Thank you. I’ve been looking all morning for these figures.
I saw something about the proposed huge hourly and benefit cuts somewhere yesterday and thought surely that the mainstream coverage would include that information in its coverage — this is the first I’ve seen.

Hostess has apparently not kept up with market share – with such good products like Twinkies and Wonder Bread, imagine!

You don’t hate those products. You hate the people who consume them: people who punch timeclocks, work with their hands, drink Old Milwaukee, watch NASCAR, and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Again, the left is the overseers. It wants to organize the working-class slaves out in the fields to help it (the left) overthrow the plantation owner so that it (the left) can move into the plantation house and take over the cotton-growing operation for itself — while retaining its working-class slaves to continue doing the hard work under the hot sun while it (the left) stays in the house and “manages” the operation.

The left is not seeking working-class liberation. It’s seeking coordinator-class liberation. That is, the left isn’t seeking to free the slaves. It’s seeking to free the overseers.

But those nasty, dirty, ill-mannered, unkempt, unwashed, uneducated masses of working people just won’t cooperate. The left keeps telling them what a “bad” job the extant ruling class is doing running society, and oh why won’t they (the working class) just help the left install itself as the new ruling class — then the left promises, really promises, to make life better for workers.

The left acts like workers are too stupid to know what the left is doing. And to the 17th-decimal place, that’s true. The working class doesn’t have an understanding that’s that sophisticated. But it’s not difficult at all for workers to feel coordinator-class hatred for their (workers’) culture.

Just talking about how terrible Twinkies are is just another in a long line of examples.

Pretty sure I actually do hate those products. But putting class-consciousness boilerplate focused on the relative enjoyment of food I personally don’t like on an article about how workers are getting a royal screwing at the hands of a hedge fund-owned company desperate to loot the assets and walk away with them – now that’s productive and laser-focused on the point!

Happy alienating.

Copy of Statement from Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) cross-posted at AFL-CIO website.

“Over the past eight years since the first Hostess bankruptcy, BCTGM members have watched as money from previous concessions that was supposed to go toward capital investment, product development, plant improvement and new equipment was squandered in executive bonuses, payouts to Wall Street investors and payments to high-priced attorneys and consultants…

… A mountain of debt and gross mismanagement by a string of failed CEOs with no true experience in the wholesale baking business have left this company unable to compete or survive.”

The Baining of America

Thank you, David.

There are actually studies proving how terrible Twinkies are. You should read more comments before you paint with such a broad brush because a good commenter on FDL is like a good painter it’s all in the prep work. Are you doing any?

I don’t see anything in the article that indicates you, personally, don’t like those products, but that whether or not others eat them is irrelevant. If that were the case, why mention how much better off society is without them? You could just mention that you don’t eat them, perhaps, and leave it at that.

But writing

In good news for people who don’t want to die prematurely because of their diet, Hostess Foods, makers of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Sno Balls and other inedible confectionaries, will liquidate the company

doesn’t sound like a personal opinion about Ho-Hos. Nor does

Hostess has apparently not kept up with market share – with such good products like Twinkies and Wonder Bread, imagine!

I mean, you’re referencing market share here. I assume that has something to do with the number of Ding-Dongs sold nationwide, not just at the Dayen household. Finally,

Outside of “great products Americans love,” I agree.

Again, this sure sounds like a reference to more than just Twinkies bought and sold in whatever part of L.A. you live in.

Moreover, what’s up with this:

In good news for people who don’t want to die prematurely because of their diet, Hostess Foods, makers of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Sno Balls and other inedible confectionaries, will liquidate the company, which is currently suffering through a labor strike.

The company is suffering through a strike? Oh, the poor, inanimate, immortal company, suffering like a person. Does this mean Mitt Romney was right, and the corporations are people, my friend?

What you call boilerplate, I call theory. Alienating? Yes, certainly. But I don’t care. I know who and what the left is, and what it stands for. I see the classism on the left. Class is as poorly understood by the left in 2012 as race and gender were by the left in 1812. I mean that seriously.

I don’t want to hear the left talk about better wages and benefits for for workers. I want to hear it talk about the division of labor in this country. Or, better yet, how about the division of labor in extant left-wing institutions?

If I give the left a magic wand, what will the left do with it? What kind of economy will it create with it? (I realize a society is more than an economy, but the economy is what I know best.) As we speak, there are nurse aides wiping shit off the asses of people who have C-diff and Hepatitis C. There are janitors sweeping floors, people doing construction work, people answering phones, and doing all manner of rote, onerous, drudgerous, or even dangerous work. They are the field slaves.

There are others who are looking at financial statements, preparing charts, making decisions, determining schedules, hiring and firing people, and the like. They are the overseers.

Using modern terminology, they are workers and coordinators. Everyone agrees no one should own the means of production; everyone agrees there should be no capitalists. But what about the division of labor?

I see every indication that, with that society-creating magic wand, the left would remove the owners, but retain the extant division of labor. The left doesn’t want to do shit work. I mean, this isn’t even debatable. I’ve had these conversations more times than I can count.

The left refuses to acknowledge the existence of the third class — the coordinator class. The class that benefits not from ownership privileges, but from division-of-labor privileges. I cringe everytime someone mentions 99% or 1% — it’s just warmed over Marxian two-class analysis — old wine in new bottles.

And yeah, I’m a prick. But I also think everyone should be liberated — not just the well-educated. And better wages and benefits do not equal liberation — they equal better wages and benefits. It’s not enough to free the overseers. The slaves must be freed too. But the left can’t see the difference between the two, and doesn’t really want to.

I agree with Eric about the twinge of snobbery and disdain in David’s article, and of course it’s only telling one side of the story, entertaining though it may be. I’ll have to look elsewhere for the rest of it.

And yes, better wages and benefits are preferable to lower wages and benefits. I support incremental changes that lead to bigger changes. I just don’t see any incremental changes being won, or even fought for — not when it comes to economics.

Of course Twinkies are horrible. I don’t eat them. It’s also irrelevant to any of this, or should be.

No, I take that back. I see incremental changes kind of being fought for, and that’s good. But they are certainly not being won.

No more Twinkies ? Now what are the graveyard computer hackers going to do for food ?

:-)

I wonder how much money Hostess wasted distributing their Twinkies? How many jobs where lost over the years due to energy cost increases in the production process?

Did they hire Pinkerton Guards to protect the plant like in Homestead PA. Dam, people need their Twinkies like Railroad tycoons needed steel for their Iron Horse transportation monopolies?

““The Board of Directors authorized the wind down of Hostess Brands to preserve and maximize the value of the estate after one of the company’s largest unions, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), initiated a nationwide strike that crippled the company’s ability to produce and deliver products at multiple facilities,” Hostess said in the statement.”

v.

“In fact, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms own Hostess brands, and they took massive bonuses and payouts over the past eight years or so. They dumped the company pensions, unilaterally stopped making pension payments that would have totaled $160 million, and plan to pay themselves with the sale of the liquidated assets of the company. Their current CEO’s main credential for the job is his “expertise in corporate liquidations,” according to the union (he’s also seen his pay triple).”

Thanks for the contrast and clarity, Dayen. Great post!

The Ding Dong is dead. Long live Ding Dong.

Ding Dongs got me through high school.

No doubt the workers could run the company at a profit, if they were given the means of production sans the debt of WS hedge funds and private equity firms.

I hope the truth of the rapacious overseers gets out. Thanks for the post, David.

I used to eat twinkies back in the (19)40s. I recall liking them. Liked dixie cups, too. I was surprised they are still around. As to the strikes, if twinkies are still a viable product somebody will buy up the patent and start making them and the unions can organize that company. The key here is fighting back. The gloves are off and we are back in ‘which side are you on’ territory. I think the recent election campaign and especially Romney open and enthusiastic advocacy of the worst sides of capitalism has brought home to a lot of people the importance of unions. I think this is going to be the new divil rights issue. First time in eighty years.

Possibly you try to be more bitter and angry at what you like to see as the “Left Overseers” here at FDL. Frankly I’m not overseeing anything or anyone. You have some points to make, but there’s ways to communicate and ways to be vitriollically nasty for no perceivable reason.

I happen to work part time with people who are trying to lose weight and change their eating habits. It’s all very well to paint with a broad brush that “everyone” at FDL somehow looks down on blue collar workers & other manual laborers, but most of here don’t look down on them at all. That’s something that you are *projecting* onto us for reasons that I can’t quite figure out and frankly don’t really care about anymore.

As for me: I never look down on or diss people for their food consumption choices bc I know that *most* of us have been misled by advertising. That it’s very easy to think you’re hungry, when you’re not really hungry. And we’ve been saturated with fatty sugary products that very very unhealthy for us.

So my role is to encourage and support citizens to learn better eating habits in order to improve their health. I don’t give a sh*t what they do or not for a living, where they live or what their beliefs are. But I can tell that I’ve seen PLENTY of citizens whose health has been *ruined* by over-consumption of products like Hostess Twinkies & Ho Hos, etc.

That said, what I see here is, as someone else has indicated, is the BAINful demise of Hostess. No doubt the Corp Fat-Cats are walking away with a pretty penny, whilst 18,000+ US worker jobs are wiped out.

I’m not unhappy to see the demise of Hostess non-nutritive “snacks” go away, but it’s always a sad day when the rich & powerful REFUSE to collaborate with the workers who’ve made the 1% wealthy.

This is yet another example of greedy rich pigs taking their tea cups – aka whatever they can rip off from the bankruptcy proceedings – and taking the money and running home.

ptoui!

Best of luck to the workers who are out of a job. Most unfortunate.

I suspect that Patton was referring to their subjective value and how a disdainful lack of identification with them was indicative of classism.

Yup, bled the corporation and workers like a stuck pig. Enriched themselves via “Twinkies” addicts and the workers who made and distributed the Twinkies. What do they call people who eat people, as some folks eat Twinkies?

I agree. I’m not fond of Hostess products for reasons which I just elaborated. That said, it would be great if the Unions could help the workers to buy the company and run it, themselves. I know it’s been done in other instances.

waiting for some other hedge fund asshole to come along and purport to “run” the company is a waste of time. what we need is more education on how workers can form collaboratives to own and run the companies themselves.

Bgrothus! I ‘ve been tthinking along those lines…the co. Is going to selll the assets, including the brands. Maybe they will try it.
Btw, I just got into an argument in the checkout line at Target with a guy who was buying a bunch of Hostess products. It began when I asked, all innocent and smiling, if he was stocking up. When he said the company was closing, the young woman cashier was horrified. So the man told her, Yeah, the unionnmade them declare bankruptcy.

Well, I couldn ‘t let that alone, could I? Or his assertion that 150,000 jobs would be lost. As he left he was muttering something about “unemployment WE have ti pay for.

When I explained that a leveraged buyout with borrowed moneyled to the cutting of pay an thus, the strike, the cashier said, “that tends to happen a lot.”

So e on balance, proof that while lots oc angry fools watch Fox e others are paying attention to the real world. And those Bain ads worked! ;-)

Jim Gaffigan’s take on this issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YDTfEhChgw

LOL. B+ for creative trolling.

heh… pretty funny.

Actually the documentary “Supersize Me” spoke to the addictive qualities of “food” products like McDonald’s & Twinkies, which offer little nutritional value, but make everyone wanting more of the same. It’s not accidental.

Personally, although I truly do loath those “products,” I have a lot of compassion for people who love that kind of stuff… it’s understandable… but it is literally killing us. And creating health care nightmares. I could go on, but just one example is a co-worker (nice person, quite intelligent, hard working) who is much younger than me, in a scooter chair, and has lost one leg (the other is looking dubious) due to diabetes-related issues… and continues to mostly eat junk food of the worst kind. It’s really a serious problem for ALL of us.

I’ll get off the soap box now… ;-)

Who outsourced more jobs? Romney, or Jeff Immelt, Obama’s jobs czar and CEO of GE? – Yahoo! Answers

I don’t have the answer but: David, the Romneyism/Bainism sobriquet is unworthy of you INMHO. The Obama committment to labo,r I think you’ll agree, is week as water. So why go there?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120714081729AA4ioI7

Your co-worker ‘s story is so sad. Are you hinting that he knows better but can ‘t help himsel

Personally, I loved the Hostess cupcakes as a kid. There were only cupcakes, snowballs, and Twinkies then. No Ding Dongs. My mom usually put one in my lunchbox. As an adult, I occasionally found myself crsving the taste. On brraking down and eating one, I ‘d usually be disappointed…and slightly sick from the sweetness.
The craving was mostly nostslgia for childhood, I think. Several years have passed since I’ve wanted one. So I wony miss them, but thst thid is another Bainish story is…sickening.

Weak not week.

Yeah, that was a good documentary.

I suppose you would know best, but eating healthy seems much more an emotional and environmental issue than an intellectual one. Plus, it is just extremely hared to eat healthy in the US. It really takes a concerted effort.

Your comments here raise a couple of interesting questions. Can the middle class, if their comfort is predicated on the division of labor and having others do “the shit work,” ever be left, in the sense that you mean that term? To what extent can someone give up their socioeconomic status in pursuit of political or ideological goals?

I think they call those people lucky, if that song by Barbara Streisand is to be believed.

“People,
People who eat people
Are the luckiest people in the world
Were children eating other children
And yet letting our grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside . . .”

As a northeastern youth, I much preferred Drake’s Cakes brands. (You could unroll a Yodel, which I thought was cool.) I see they’ve been bought out by Hostess and so will probably go under, too.

Fortunately for Philadelphians (and, apparently, the South…say what? Since when?), Tastykake soldiers on.

David, while your nutritional preferences are indisputable and while Eric’s “the left are the overseers” thesis is simplistic, I do have to say that I believe that the nutritional issue is irrelevant to the main thrust of the article, and the snobbish tone only invites reactions such as Eric’s. The issue is the destruction of good jobs and popular American brands by Vulture Capitalists, not What David Dayen Eats as a Snack Food, IMO.

Still, the major story here is what’s important. Thanks.

Um…Hunh?

Good bit. I dig Gaffigan.

What are these Masters of the Universe thinking?

I guess its always one step forward and two steps back.

Don’t they realize that with the results of this past election
that the country is now moving inexorably toward legalization?

This is the moment to expand Hostess, not to shut it down.

Hey Homeboy: I can’t speak for anyone else here but personally, I’d settle for seeing the American economy return to what it was in the mid-1970′s. You may recall that it was around that time that the “middle class” peaked. (And no, I’m not going to get into a pissing contest about class terminology. There’s a point at which such squabbling crosses over a line which separates the merely technical from the stubbornly mindless. We all know what I’m referring to in this instance, right? Right.)

In the mid-1970′s, the vast majority of “regular Americans” were doing very well (relatively speaking), and corporations were also doing just fine, thank you very much. To be more specific, the economy was humming, people were working, money was being saved, it was possible to obtain a higher education without committing oneself to a feudal existence for decades after, and people could retire with some measure of dignity. In short, a pretty good life for a majority of Americans.

While it’s (arguably) fun to yammer-on about the finer aspects of what a “more perfect union” might look like, in the final analysis there’s really no need to over-complicate things. After all, this ain’t exactly rocket science we’re discussing here. What it’s going to take is for some people in positions of authority to step up and start calling things for what they are. (Though I don’t like Chris Christie for any number of reasons, a good example of what I’m talking about here is when the governor set aside politics (days before a presidential election, no less) to actually do the work of governing during a major disaster. Wingnut heads were exploding all over the country. He was right, they were wrong.) Failing such rare demonstrations of courage, however, I see it as absolutely vital that people across the political spectrum push back in any and every way that’s feasible and/or practicable. (Actually, I see both actions (and others) as necessary to effect real change in any sort of reasonable time frame, but that’s another discussion.)

Well duh…

CEO and chairman Gregory F. Rayburn told CNBC that he was hopeful the company could sell its brands [...]

Translation: “Fuck you, we got ours!” The shareholders have been paid off, the CEO and other execs have gotten there millions and sparkly parachutes out of the brand…now, the workers can go fuck themselves.

Yeah i agree. Its as if the writer (and some of the readers) of the post felt they had to provide some kind of “anti twinkie” bona fides, sliding neatly into a sterotype slot that has long been a staple of right wing faux populism….wouldnt it be easier just to keep the snotty comments out of the whole thing?? One or two former, recently robbered and screwed over Hostess employees might even READ this thing. Its possible. The punk-kid style smart-assery (this site is infamous for) REALLY dosnt help make the relevant points..

While we’re calling this Romneyism and Bainism I think it’s important to note that Ripplewood was a equity group run by a Democrat.

“Ripplewood’s foray into Hostess was partly enabled by Collins’s connections in the Democratic Party. He wanted to explore deals with union-involved companies and sought the help of former congressman Gephardt, who in 2005 founded the Gephardt Group, an Atlanta consulting firm that provides “labor advisory services.” In his 2004 presidential bid, Gephardt — whose father was a Teamsters milk truck driver — was endorsed by 21 of the largest U.S. labor unions; in 2003, Collins was one of 19 “founding members” of Gephardt’s New York State leadership committee. (Today, Ripplewood and Hostess are listed online as major clients of Gephardt’s consulting group, which is also an equity owner of Hostess.) Back when Hostess was coming out of the first bankruptcy, Gephardt’s credibility with both Ripplewood and the Teamsters gave them each a little more room to break bread.”

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/tag/ripplewood-holdings/

I got that. Good one!

That’s the association I get to Twinkies. Dr.Pepper and a twinkie hit the spot back in my earlier days.

Down south, it was usually an RC Cola and a moon pie.

Can the middle class, if their comfort is predicated on the division of labor and having others do “the shit work,” ever be left, in the sense that you mean that term?

Bingo.

I’d be delighted if the world’s shitwipers got Wall street bonuses. I hate twinkies and ding dongs and I grew up poor white in Kentucky. I just don’t like being surprised by squishy stuff in the middle of my food.

E Patton’s argument is predicated on the belief that poor folk don’t know that Twinkies are bad for you. Which is nonsense. People eat stuff that they know is bad for them. Whatever’s stocked on the end caps at Sam’s and shuts the kids up is what they’re going to buy. I think Dayen was simply pointing up a universally accepted belief that Twinkies et al are profoundly bad for you, a fact not lost on the third shift nursing home worker. No need to throw up barriers where none exist.

So the man told her, Yeah, the unionnmade them declare bankruptcy.

DAvid, this was the one element you failed to include in your summary of the hedge fund scenario: at the end of their rapacious plundering, they blame the unions for everything.

See, it’s working again.

Eric Patton’s job as a free-market Republican servant and fellow traveler of the 1% is to do things like distract from the main point of David Dayen’s piece, which is that the Hostess company is a perfect example of a company that was pillaged for years by venture capitalists who wrung a few extra dollars from union workers’ pockets before doing what they planned to do all along: butcher the ailing company and divide up its remaining substance amongst themselves.

Indeed. It’s rather elitist of Mr. Patton to insist that mocking crummy food is mocking poor people, because Mr. Patton is thus insisting that poor people have crummy tastes in food. Demagoguery Fail, Mr. Patton! Go back to RedState to see if they have better talking points for use in trolling non-right-wing-dominated websites.

As opposed to inviting opportunistic attacks from someone who doesn’t think DDay is lefty enough for his tastes? Someone like, perhaps, you?

Both you and your right-wing ally against DDay, Eric Patton, seem to share the belief that poor people have crummy tastes in food, when in fact (as DDay’s post explains for those of you who aren’t just reading it with a view to attack DDay) the source of the Hostess company’s troubles, the fatal weakness that left them open to their first bout with bankruptcy and takeover by vulture capitalists bent on the ultimate destruction of the company, was their leaders’ unwillingness and/or inability to adapt the company’s products to Americans’ changing tastes. If poor people were consuming Twinkies as prodigiously as you and Patton imply, Hostess wouldn’t have gone into bankruptcy in 2004, much less today.

My questions weren’t rhetorical.

The middle classes are much more lefty in Europe, particularly in places like Scandinavia, France and Germany, which are not coincidentally the chief places in Europe (outside of Spain’s Basque region, particularly in the areas where the Mondragon Corporation has a large presence) that have weathered the global depression of the past five years with much less hardship for anyone, rich or poor, than have countries like the UK, Ireland, Greece, or Spain. (Meanwhile, in the US, the past five years have been just fine for the 1% and horrific for everyone else, including what’s left of the middle class that has been under attack by big business for the past half-century.)

It’s all about moderation. Nothing wrong with having a twinkie, just don’t over do it. I thought ‘Super Size Me’ was kind of dumb, because it doesn’t deal with that. It was kind of snobby as well, but hiding behind an anti-corporate or health message. Lots of McDonald’s is perfectly good, but of course if you get a double quarter pounder with cheese, large fries and large shake then you’re probably getting too much of what you don’t need. Also, McDonald’s puts mayo on their burgers, rather than something healthier for example, because that’s what people want.

Maybe I’m the exception, but I’ve always stayed away from Hostess products because they were so expensive.

You’re not at all tribal, are you? You must enjoy the fishbowl quality of many chat boards. I enjoy a little disagreement, or a lot. That way it isn’t just ‘ra ra ra ra ra.’ How boring.

Lots of things are bad for you. Twinkies aren’t bad for you if you don’t eat too much of them. They are bad for you if you do eat too much of them. Strawberries are bad for you, too, if you eat too much of them.

Has anyone examined the market for the products Hostess produced? Is the market such that Hostess can be profitable?
I suppose it i nice to harp on the “Bains” and worry for those who lost their jobs but is there need for Hostess?
I look on the shelves in the market and find plenty of brand of Bread, so we will still eat. There are still many ways to ruin your health without “Twinkies”.

Can we cut to the chase and freely allow Capital to shoot workers, after dismembering them and gouging their eyes out?

Drudge nailed it: it’s the workers fault that Hostess will go under.

The only silver lining I see is that, once US oligarchs get all the wealth, and 98% of the national income, they will be finished. Done. Dead. I look forward to pissing on a billionaire’s corpse.

BOOK and MOVIE – Recommendations for a better understanding of this action and others regarding Private Equity and financial engineering, the destruction of american companies, jobs, and our former tax base.

See on-line THE WALL STREET CONSPIRACY for a better understanding of stock manipulation, fraud, the naked short selling of stocks which continues today. Read THE BUYOUT OF AMERICA by Josh Kosman for information on ‘private equity’ and derivatives, and a bit about Bain Capital. And read RETIREMENT HEIST to understand where your pension, defined benefits, and 401k have disappeared to. (by Ellen Schultz). Then let’s organize. Tell others about the above movie and books. They give a better idea of the big picture. Other documentary movies to learn more ‘HEIST’ and ‘We’re not broke’.

Thanks for tacitly admitting you have no facts on your side, because otherwise you would have used them. Ta!

If classlessness is a goal, then you can’t have one class monopolize empowering tasks while another does only shit work. However, literally the next time anyone at FDL answers the question “Is (or should) classlessness (be) a goal of the left?” with a straight yes-or-no answer will be the first time. It’s not restricted to FDL, mind you. Virtually no one on the left will answer this question.

Okay, you asked

Can the middle class, if their comfort is predicated on the division of labor and having others do “the shit work,” ever be left, in the sense that you mean that term? To what extent can someone give up their socioeconomic status in pursuit of political or ideological goals?

To answer the first, really, we’d have to settle on some definitions. First, you’d have to define for me the term “middle class” — which, to be honest, is a meaningless term. Thinking your question was rhetorical and that you understood my point, I was willing to grade on a curve. But if you’re seriously going to ask me a question about the middle class, I’m within my rights to require you to define the term first.

I won’t, though. I’ll define it for you: It’s meaningless. To really understand the economy, the technical terms you need are worker (or working class), coordinator (or coordinator class), and owner or capitalist (or owning or capitalist class). For definitions, go here.

Before I go on, you ask if they can ever be left. Again, we’d really have to define what we mean by left. I’d rather punt on this question and just ask, again, if classlessness is a goal of the left. I’ve asked if the eradication of sexism or racism should be goals of the left, and I can’t get answers there either, I assume because people are smart enough to know what’s coming next. I mean, Phoenix Woman can hate on me all she wants, but I’d lick her boots if I could get some straight yes-or-no answers from her.

So to really answer your first question, for me, requires answering, “Is classlessness a goal of the left? Should it be?” — with yes-or-no answers.

The second question I don’t really understand, so I’ll answer a variation: Chomsky’s rich even by Western standards; he’s still radical. The issue isn’t material privilege. It’s, What do we want? What are our goals? Right now, it’s … Do we want a classless economy?

Understand, when I ask questions like, Do we want a classless society, or, Do we want a society free of racism, or, Do we want a society free of sexism?, it’s not with any sort of practical understanding of whether these things are possible or, if they were, how we would get there.

It goes back to the magic wand. If the left had a magic wand, what would it do with it? If you had a magic wand in your own personal life, what would you do with it? I mean, in their daily lives, people do this all the time: They dream dreams about what they want. Most dreams are unattainable, but some dreams people set about to bringing to fruition. That’s how lives and worlds change.

So, collectively, what does the left want? Do you want to end war? End racism? Clean up the environment? End sexism? End classism? Forget attainability for the moment. You have a magic wand. Do you bring any of these things into existence?

And do you notice I’m asking a lot of questions? Why doesn’t the left spend less time pontificating, and more time asking questions and trying to find answers and wisdom? I digress…

They all should be simple “yes” answers. But Phoenix Woman won’t answer them. If she does, email me at ebpatton@yahoo.com and I’ll pick this up somewhere else (only, however, if I get straight yes-or-no answers — otherwise I’ll just pick my spots as I do now).

Do you want a classless society — yes or no?????????

If you do, you have to get serious about seeing the third class — the coordinator class. You have to get serious about acknowledging the division-of-labor privileges.

Let me try this: In a society free of sexism … Look, I play a lot of D&D (Dungeons & Dragons). D&D is marketed to males, obviously. There are pictures (drawings) of women in various places in D&D books — women who, in the fantasy context the books are creating, have a lot of power. Yet, strangely, all these women (drawn in the books) seem compelled to show skin, wear tight clothes, and so on. Why? Do truly powerful women in the U.S. in 2012 do this? So why do women in these books?

The answer’s obvious, of course. But, in a society bereft of sexism, wouldn’t men appreciate women for more than just their physical attractiveness? I suspect that, for Phoenix Woman, that’s a big part of what a sexism-free society would look like. I mean, why do women (in 2012) have to wear heels and tight clothes and so on? Every woman reading this knows the answer, even if the men can’t figure it out. For the record, I love heels. So I’m caught in this nether land where I see what’s behind the manner of dress, and yet I absolutely love it at the same time. So what do I do? Well, I do my best — that’s all any of us can do. I look at those pictures the same way: they make me slightly sad at the same time I look at them and think, OMG she’s hot.

Anyway, the key — as with the alcoholic — is to first be honest with oneself about it. If I look at those pictures (or real-life women) with no understanding that I like heels but that, really, women shouldn’t have to wear them, then nothing ever changes, period. There’s no guarantee that my self-awareness gets me to change — either drinking or ogling women in tight clothes. Honestly, I’m sorry ladies, but if she’s hot (meaning all the things you think it means in 2012), I’m going to notice her.

So should any of this exist in a society free of sexism? If that’s an easy yes-or-no question — as it should be — then why can’t we also pay some attention to matters of class? I imagine Phoenix Woman thinks women shouldn’t have to wear tight clothes in a good society. As much as I love tight clothes on a woman, I agree with her.

Well, I don’t think the shit work should be done by one class of people, while managerial decisions should be made by another class. That’s classism. There’s a whole economic theory devoted to answering questions about how we eliminate classism, and I claim it’s viable.

But the step zero (even before step one of being honest with ourselves) is to ask … DO WE WANT A SOCIETY FREE OF CLASSISM? I’m still waiting on a yes-or-no answer to that question.

Yes.

You are literally the first person at FDL to answer that question. Dayen, PW, TBogg, dakine, CTuttle, massacio, Hamsher — none of the heavyweights wanted any part of it. Still don’t, I’m sure. But you stepped up. I notice shit like that.

Okay, I’m done checking this thread. I’ve got a busy remainder-of-my Sunday ahead of me. Gandhi, aka me, is busy nuking Montezuma in Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. Only I’m not taking his capitulation — I’m going to wipe out his whole civ and recolonize it with my own people.

Ah, my little power fantasies.