note too that the implications of this claim, for all manner of unglamorous but necessary tasks, are somehow not explored.
Consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.
They keep commodities away from people and demand that you pay a fee to the bourgeois to access them. And if you refuse, they will use the violence of the state against you by reporting you to the authorities for shoplifting.
Sounds like someone got busted for nicking. 🙂
Sounds like someone got busted for nicking. 🙂
Well, it’s not an entirely unreasonable suspicion.
Readers will of course recall these glorious scenes from a Moscow supermarket, circa 1990.
Under a non-capitalistic society, nobody would do what they do.
It wasn’t real socialism; they had people regulating the bread line.
The first item here seems somewhat apposite.
Best comment: “I found the person who’s never worked in the service industry before”
I did briefly get drawn into the slightly demented sub-debate as to whether police officers can ever be considered working class.
Kinda reminds me of….
They keep commodities away from people and demand that you pay a fee to the bourgeois to access them.
The Morlocks wonder if this one will be gamey.
Sounds like someone got busted for nicking.
No, no, “Sounds like someone got taken to the nick after being nicked for nicking some stuff that was in good nick”.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, socialism is a cargo cult.
No, no, “Sounds like someone got taken to the nick after being nicked for nicking some stuff that was in good nick”.
Hmmm. Seems someone watched too much Nickelodeon as a kid. Nick, nick, nick… and all that.
Presumably someone who is unemployed or retired is not working class either.
Don’t do Marxism, kids. Not even once.
People really need to go read David Remnick’s “Lenin’s Tomb”. He was the NYT Moscow bureau chief as the Soviet Union was collapsing. The book is a live time postmortem of the collapse. If anything, he was predisposed to sympathetic views of the communist experiment. The book ends up being the reflections of a man who is so shocked by what he sees, and who is so eager to write them down accurately, that he doesn’t have time to filter them through his leftist-sympathetic ideological lens. Which, make his descriptions of life in the Soviet working class is the single greatest indictment of communism I’ve ever read, anywhere.
His accounts of the physical conditions people work in are horrifying, but the thing that really comes across is the psychological Hell those people endured. The world of constantly changing lies they lived in and the complete havoc that caused, is absolutely more grotesque than anything Kafka or Orwell or Bradbury could ever imagine.
When you have to put a few items back at checkout because you don’t have enough money to pay for everything, you might feel mildly embarrassed and begin to wonder why you are so disorganized and unproductive that you can’t even feed yourself. Much easier to blame the cashier I guess.
The world of constantly changing lies they lived in and the complete havoc that caused
Sounds oddly familiar, somehow.
They keep commodities away from people and demand that you pay a fee to the bourgeois to access them. And if you refuse, they will use the violence of the state against you by reporting you to the authorities for shoplifting. So how are they, in a Marxist analysis, working class?
Quick quiz. Was this written by:
a. An easily led 15-year-old
b. A university grad student
c. A university professor
d. A professional journalist
My point being, of course–you just can’t tell.
Under a non-capitalistic society, nobody would do what they do.
This much is correct.
In a free market cashiers help customers check out and bag items they have chosen to purchase.
In an unfree market cashiers are kept by The State to maintain appearances at stores where the shelves contain:
A) Nothing.
B) Produce allowed to become inedible.
C) Items the
propertycommon citizens of The State either cannot afford or do not have a use for.Except . . . cargo cults were based on direct (if fantastically misunderstood) observation.
If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me, top left, and I’ll poke about in the spam filter.
The only problem I have with the appearance of comments is that they don’t appear fast and continually enough to allow me to avoid work. Thus necessitating trips into the archives of some of your more amusing tags.
Ahem: actually on topic, does our Bizarrely Anti-Cashier patient of the day seriously believe that in whatever dispensary was enjoyed by luxury robo-communists, that there needn’t be an orderly process for obtaining goods or any type of rationing-out of things? I rather thought the equal distribution of goods was the main… gimmick. Everyone going to be distributing fairly among themselves, then. Such angels they’ll be.
Such angels they’ll be.
Them thar anarcho-communists, like dear darling Laurie.
Marxism:
1. People are greedy.
2. We need all your money to stop this.
Except . . . cargo cults were based on direct (if fantastically misunderstood) observation.
Socialists watch people go to work. They see stuff come out of stores. The complex process that gets the stuff in the stores, the reason the cashiers (and stock boys and managers and etc.) are just charades as far as they understand. The stuff just appears. Though you do have a point. The socialists think they’re so smart as to see that the charades are completely unnecessary. The stuff just is and they know where it should be.
Sporkatus, in part, wrote:
…an orderly process for obtaining goods or any type of rationing-out of things? I rather thought the equal distribution of goods was the main…gimmick
Ain’t that the principal shortfall of communism/socialism vis-à-vis free markets, i.e. free markets, having figured out an orderly process of obtaining things, survived to see the Soviets into the dust bin of history.
Our Bizarrely Anti-Cashier patient has distilled the surface oil-on-the-water without considering the depth-of-the-ocean complexity as how free markets arise to solve the obtaining goods question. As if eliminating the middleman gatekeeper (grocery checkout clerk) delivers equal distribution nirvana…
As well, the definition of equal is always a stumbling block for the nomenklatura, as “Animal Farm” teaches your typical middle schooler.
The charades are completely unnecessary
The kind of person to take apart a drum brake for no reason other than to “see if it’s working properly, because ‘I’m a genius'”, observe with total certainty that the adjuster never bloody moves, see that the handbrake cable duplicates the function of the main brake, and to put the whole thing back together without the springs or any of that riffraff, because they’re just making it harder for the brake to do its job properly.
The people whose death in a fiery wreck could not possibly have been avoided, and whose actual former mechanic will subsequently be blamed.
In any machine, a government not excluded, the smallest part takes the greatest thought, “big picture” be hanged. One doesn’t award a patent (metaphorically) to the system of total socialism, because it’s a crank device that is not only non-functional, but is missing pieces. Pieces which don’t exist and cannot exist.
As Chesterton said about HG Wells’ concepts of luxury robo-communism…
“The smallest part takes the greatest thought.”
That’s brilliant. I am SO redistributing that for my own use.
Back in 1978 I worked at a silicon valley tech startup founded by a couple of Czech refugees. They sponsored another guy who had escaped with a wife and kid, giving him an enginering job.
Seeing his reactions to life here was quite the eye-opener for this 19 year old.
Speaking of H.G. Wells, this is his bastard son (Anthony West) on his old man’s knowledge of socialism:
“Although he had been calling himself a socialist for years, he had little knowledge of political theory, and none of practical politics. … He hadn’t at that stage any idea of what socialism was, beyond that it required a man to go about looking fierce, running down the system, and wearing a red tie. When called on to defend his position, he hadn’t been able to do much more than sick up some scrambled stuff that he’d got from a random sampling of the literature of dissent.”
Sounds familiar, like I’ve heard this before somewhere.
“Seeing his reactions to life here was quite the eye-opener for this 19 year old.”
My wife was in Norfolk, Va., in the Navy in the late ’80s when a Soviet ship paid a visit. Part of the sailors’ itinerary was a visit to the local supermarket.
Not a special market for the Nomklature, just an ordinary grocery store.
They walked through the store, these fit young men in their cute uniforms, flabbergasted at the amount and variety of food.
They bought what they could, and when they ran out of money, the Americans there paid for what they couldn’t afford, because meeting and befriending Russians was as exciting to them as what they were experiencing. It was a mutually exploitative situation.
Then they saw something on the shelves that stopped them dead, according to my wife. They saw something for sale that blew their minds.
Brace yourself …
What really, really stunned them the most …
Ready?
Cat food.
Single-serving cat food.
In cans.
With pull-tops.
As Chesterton said about HG Wells’ concepts of luxury robo-communism…
Full Luxury Communism Today! I have been told that leftist Iain Banks’ sf stories demonstrate that this is entirely practical and desirable and that we should start moving towards it today. (Why, oh why, do so many sf fans have so many serious and dangerous blind spots?)
Instalanch!
Them thar anarcho-communists, like dear darling Laurie.
From the link:
“How terribly precious. Imagine all of our delicate hand-wash-only radicals, all those little Lauries, self-determining how much wealth should be distributed their way, and how much, or little, they could be arsed to do in return.”
Well said, David, well said.
Why, oh why, do so many sf fans have so many serious and dangerous blind spots?
It’s because they are nerds.
It’s because they are nerds.
I think I’ll start a charity to cure this terrible affliction. Maybe call it the March of Dumbs.
I think it’s great that so many of the entries on the r/socialism subreddit read like self-parodies:
“This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes.“
…But the things is is that I’m not exactly “socialist material”. I’m very anti-capitalist, but I’m also upper middle class, and it doesn’t help that my grandfather is both a Vietnam AND Iraq war veteran. I’m not sure if I belong in this movement.
Getting asked if a doctor should get the same pay as a janitor, help.
New to Socialism, Depressed, Feel Worthless
I’m lucky to be able to do so because I’m a class traitor (am bourgeoisie, have both parents as managers over large parts of companies).
Is it okay that I believe and support the socialist cause despite being from an upperclass family?
Socialist Therapy?
My boyfriend is struggling with severe anxiety based in the political climate of Canada and the meaninglessness of capitalism and he needs help.
according to everyone around me fidel castro was a terrible person and a dictator, but everyone here and on r/communism seems to love him. why?
I’m half way through Animal Farm and I have to compulsorily finish it.
See, I’m a young socialist (14). And in my school it is absolutely compulsory to read Animal Farm, (which I will [b]e examined on). The book has gotten to the point where it’s just pure anti-Stalinist propaganda, which continues little to no historical synchronisation. Therefore I have no interest in reading it but I have to.
This is what a lead deficiency looks like.
His accounts of the physical conditions people work in are horrifying, but the thing that really comes across is the psychological Hell those people endured. The world of constantly changing lies they lived in and the complete havoc that caused, is absolutely more grotesque than anything Kafka or Orwell or Bradbury could ever imagine.
You sure he wasn’t writing about wokeism?
…for all manner of unglamorous but necessary tasks, are somehow not explored.
Nonsense…
Nonsense…
Take a look at that Twitter account: seriously racist, criminal, malevolent “community” of people too deranged to be treated as fellow citizens. They make David Duke seem like a solid citizen by comparison.
Parasitology: noun. The study of socialism.
“I have been told that leftist Iain Banks’ sf stories demonstrate that this is entirely practical and desirable and that we should start moving towards it today.”
Even Banks himself was smart enough to recognise that his stories were fantasies; that a) communism is only feasible without scarcity of goods, and b) eliminating the scarcity of physical goods, if it’s even possible*, is millennia away. Largely because it would require insane amounts of energy. Square turning all of the planets into a Dyson sphere with your environmentalism if you can, Lefties.
*Which, of course, it isn’t. Abundance may minimize its effects, but you can’t alter the fact that if I eat an apple, you can’t eat the same one; i.e., they’re “scarce”.
Under a non-capitalistic society, nobody would do what they do.
That’s funny, because in the long-ago worker’s paradise known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics there wasn’t one, weren’t two, but *three* comrade checkout ladies at retail establishments like the GUM, Intourist souvenir shops and food markets: one to pull the purchase from the shelves, one to wrap it in plain paper and one to ring up the purchase on an abacus (ubiquitous at the time).
Witnessed it with my own pre-teen lying eyes while touring the country with me mum.
Quick quiz. Was this written by:
a. An easily led 15-year-old
b. A university grad student
c. A university professor
d. A professional journalist
My point being, of course–you just can’t tell.
Heh.
[ Slides along bar a voucher for 5% off chitterlings and bag, to be used at nearest kerbside vendor. ]
Seeing his reactions to life here was quite the eye-opener for this 19 year old.
We seem to have a large number of Russian and Eastern European ex-pats working in the IT field here. The stories many of them tell about life under Communism are chilling in their banality.
It’s because they are nerds.
Tautology. It’s because they’re children (emotionally). If you look at the Geek Social Fallacies, they seem incomprehensible until you realise that you’re looking at a description of how children view relationships.
I’m lucky to be able to do so because I’m a class traitor (am bourgeoisie, have both parents as managers over large parts of companies).
Speaking of the ex-pats – I’ve noticed that the children of parents who fled Communism are often the most vociferous supporters of [adjective] socialism. I suspect there’s more than a little “F*** you, Dad” going on there.
My boyfriend is struggling with severe anxiety based in the political climate of Canada
So am I, although I suspect not for the same reasons.
Largely because it would require insane amounts of energy.
Frederik Pohl’s Midas World is a fascinating collection of short stories on what happens when room-temperature fusion power is perfected – because when energy is cheap, so is everything else.
[ Slides along bar a voucher for 5% off chitterlings and bag, to be used at nearest kerbside vendor. ]
Lol. Eww.
To each according to his need……
In their childish world Marxists are only about things , well I need the exclusive and enthusiastic attention of beautiful women. How are you going to satisfy that need comrade?
…chitterlings and bag…
To this day I find it remarkable that, for reasons unfathomable, most people think the only Brit food fit to eat is fish and chips. Pass the bubble and squeak please, and a side of canned baked beans on toast…
[ Slides voucher across bar to Mr Muldoon. ]
First lay-by on the left. Ask for Big Sheila.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, good news, everyone, you are now allowed to play tennis, but you and your opponent cannot use the same ball.
More good news, as long as you wear a face diaper and stay six feet apart, you can go on a date. No tongues, though. Sharing needles is not addressed.