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Rescuing the Left From Its Obsession With Culture — Vivek Chibber
Jen Pan interviews Vivek Chibber about his new book, The Class Matrix: Social Theory After the Cultural Turn. Chibber argues that to truly explain why workers do not always revolt, or even why they appear to “vote against their interests,” it is not necessary to point directly to “culture.” In fact, class structure in capitalism always tips the scales against collective worker action, allowing it to underwrite its own stability: it is much easier, and in many cases more rational, for workers to pursue individual as opposed to collective solutions. Culture plays a role in class formation, but a positive one: to sustain solidarity and provide conditions where collective action appears feasible.
Find Chibber's books here: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674245136 https://www.versobooks.com/products/2705-confronting-capitalism
Note to Ed... No. "Why is the left obsessed with culture?" Is a culture war meme, + no mention of capitalism. Just left shaming?
ReplyDeleteTry No. "Betteridge's law of headlines is an adagethat states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
"Chibber’s Confronting Capitalism, Trump, and the Anxiety of Disordered Societies
by ERIC SCHLIESSER on JUNE 9, 2025
...
"The kind of structural and existential insecurity that Chibber has diagnosed is a genuine harm of un-bridled capitalism characterized by at-will-employment and the ability to change terms of contract unilaterally. It also has other effects (on health, spontaneity, mutual recognition) that Chibber does not mention that are rather important too. I doubt the harm is absent in many other ways of organizing social and political life not the least (as Chibber acknowledges) in Soviet era Marxist states. This existential insecurity was often named ‘fortune’ in other periods and is coextensive with political disorder. How to combat it, is no easy matter when strategic agents among the rich and powerful promote it for their own gain.
" *I added ‘as income’ because Chibber has a tendency to ignore workers’ status as consumers."
...
https://crookedtimber.org/2025/06/09/chibbers-confronting-capitalism-trump-and-the-cult-of-firing/
SD
"Why is the left obsessed with culture?" No.
ReplyDeleteThat makes no sense.