Morning Comrades.
There is going to be a quite a bit of context before getting into the nitty gritty of it for the rest of the week. Alex and I are in he middle of working on a co-authored piece on cancel culture within the construct of our work and during that work I started focusing on an important part of Marx’s work, that was written in a series of letters to Arnold Rutge in 1844. Whilst discussing the practical realities of their work, Marx wrote:
If we have no business with the construction of the future or with organizing it for all time, there can still be no doubt about the task confronting us at present: the ruthless criticism of the existing order, ruthless in that it will shrink neither from its own discoveries, nor from conflict with the powers that be.
Which, as you can well imagine ties in deeply with his belief that: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” - something I try to adhere to to the best of my abilities. While the context of that work in relation to the piece Alex and I are working on is different, it got me thinking on our present situation, with the reality that fascism is the true nature of capitalism, our experience with it today as well as the reality of what western capitalist democracy means to the rest of the world.
This in turn had me looking back on the ever so important work of György Lukács, the Hungarian philosopher and his rightful critique of the original Frankfurt School. For context, again, The Frankfurt School, whose work still greatly influences large areas of our thinking, was initially founded in 1923 in Weimar Republic, as a neo-Marxist school of thought that dreamt of a socialist revolution in their homeland akin to what occurred in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, but instead they witnessed the rise of fascism in the form of Hitler and his Nazi Party. As a response to their failure to foresee the rise of Hitler they eventually developed the Critical Theory, a form of social critique that relies heavy on dialectic approach.
This is the delightful contrasting nature within the Frankfurt School. In fact, interrogating society’s contradictions is indeed the basis of their intellectual approach, where the philosopher György Lukács once commented that these men had taken residence in “Grand Hotel Abyss”, where the fictitious hotel was “equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity.” Indeed, nothing is definitive for this group of scholars, some can even contradict each other, and everything is up for a discussion and/or scrutinize, which could be seen as chaotic from the outside.
I will get into the entire concept of the Grand Hotel Abysss in Friday’s dispatch but for the time being, and today’s dispatch will be free to read for everyone, I wanted to give that essay even more context by the below. A few years ago I wrote a patreon-only essay here on Imposter Syndrome, that is re-written today to suit this subject. To explain, we do have a genuine Grand Hotel Abyss problem that is entirely akin to what Lukács was referring to: a grand host of intellectual analysis in the face of fascist realities that are being created by capitalist without any consequence.
How often have you heard phrases such as “we need to do x” “we have to do y” - without there being any consequence to whatever level analysis offered? Especially in the light of what Engels said some 200 years ago: “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”, this Grand Hotel Abyss reality is striking, today. If you then take Marx’s words from the beginning of this essay in regards to ruthless criticism, I immediately looked at myself - fully aware of the fact that systemic injustices cannot ever ben changed by individualism but here I am - and it did come back to the reality of imposter syndrome that affects so many of us working class people. For all objective purposes I genuinely should have overcome this at age 45 with all the material achievements in light of the obstacles faced but hell no, far from it.
With that, I wanted to share an abridged and edited version of what I wrote in 2022 for anyone that needs to hear as well, and frankly more importantly, for the essay that is to come on Friday.
What Is Imposter Syndrome?
Impostor syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or impostorism, is a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon do not believe they deserve their success or luck.
When impostor syndrome was first conceptualized, it was viewed as a phenomenon that was common among high-achieving female perceived people. Further research has shown that it affects all sexes and genders, in the collective sense that the proportion affected are more or less equally distributed among the genders.
As far as I know the predominate research in this field is done along the lines of race, sex and gender, yet not of class, something I find hugely interesting. Before we truly get into it, a few words about Psychology:
I don’t know much about it, especially professionally. No matter how many years I have had therapy and have had the utmost privilege to be around and taught by accomplished psychologists I have only dabbled. The intersection between materialism ( read Marxism ) and psychology is huge yet often criticized, and I am one of those often doing the critique. Nonetheless, I do consider it not only a valid field of study, but one that is beneficial in the greater context of classism and materialism. My criticism is a mixed bag of subjectiveness and objectiveness. Personally, I have not found all that much value in identifying people and / or systems to “blame” for ones ill-being or destructive behaviour. For example, I grew up with parents that shouldn’t have been parents. Both suffered ( or rather still are as far as I know ) from massive neglect and abuse in their own respective childhoods that were carried forward in forms of neglect, narcissistic manipulation and downright abuse to me. Cool, I learned through therapy & psychology that this was the predominate reason for a lot of my own problems but then what? Making peace with that knowledge didn’t help overcome the pain, nor the results in my own destructive behaviour. Objectively, I know identifying problems “helps” in this regard, but if one were to attempt to scale this up, systematically, to help an entire class, I see only impossibility. Psychology as the root identifier and solution to systemic issues fails in its own subordination to the precise systemic issues at hand. To put simpler, material realities determine much, if not most, self and thus community destruction - give a comrade free housing, free healthcare and UBI and watch most “problems” disappear. That’s my take though and certainly debatable.
My background is solid English peasant stock. English working class consciousness is very specific and equally destructive as well as supportive. Whilst always beating down on any feeling of self-worth and beating down even stronger on any attempt at social class mobility, it does place great pride and offers a great support system towards work. Especially, crafts-based work. For clarities sake, you will get rewarded a great deal for any manual labour, i.e. providing and crafting the material needs for yourself and your community but you will get a massive bollocking if you get into marketing. As I did, for a while in any case. In so far this differs to other European working class traits, puh, what a wonderful study that would be, but I can only comment on the non-existing working class ethos of Germany, one that was eradicated by the Nazis and kept under wraps by the Allied powers after they rebuild West Germany after WW2. Obviously, that was a whole different story in East / Communist Germany but I know so very little about that and thus won’t dare comment on it.
To cut a long story short, I have never felt comfortable existing, let alone thriving, in the realities of the petit-bourgeoisie let alone bourgeoisie world. This has always been extremely clear in work situations. Up until I was 25 I always worked classic working class jobs, retail, manual labour, bar & restaurant work. Always felt comfortable in the language, actions and enjoyed working with my hands. It felt “honest”. From 25 onwards I moved into design, marketing, branding, art and art shows - selling ideas and feelings rather than something I made with my hands that I felt was helpful ( i.e. food for example ) - and you know what, it pays so much better than making food, caring for people, building houses and so forth. That difference in material realities, i.e. no longer living from hand to mouth, but actually accumulating money (!!) was such an alien world to me that I didn’t realize that it truly was an alien world.
As I understand it, in the world of selling ideas you are required to speak a different language and most importantly be born with a level of self-confidence that predominately comes from the knowledge that there is a ( financial ) safety net. Plainly, knowing that if you fuck up, you won’t be evicted or have to go to jail. In my case, that’s always been my reality and still is. If I fuck up, and trust me, I have severely and often, the choices are: jail, eviction or crime to make up for it. That reality fucks with your self-confidence beyond repair as far as I am concerned and essentially keeps the working classes where they are. Amongst themselves, easily divided and pitted against one another. That, in turn allows all classes in the capitalist hierarchical system to not only exploit the wealth generating class but also and most importantly, stop upward social mobility, upon which their generational domination is built.
This is why I was never truly successful during my time in the world of design, music, fashion and what not. I still lack that confidence to bullshit my way through their world. I am equally worried about failing as well as struggling to truly accept the merit of the work involved. For example, I have worked for a number of clients whose core product was bullshit, but they paid well. I was hired to sell it, dress it up with good design, marketing, social media manipulation, you name it - and I more than often failed, as in, walked away after a few weeks, or got fired because I would self-sabotage. When I don’t see value in work, and working class “values” differ vastly from bourgeoisie “values”, my conditioning stops me from doing what I actually can.
This was true often enough during my PhD studies. I know I don’t belong in those circles, I am too poor to be an academic and whilst being able to “fake it till I make it” I self-sabotaged that work often enough as I still struggle with seeing the community relatable value of it. I mean, thank fuck for my therapist who kept me sane and focused during this time but again, what a luxury that most people don’t and will never have access to.
This is why I work as a chef. I am capable of running entire business’ but I don’t see any value in that. I see the value of making food, feeding and bringing together entire communities together and making a living from this. In this upside down world of capitalism this is valued little similar to other essential jobs such as care takers, teachers, garbage people, public transport workers and so on. Work that keeps us healthy and together is valued little while work that upholds the dictatorship of capital is. Add the social conditioning of maintain that system through psychological manipulation and generational damage- well, that is why I keep on rambling about class war.
Because this isn’t good. This isn’t sustainable. This isn’t healthy, moral, and it doesn’t and truly shouldn’t have to be this way.
Fuck feeling small, unvalued and having to exist in precarity to merely uphold and enrich our oppressors.
Enough is enough.
Yours, with love and hope for a better tomorrow,
Steven.