Marx was Wrong, but Class Still Matters

If you've been to college, and particularly an elite, WASP heavy college, there is a phenomenon you're already familiar with, but maybe don't know exactly what it is or why it happens. 

To make sure you know where I'm going with this, it essentially comes from white guilt. White people feel bad because white people used to own, sell, and use black people like animals. It doesn't really make sense, considering no American alive contributed to this system and it didn't benefit very many white people anyway, but the system set black people back in every facet of life. 

So why don't all white people feel the same way about this? Why do upper middle class white kids at elite colleges feel the need to be constantly obsessing over their relationship to black people? Why is the thing they covet the most in the world a chance to help a black person? And when they do, why do they treat them like a beloved pet, throw them a bone, pat them on the head, and tell them they're a good boy? 

The answer is that (white) progressivism is Christianity without the mythology. To give credit where it's due, I've heard this idea first from Thaddeus Russell, but also Michael Malice and Mencius Moldbug. The theory has a lot of moving pieces to it, but in this case the relevant information is that Christianity values the meek, the humble, the lowest members of society. Progressivism is a secularization of these values. In the Progressive scheme, you are valued the most based on how marginalized you are. If you're in college you've probably seen the evolution of intersectionality, that being a woman, LGBT+, non-cis, or a racial minority, means you have been marginalized more than those who aren't (I have no qualm with the validity of this part) and that you should then be lionized. You'll notice that the one part that seems to be included in Christianity but not in SJW Progressivism, is economic class.

If you need any evidence that this is the case, look at a 2016 electoral map of the economically affected parts of the US. Progressives never actually did things to improve the lives of poor people, but recently they have stopped even paying lip service to them. They noticed, and they elected Donald Trump.

Why do they ignore class? They can't afford not to. The people who control the media, universities, and the government, are upper (middle) class white Progressives. They need to appeal to the marginalized groups I mentioned earlier, and they're happy to let them control the narrative over themselves. They make themselves out to be martyrs because they need those groups to preserve the only thing that really matters to them: social control. A massive part of that is shifting everyone's attention away from the fact that they are not marginalized in the most important way: they're rich. 

Whether blacks or whites, straights or LGBT+, cis or trans, men or women have the upper hand, they don't care. It doesn't affect their material well being, which is what people tend to value the most. Why else wouldn't these people be constantly giving money to marginalized people? They want to keep their material well being. This is why they need the government. To give the illusion that they're helping those groups. 

Do they feel bad about being rich? A lot of them probably do. They're Progressivies after all and it is a religion. So they have to convince themselves that it's bad. But when it comes down to it, everybody acts according to what they value most, and people care about their material well being a whole lot. The point is, they need other things that they can pretend to be martyrs about so that they can keep what really matters to them after all.

All of Marx's prescriptive nonsense is still nonsense, but as anti-authoritarians, we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater and forgotten how important material condition is to any person.