#class theory

James *is* prejudiced. He’s a classist bigot. He’s also, despite fighting on the anti-Voldemort side of the war, got an ingrained sense of superiority based on his blood status. Yes, he marries a muggleborn and befriends a werewolf. But he picks his victim knowing Severus is an easy target who won’t be defended by his blood supremacist housemates because he’s the son of a muggle. He’s not going after the pureblood Slytherins, because he knows he wouldn’t get away with it so easily if he went after people with important families. He never unpacks what this says about his true attitudes towards blood status.

Severus is prejudiced as a youth, but it’s internalised self-hatred because he too is part of the marginalised class as somebody with a muggle father. As a teacher, he doesn’t dislike Hermione because she’s a muggleborn. He dislikes her because she’s a uniquely insufferable student who isn’t as clever as she thinks she is.

Many people in this fandom don’t seem to understand what classism is, nor do they grasp class dynamics or how they shape power structures. The globalized, neoliberal, Americanized perspective has led to a cultural misunderstanding of class as the foundation upon which all other social inequalities rest. By ignoring class issues, people tend to focus on individual trees rather than seeing the forest. So, let’s break it down:

James Potter comes from a wealthy and respected pureblood family, which places him in a position of privilege both in the wizarding world and within Hogwarts. Although he opposes Voldemort’s ideology and the explicit blood supremacy of the Death Eaters, he still benefits from a structure that grants advantages to those from old, wealthy families. His choice of Severus as a bullying target is not arbitrary; it aligns with the implicit social hierarchy at the school: Snape is the son of a Muggle, comes from a poor family, and lacks the protection of a powerful lineage.

James’ behavior can be analyzed through Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, which argues that ruling classes maintain power not just through coercion but also by instilling norms and values that reinforce their status. James, while rebelling against the most extreme version of blood supremacy, still operates within the values of his class: he despises and torments a peer who represents marginality within the wizarding world.

Furthermore, his friendship with Remus Lupin, a werewolf, can be interpreted through the theory of “tokenism,” which suggests that elites often include a few marginalized individuals as a way to justify their own position as Rosabeth Kanter said on her sociology studies. His friendship with Lupin does not dismantle the system of privilege in which James operates, just as his marriage to Lily Evans does not force him to question the wizarding world's class structure as a whole.

Severus, on the other hand, embodies a different kind of prejudice. His initial alignment with Death Eater ideology does not stem from pure supremacist conviction but rather from a survival mechanism within a society that despises him. In terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, Severus seeks to accumulate “symbolic capital” by associating with Slytherins of pureblood status, as his “social capital” (his family and connections) is practically nonexistent. However, despite his desire to belong, his lineage relegates him to an ambiguous position: he is not fully accepted among the blood purists, but he also finds no protection within the broader wizarding community.

His resentment toward Hermione Granger, therefore, is not because she is a Muggleborn but because she represents the kind of student who has always been valued by Hogwarts society in a way that he never was. In terms of Bourdieu’s theory of reflexivity, Hermione embodies the institutional validation of academic talent that Snape himself never received.

The relationship between James and Severus, then, is not just a school rivalry but a manifestation of class struggle within the wizarding world. James, the benevolent aristocrat who never fully questions his privilege, represents the dominant class—one that opposes extreme ideologies but does not challenge the system that benefits him. Severus, on the other hand, is the outcast who desperately seeks upward mobility, even if it means aligning himself with ideologies that ultimately despise him.

We are not enemies.

Freddie Stuart discussing the treatment of Amazon warehouse floor workers in “My Life as an Amazon Warehouse Worker”:

There are about a thousand of us working in this facility, and two hundred on shift at any one time. As we file in, we head straight toward five large screens. The first displays a number around two hundred thousand. It’s the total number of boxes Amazon wants our center to sort that day. As they flicker, the screens list our names, roles, and where we need to go. I don’t know how this system works. Is it random? Do managers allocate who works where? All I know is that I’m rarely in the same space twice, and I’m almost never working alongside the same people.

[...]

Editor’s note: although much of the past week has felt like swimming in molasses in terms of my writing progress, I have managed to keep publishing new material across some of the other platforms I write on. Over on my Patreon blog, I’ve recently published “Theory Discussion: A Working Definition of Neofeudalism” and a new(ish) edition of “The Skinny” - while my Media Madness blog recently featured a new rant entitled “Matthew Yglesias is a Disingenuous Bootlicker.”

Today’s “Quickshot Quotation” comes to us from the Politics and Fascism page of my library in the form of “Rendezvous with Oblivion”; a collection of previously published essays about the decline of American society under neoliberal capitalism, by author, historian and political analyst Thomas Frank - a name you may recognize from our earlier review and commentary piece about his previous book “Listen, Liberal.”

Although it is ultimately difficult to recommend a book comprised entirely of previously published (albeit, slightly updated) essays to the discerning book-shopper on a budget, I’ve personally grown to be such an unabashed fan of Frank’s work that I had no problem plunking down twenty-two bucks for a physical copy of seventeen essays I could probably still have found online for free.

Divided into four thematically related sections and featuring essays spanning from 2011 right up to its publication date in 2018, Rendezvous with Oblivion is ultimately a book not just about the unraveling of American liberalism but more specifically the isolation, atomization and dehumanization increasingly inherent in life (or death) under western neoliberalism and the rule of elite capital. Written entirely in Frank’s now-famous, wistfully bemused composition style, the author somehow manages to make it at least somewhat enjoyable to read about the purposeful looting of the labor class, the ongoing financialization of our economy and the utter moral bankruptcy of a Democratic Party that now openly despises class consciousness among “the proles.”

Perhaps most importantly of all however, whether he’s talking about fast food workers, the fall of the American small business sector to monopoly power or disaffected labor class voters who’ve (with some justification) turned their backs on the Democratic Party, it remains apparent that Thomas Frank actually cares about the people, places and way of life he’s writing about. Rendevous with Oblivion is not another elitist academic’s faux-sympathetic offering of condescension and crocodile tears to the poor American working stiffs, but instead a series of genuine, heartfelt warnings about what we as a society are losing in the face of the increasingly heartless, absolute rule of elite capital over us all - even at the cost of everything that makes life worth living.

These are all fine reasons to read Rendezvous with Oblivion in specific and Thomas Frank in general, but they aren’t the reason why the author’s analysis represents “must-read” material for the American leftist. Truthfully, it is Frank’s uncommon and incisive analysis of the professional managerial class voter and apparatchik who now represents the “soul” of the Democratic Party, which should be bringing all the (Bakunin) boys to the yard. As the author has noted numerous times, it is the affluent, economically conservative “upper-middle class” professional who have come to embody the base of the party in the wake of the Democrat’s post-McGovern betrayal of the labor class; wealthier, more educated and more influential than the dwindling labor class, it is indeed these college educated managers, professors and “experts” Democratic Party leaders now picture when they are asked to envision some concept of “the American people” - the labor class itself simply no longer merits notice in the elite liberal worldview that dominates political though in the top levels of the party.

As those of you who’ve read my prior writings on modern American class theory will no doubt be aware, I personally consider the absolutely paucity of discussion examining these modern class divisions in America to be in and of themselves a subtle form of anti-labor class propaganda and as such I find Frank’s in depth exploration of this “professional class” to be a vital resource in this media environment. Indeed, the fact that the author is both himself a recognized “liberal influencer” and a member of this petite-bourgeoisie, professional class lends a surprisingly frank, “inside baseball” feeling to much of everything Frank writes about the extremely profitable alliance between elite capital and the professional class, against the labor class - aka the rest of us.

In my last review of his work, I knocked Thomas Frank around for still being an American liberal - but today, after reading a much broader selection of his work, I’m starting to realize that the author’s liberalism may indeed be his finest asset; Frank might be the last liberal writer in the world who still believes in something, even if that something is as milquetoast as a “party of the people” and a social contract between capitalism and the labor class. Whether you start with Rendezvous with Oblivion, Listen Liberal or the author’s online writing in major left wing/liberal publications, I strongly advise the modern leftist scholar to make the time to read more Thomas Frank.

- nina illingworth Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

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Maids, as the name implies, are servants of their aspect.  Like most servants, they are simultaneously omnipresent and ignored.  A successful Maid works from the background to preserve and repair their aspect.  Maids also spend a lot of time doing the “grunt work” of their aspect, like establishing stable time loops for the sake of self-reduplication, frog breeding, doing consort quests, helping other players with minor problems, and the like.  However, once a Maid hits god tier, they gain powerful abilities that let them undo other mistakes, such as outright revival with no significant strings attached, or a time stop ability that helps make up for other players’ lack of preparation.

Maids are not a fortunate class (except perhaps the Maid of Light).  A Maid is actually guaranteed to die (either their real or their dream self, possibly extrapolated to “only” being significantly injured as another possibility) prior to playing the game.  However, the Maid’s aspect will either return them to life, or at least restore to a state that allows them to participate in the game (whereupon they will be truly revived by becoming God Tier).  Additionally, it is not uncommon for a Maid to at some point lose everything except their aspect--Jane lost everything short of her life while controlled by the Condesce, and once Aradia sent off the meteor, she had nothing but Time left.  This loss is not necessarily permanent, however, so take heart, Maids.

(and it’s not scientific or maybe even true at all but it’s true to me okay. xx)

which is inspired in my personal and others experiences, and is mirrored by Pulp’s song Common People. It’s the idea that a relationship between a working class girl and middle/upper class boy has a 1% success rate. These posh boys have a curiosity for the lower classes, like they used to in the 1800s and coined it ‘slumming’, it’s a fascination of a different world of girl. These girls to them are not frigid or have a high moral compass like the girls they’ve been raised around. These are girls with their interests, girls who enjoy the same music, drinks, culture as them but are on the other side enough that it’s fun. And they can love this girl, can wholeheartedly love the shit out of her, but he won’t take her seriously. No matter how much adulation is shared between them two, he will always go back to the bleached blonde private school girl he met at uni. Because his family and friends won’t share his curiosity. They won’t accept someone who will so easily call them out, who politically was raised differently, and it’ll be that which will break down years of love. Because he cannot say no to his family. He can say no to her, because he never really said yes, just bordered close enough to infiltrate her life, to fall in love with her, but never enough to have to do something about it. And in most cases, she doesn’t see this as a bad thing, because in her head “how could she get so lucky”, she almost understands him, which doesn’t make it right, but it means they both let go. He cannot face being ostracised and she cannot fathom being enough.

“You want to sleep with common people like me.”