I generally agree with you, and didn’t say that I believe he is bad for having money. I specifically asked whether someone with millions of dollars (and thus an ability to effect real change in the lives of the community around him) can be considered “doing something for the working class,” and I think we both agree that Hasan does not (on first glance, maybe someone will be able to surprise me here) do anything for the working class.
I also think it is important to focus a little bit on the money, because (especially in North America) a lot of working class people look to celebrities for moral guidance, often forgetting that someone with access to so much wealth does not, in fact, have the same class interests.
You did bring up the rare but valued bourgeois class traitors, which of course, can be invaluable tools. But they are not the norm, it should not be expected that the wealthy will join us in our struggle, and so I think a clear reminder that spending our time examining the values and actions of people who inherently do not share our class interests is generally futile. Millionaires (as a group) are not on our side, and do not benefit from our advancement, so rather than looking for reasons to disavow them, we should default to not considering them allies until and unless they actually act on behalf of furthering proletarian power.
Yea, we do agree for the most part then. I also do still think a disproportionate amount of time is spent on folks who are generally nobodies such as Hasan, as opposed to actors with some actual influence. I’d wager to say Hasan is negligible in the grand scheme of things. He is not actually in the bourgeoisie. That’s mainly why I bother to suggest he could still be useful as opposed to Warren Buffett, who is quite clearly never going to be.
Is Hasan bourgeois? I don’t think he owns his means of productions? Most of the money he earns goes to Twitch, he doesn’t run a shop or have an enterprise for brand deals, he employs the services of an editor for his YouTube vids, but I don’t think that makes him bourgeois. I think he is like labor ultra aristocracy.
Plus he also allows free use of all his streaming, allowing others to make YouTube videos on his content and make money off it (idk what you’d call this theory wise lol)
Generally individuals as wealthy as him (he makes literally millions from twitch, and that is only taking into account his take home from that platform, not including any money on other platforms, donations, and merch sales) do become capitalists, as they almost invariably invest that wealth into capital.
However, without looking into him (and I already have looked into him far more than I would otherwise have just so I could answer this in good faith), I couldn’t say whether or not he has purchased capital. What I can say is that arguments could easily be made that his access to wealth puts him in the petit bourgeois camp.
Regardless, just based off Twitch streaming as like, a job, I would say that he could be considered intelligentsia. I wasn’t specifically calling him bourgeois, was just replying to a point about bourgeois class traitors. The main thrust of my contention is that we shouldn’t spend time poking into every rich person’s thoughts and feelings, because, ultimately, nearly every one of them will side with capitalism as a system because that is the system that gives them access to their wealth.
Rather, we should just assume the wealthy are not on our side, and focus our efforts on thinking about more important things than what this actor or that popstar have to say. Unless and until they are actually willing to use their wealth to betray their class interests in support of the good of the people, I just don’t see how them generally sucking or not matters.
I generally agree with you, and didn’t say that I believe he is bad for having money. I specifically asked whether someone with millions of dollars (and thus an ability to effect real change in the lives of the community around him) can be considered “doing something for the working class,” and I think we both agree that Hasan does not (on first glance, maybe someone will be able to surprise me here) do anything for the working class.
I also think it is important to focus a little bit on the money, because (especially in North America) a lot of working class people look to celebrities for moral guidance, often forgetting that someone with access to so much wealth does not, in fact, have the same class interests.
You did bring up the rare but valued bourgeois class traitors, which of course, can be invaluable tools. But they are not the norm, it should not be expected that the wealthy will join us in our struggle, and so I think a clear reminder that spending our time examining the values and actions of people who inherently do not share our class interests is generally futile. Millionaires (as a group) are not on our side, and do not benefit from our advancement, so rather than looking for reasons to disavow them, we should default to not considering them allies until and unless they actually act on behalf of furthering proletarian power.
Yea, we do agree for the most part then. I also do still think a disproportionate amount of time is spent on folks who are generally nobodies such as Hasan, as opposed to actors with some actual influence. I’d wager to say Hasan is negligible in the grand scheme of things. He is not actually in the bourgeoisie. That’s mainly why I bother to suggest he could still be useful as opposed to Warren Buffett, who is quite clearly never going to be.
Is Hasan bourgeois? I don’t think he owns his means of productions? Most of the money he earns goes to Twitch, he doesn’t run a shop or have an enterprise for brand deals, he employs the services of an editor for his YouTube vids, but I don’t think that makes him bourgeois. I think he is like labor ultra aristocracy.
Plus he also allows free use of all his streaming, allowing others to make YouTube videos on his content and make money off it (idk what you’d call this theory wise lol)
Generally individuals as wealthy as him (he makes literally millions from twitch, and that is only taking into account his take home from that platform, not including any money on other platforms, donations, and merch sales) do become capitalists, as they almost invariably invest that wealth into capital.
However, without looking into him (and I already have looked into him far more than I would otherwise have just so I could answer this in good faith), I couldn’t say whether or not he has purchased capital. What I can say is that arguments could easily be made that his access to wealth puts him in the petit bourgeois camp.
Regardless, just based off Twitch streaming as like, a job, I would say that he could be considered intelligentsia. I wasn’t specifically calling him bourgeois, was just replying to a point about bourgeois class traitors. The main thrust of my contention is that we shouldn’t spend time poking into every rich person’s thoughts and feelings, because, ultimately, nearly every one of them will side with capitalism as a system because that is the system that gives them access to their wealth.
Rather, we should just assume the wealthy are not on our side, and focus our efforts on thinking about more important things than what this actor or that popstar have to say. Unless and until they are actually willing to use their wealth to betray their class interests in support of the good of the people, I just don’t see how them generally sucking or not matters.