Exiting The Vampire Castle

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Exiting the Vampire Castle

by Mark Fisher on November 22, 2013
This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in

politics. Exhausted through overwork, incapable of productive activity, I
found myself drifting through social networks, feeling my depression and
exhaustion increasing.
‘Left-wing’ Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this

year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-
identifying figures were ‘called out’ and condemned. What these figures
had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in
which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue:
the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism. The reason I
didn’t speak out on any of these incidents, I’m ashamed to say, was fear.
The bullies were in another part of the playground. I didn’t want to
attract their attention to me.
The open savagery of these exchanges was accompanied by something

more pervasive, and for that reason perhaps more debilitating: an
atmosphere of snarky resentment. The most frequent object of this
resentment is Owen Jones, and the attacks on Jones – the person most
responsible for raising class consciousness in the UK in the last few years
– were one of the reasons I was so dejected. If this is what happens to a
left-winger who is actually succeeding in taking the struggle to the
centre ground of British life, why would anyone want to follow him into
the mainstream? Is the only way to avoid this drip-feed of abuse to
remain in a position of impotent marginality?
One of the things that broke me out of this depressive stupor was going
to the People’s Assembly in Ipswich, near where I live. The People’s
Assembly had been greeted with the usual sneers and snarks. This was,
we were told, a useless stunt, in which media leftists, including Jones,
were aggrandising themselves in yet another display of top-down
celebrity culture. What actually happened at the Assembly in Ipswich was
very different to this caricature. The first half of the evening –
culminating in a rousing speech by Owen Jones – was certainly led by the
top-table speakers. But the second half of the meeting saw working class
activists from all over Suffolk talking to each other, supporting one
another, sharing experiences and strategies. Far from being another
example of hierarchical leftism, the People’s Assembly was an example of
how the vertical can be combined with the horizontal: media power and
charisma could draw people who hadn’t previously been to a political
meeting into the room, where they could talk and strategise with
seasoned activists. The atmosphere was anti-racist and anti-sexist, but
refreshingly free of the paralysing feeling of guilt and suspicion which
hangs over left-wing twitter like an acrid, stifling fog.
Then there was Russell Brand. I’ve long been an admirer of Brand – one
of the few big-name comedians on the current scene to come from a
working class background. Over the last few years, there has been a
gradual but remorseless embourgeoisement of television comedy, with
preposterous ultra-posh nincompoop Michael McIntyre and a dreary
drizzle of bland graduate chancers dominating the stage.
The day before Brand’s now famous interview with Jeremy Paxman was
broadcast on Newsnight, I had seen Brand’s stand-up show the Messiah
Complex in Ipswich. The show was defiantly pro-immigrant, pro-
communist, anti-homophobic, saturated with working class intelligence
and not afraid to show it, and queer in the way that popular culture used
to be (i.e. nothing to do with the sour-faced identitarian piety foisted
upon us by moralisers on the post-structuralist ‘left’). Malcolm X, Che,
politics as a psychedelic dismantling of existing reality: this was
communism as something cool, sexy and proletarian, instead of a finger-
wagging sermon.
The next night, it was clear that Brand’s appearance had produced a
moment of splitting. For some of us, Brand’s forensic take-down of
Paxman was intensely moving, miraculous; I couldn’t remember the last
time a person from a working class background had been given the space
to so consummately destroy a class ‘superior’ using intelligence and
reason. This wasn’t Johnny Rotten swearing at Bill Grundy – an act of
antagonism which confirmed rather than challenged class stereotypes.
Brand had outwitted Paxman – and the use of humour was what
separated Brand from the dourness of so much ‘leftism’. Brand makes
people feel good about themselves; whereas the moralising left
specialises in making people feed bad, and is not happy until their heads
are bent in guilt and self-loathing.
The moralising left quickly ensured that the story was not about Brand’s
extraordinary breach of the bland conventions of mainstream media
‘debate’, nor about his claim that revolution was going to happen. (This
last claim could only be heard by the cloth-eared petit-bourgeois
narcissistic ‘left’ as Brand saying that he wanted to lead the revolution –
something that they responded to with typical resentment: ‘I don’t need
a jumped-up celebrity to lead me‘.) For the moralisers, the dominant
story was to be about Brand’s personal conduct – specifically his sexism.
In the febrile McCarthyite atmosphere fermented by the moralising left,
remarks that could be construed as sexist mean that Brand is a sexist,
which also meant that he is a misogynist. Cut and dried, finished,
condemned.
It is right that Brand, like any of us, should answer for his behaviour and
the language that he uses. But such questioning should take place in an
atmosphere of comradeship and solidarity, and probably not in public in
the first instance – although when Brand was questioned about sexism
by Mehdi Hasan, he displayed exactly the kind of good-humoured
humility that was entirely lacking in the stony faces of those who had
judged him. “I don’t think I’m sexist, But I remember my grandmother,
the loveliest person I‘ve ever known, but she was racist, but I don’t think
she knew. I don’t know if I have some cultural hangover, I know that I
have a great love of proletariat linguistics, like ‘darling’ and ‘bird’, so if
women think I’m sexist they’re in a better position to judge than I am, so
I’ll work on that.”
Brand’s intervention was not a bid for leadership; it was an inspiration, a

call to arms. And I for one was inspired. Where a few months before, I
would have stayed silent as the PoshLeft moralisers subjected Brand to
their kangaroo courts and character assassinations – with ‘evidence’
usually gleaned from the right-wing press, always available to lend a
hand – this time I was prepared to take them on. The response to Brand
quickly became as significant as the Paxman exchange itself. As Laura
Oldfield Ford pointed out, this was a clarifying moment. And one of the
things that was clarified for me was the way in which, in recent years, so
much of the self-styled ‘left’ has suppressed the question of class.
Class consciousness is fragile and fleeting. The petit bourgeoisie which

dominates the academy and the culture industry has all kinds of subtle
deflections and pre-emptions which prevent the topic even coming up,
and then, if it does come up, they make one think it is a terrible
impertinence, a breach of etiquette, to raise it. I’ve been speaking now at
left-wing, anti-capitalist events for years, but I’ve rarely talked – or been
asked to talk – about class in public.
But, once class had re-appeared, it was impossible not to see it

everywhere in the response to the Brand affair. Brand was quickly judged
and-or questioned by at least three ex-private school people on the left.
Others told us that Brand couldn’t really be working class, because he
was a millionaire. It’s alarming how many ‘leftists’ seemed to
fundamentally agree with the drift behind Paxman’s question: ‘What gives
this working class person the authority to speak?’ It’s also alarming,
actually distressing, that they seem to think that working class people
should remain in poverty, obscurity and impotence lest they lose their
‘authenticity’.
Someone passed me a post written about Brand on Facebook. I don’t

know the individual who wrote it, and I wouldn’t wish to name them.
What’s important is that the post was symptomatic of a set of snobbish
and condescending attitudes that it is apparently alright to exhibit while
still classifying oneself as left wing. The whole tone was horrifyingly high-
handed, as if they were a schoolteacher marking a child’s work, or a
psychiatrist assessing a patient. Brand, apparently, is ‘clearly extremely
unstable … one bad relationship or career knockback away from
collapsing back into drug addiction or worse.’ Although the person
claims that they ‘really quite like [Brand]’, it perhaps never occurs to
them that one of the reasons that Brand might be ‘unstable’ is just this
sort of patronising faux-transcendent ‘assessment’ from the ‘left’
bourgeoisie. There’s also a shocking but revealing aside where the
individual casually refers to Brand’s ‘patchy education [and] the often
wince-inducing vocab slips characteristic of the auto-didact’ – which, this
individual generously says, ‘I have no problem with at all’ – how very
good of them! This isn’t some colonial bureaucrat writing about his
attempts to teach some ‘natives’ the English language in the nineteenth
century, or a Victorian schoolmaster at some private institution
describing a scholarship boy, it’s a ‘leftist’ writing a few weeks ago.
Where to go from here? It is first of all necessary to identify the features

of the discourses and the desires which have led us to this grim and
demoralising pass, where class has disappeared, but moralism is
everywhere, where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are
omnipresent – and not because we are terrorised by the right, but
because we have allowed bourgeois modes of subjectivity to contaminate
our movement. I think there are two libidinal-discursive configurations
which have brought this situation about. They call themselves left wing,
but – as the Brand episode has made clear – they are many ways a sign
that the left – defined as an agent in a class struggle – has all but
disappeared.
Inside the Vampires’ Castle
The first configuration is what I came to call the Vampires’ Castle. The
Vampires’ Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s
desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to
be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one
of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it
can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought –
that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism,
heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such
struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal
perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The
Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be
defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’
recognised by a bourgeois big Other.
The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not

being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and
revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-
spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves
freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ Castle seeks to
corral people back into identi-camps, where they are forever defined in
the terms set by dominant power, crippled by self-consciousness and
isolated by a logic of solipsism which insists that we cannot understand
one another unless we belong to the same identity group.
I’ve noticed a fascinating magical inversion projection-disavowal

mechanism whereby the sheer mention of class is now automatically
treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of
race and gender. In fact, the exact opposite is the case, as the Vampires’
Castle uses an ultimately liberal understanding of race and gender to
obfuscate class. In all of the absurd and traumatic twitterstorms about
privilege earlier this year it was noticeable that the discussion of class
privilege was entirely absent. The task, as ever, remains the articulation
of class, gender and race – but the founding move of the Vampires’
Castle is the dis-articulation of class from other categories.
The problem that the Vampires’ Castle was set up to solve is this: how do
you hold immense wealth and power while also appearing as a victim,
marginal and oppositional? The solution was already there – in the
Christian Church. So the VC has recourse to all the infernal strategies,
dark pathologies and psychological torture instruments Christianity
invented, and which Nietzsche described in The Genealogy of Morals. This
priesthood of bad conscience, this nest of pious guilt-mongers, is exactly
what Nietzsche predicted when he said that something worse than
Christianity was already on the way. Now, here it is …
The Vampires’ Castle feeds on the energy and anxieties and

vulnerabilities of young students, but most of all it lives by converting the
suffering of particular groups – the more ‘marginal’ the better – into
academic capital. The most lauded figures in the Vampires’ Castle are
those who have spotted a new market in suffering – those who can find a
group more oppressed and subjugated than any previously exploited will
find themselves promoted through the ranks very quickly.
The first law of the Vampires’ Castle is: individualise and privatise
everything. While in theory it claims to be in favour of structural critique,
in practice it never focuses on anything except individual behaviour.
Some of these working class types are not terribly well brought up, and
can be very rude at times. Remember: condemning individuals is always
more important than paying attention to impersonal structures. The
actual ruling class propagates ideologies of individualism, while tending
to act as a class. (Many of what we call ‘conspiracies’ are the ruling class
showing class solidarity.) The VC, as dupe-servants of the ruling class,
does the opposite: it pays lip service to ‘solidarity’ and ‘collectivity’, while
always acting as if the individualist categories imposed by power really
hold. Because they are petit-bourgeois to the core, the members of the
Vampires’ Castle are intensely competitive, but this is repressed in the
passive aggressive manner typical of the bourgeoisie. What holds them
together is not solidarity, but mutual fear – the fear that they will be the
next one to be outed, exposed, condemned.
The second law of the Vampires’ Castle is: make thought and action
appear very, very difficult. There must be no lightness, and certainly no
humour. Humour isn’t serious, by definition, right? Thought is hard work,
for people with posh voices and furrowed brows. Where there is
confidence, introduce scepticism. Say: don’t be hasty, we have to think
more deeply about this. Remember: having convictions is oppressive, and
might lead to gulags.
The third law of the Vampires’ Castle is: propagate as much guilt as you
can. The more guilt the better. People must feel bad: it is a sign that they
understand the gravity of things. It’s OK to be class-privileged if you feel
guilty about privilege and make others in a subordinate class position to
you feel guilty too. You do some good works for the poor, too, right?
The fourth law of the Vampires’ Castle is: essentialize. While fluidity of
identity, pluarity and multiplicity are always claimed on behalf of the VC
members – partly to cover up their own invariably wealthy, privileged or
bourgeois-assimilationist background – the enemy is always to be
essentialized. Since the desires animating the VC are in large part
priests’ desires to excommunicate and condemn, there has to be a strong
distinction between Good and Evil, with the latter essentialized. Notice
the tactics. X has made a remark/ has behaved in a particular way –
these remarks/ this behaviour might be construed as transphobic/ sexist
etc. So far, OK. But it’s the next move which is the kicker. X then becomes
defined as a transphobe/ sexist etc. Their whole identity becomes
defined by one ill-judged remark or behavioural slip. Once the VC has
mustered its witch-hunt, the victim (often from a working class
background, and not schooled in the passive aggressive etiquette of the
bourgeoisie) can reliably be goaded into losing their temper, further
securing their position as pariah/ latest to be consumed in feeding
frenzy.
The fifth law of the Vampires’ Castle: think like a liberal (because you
are one). The VC’s work of constantly stoking up reactive outrage
consists of endlessly pointing out the screamingly obvious: capital
behaves like capital (it’s not very nice!), repressive state apparatuses are
repressive. We must protest!
Neo-anarchy in the UK
The second libidinal formation is neo-anarchism. By neo-anarchists I

definitely do not mean anarchists or syndicalists involved in actual
workplace organisation, such as the Solidarity Federation. I mean, rather,
those who identify as anarchists but whose involvement in politics
extends little beyond student protests and occupations, and commenting
on Twitter. Like the denizens of the Vampires’ Castle, neo-anarchists
usually come from a petit-bourgeois background, if not from somewhere
even more class-privileged.
They are also overwhelmingly young: in their twenties or at most their

early thirties, and what informs the neo-anarchist position is a narrow
historical horizon. Neo-anarchists have experienced nothing but
capitalist realism. By the time the neo-anarchists had come to political
consciousness – and many of them have come to political consciousness
remarkably recently, given the level of bullish swagger they sometimes
display – the Labour Party had become a Blairite shell, implementing
neo-liberalism with a small dose of social justice on the side. But the
problem with neo-anarchism is that it unthinkingly reflects this historical
moment rather than offering any escape from it. It forgets, or perhaps is
genuinely unaware of, the Labour Party’s role in nationalising major
industries and utilities or founding the National Health Service. Neo-
anarchists will assert that ‘parliamentary politics never changed
anything’, or the ‘Labour Party was always useless’ while attending
protests about the NHS, or retweeting complaints about the dismantling
of what remains of the welfare state. There’s a strange implicit rule here:
it’s OK to protest against what parliament has done, but it’s not alright to
enter into parliament or the mass media to attempt to engineer change
from there. Mainstream media is to be disdained, but BBC Question Time
is to be watched and moaned about on Twitter. Purism shades into
fatalism; better not to be in any way tainted by the corruption of the
mainstream, better to uselessly ‘resist’ than to risk getting your hands
dirty.
It’s not surprising, then, that so many neo-anarchists come across as
depressed. This depression is no doubt reinforced by the anxieties of
postgraduate life, since, like the Vampires’ Castle, neo-anarchism has its
natural home in universities, and is usually propagated by those studying
for postgraduate qualifications, or those who have recently graduated
from such study.
What is to be done?
Why have these two configurations come to the fore? The first reason is
that they have been allowed to prosper by capital because they serve its
interests. Capital subdued the organised working class by decomposing
class consciousness, viciously subjugating trade unions while seducing
‘hard working families’ into identifying with their own narrowly defined
interests instead of the interests of the wider class; but why would capital
be concerned about a ‘left’ that replaces class politics with a moralising
individualism, and that, far from building solidarity, spreads fear and
insecurity?
The second reason is what Jodi Dean has called communicative

capitalism. It might have been possible to ignore the Vampires’ Castle
and the neo-anarchists if it weren’t for capitalist cyberspace. The VC’s
pious moralising has been a feature of a certain ‘left’ for many years –
but, if one wasn’t a member of this particular church, its sermons could
be avoided. Social media means that this is no longer the case, and there
is little protection from the psychic pathologies propagated by these
discourses.
So what can we do now? First of all, it is imperative to reject

identitarianism, and to recognise that there are no identities, only
desires, interests and identifications. Part of the importance of the British
Cultural Studies project – as revealed so powerfully and so movingly in
John Akomfrah’s installation The Unfinished Conversation (currently in
Tate Britain) and his film The Stuart Hall Project – was to have resisted
identitarian essentialism. Instead of freezing people into chains of
already-existing equivalences, the point was to treat any articulation as
provisional and plastic. New articulations can always be created. No-one
is essentially anything. Sadly, the right act on this insight more
effectively than the left does. The bourgeois-identitarian left knows how
to propagate guilt and conduct a witch hunt, but it doesn’t know how to
make converts. But that, after all, is not the point. The aim is not to
popularise a leftist position, or to win people over to it, but to remain in a
position of elite superiority, but now with class superiority redoubled by
moral superiority too. ‘How dare you talk – it’s we who speak for those
who suffer!’
But the rejection of identitarianism can only be achieved by the re-
assertion of class. A left that does not have class at its core can only be a
liberal pressure group. Class consciousness is always double: it involves
a simultaneous knowledge of the way in which class frames and shapes
all experience, and a knowledge of the particular position that we occupy
in the class structure. It must be remembered that the aim of our
struggle is not recognition by the bourgeoisie, nor even the destruction
of the bourgeoisie itself. It is the class structure – a structure that
wounds everyone, even those who materially profit from it – that must be
destroyed. The interests of the working class are the interests of all; the
interests of the bourgeoisie are the interests of capital, which are the
interests of no-one. Our struggle must be towards the construction of a
new and surprising world, not the preservation of identities shaped and
distorted by capital.
If this seems like a forbidding and daunting task, it is. But we can start to
engage in many prefigurative activities right now. Actually, such activities
would go beyond pre-figuration – they could start a virtuous cycle, a self-
fulfilling prophecy in which bourgeois modes of subjectivity are
dismantled and a new universality starts to build itself. We need to learn,
or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing
capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t
mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must
create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of
exclusion and excommunication. We need to think very strategically
about how to use social media – always remembering that, despite the
egalitarianism claimed for social media by capital’s libidinal engineers,
that this is currently an enemy territory, dedicated to the reproduction of
capital. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t occupy the terrain and start
to use it for the purposes of producing class consciousness. We must
break out of the ‘debate’ that communicative capitalism in which capital
is endlessly cajoling us to participate in, and remember that we are
involved in a class struggle. The goal is not to ‘be’ an activist, but to aid
the working class to activate – and transform – itself. Outside the
Vampires’ Castle, anything is possible.
Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism and the

forthcoming Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and
Lost Futures (both published by Zer0 books, where he is now a
Commissioning Editor). His writing has appeared in a wide variety of
publications, including Film Quarterly, The Wire, The Guardian and Frieze.
He is Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at
Goldsmiths, University of London and a lecturer at the University of East
London.
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Tagged as: class struggle, identitarianism, posh left
{ 149 comments… read them below or add one }
automnia November 22, 2013 at 3:39 pm
Your a dick.
Reply
Ruralrighton November 22, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Your a dick.
PS intersectional feminist vampires are under your bed.
Reply
A Concerned Vlogger November 22, 2013 at 4:11 pm
im going to drown you in a var of piss
Reply
murray November 22, 2013 at 4:30 pm
“This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any

involvement in politics.”
We were close, so damn close.
Reply
charles November 28, 2013 at 4:20 pm
my dad didnt buy me the car i wanted. im sick of arseholes

like him going on about how only the ”working class” are
oppressed
Reply
John Smith March 31, 2014 at 9:05 pm
hahaha. That’s precisely what I heard when I read

murray’s comment
Reply
duras November 22, 2013 at 5:14 pm
good thinking mark! agree that we need to do something about

these liberal effete queer blood-suckers, and establish our
thousand-tweet reign … laughs …
Reply
. November 22, 2013 at 7:02 pm
pa pa?
Reply
John Bull November 22, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Interesting article. Now that these arguments are out in a public

forum, I hope these problems I’ve found in the arguments will add
something constructive to the debate.
1. The whole play of attacking left-wing critiques of bigotry that

represent queer sexualities, feminism and people of colour as
vampiric and stemming from a ‘vampire castle’ seems a bit dodgy.
In themselves, these positions are essential to creating conditions
of equality and fairness in the socialist and democratic mass
movements many of us have long been striving towards. Dismissing
hot-tempered and dramatic critiques as ‘vampiric’ not only
delegitimises a form of criticism that doesn’t play by academic
rules (isn’t shouting and harsh put-downs part of the demotic
politics of the street, about holding your own?), but it also
dehumanises their proponents. It creates a bogeyman from which
the writer and his allies emerge clean, truly “alive”. These kinds of
arguments are dangerous as well as a bit childish eh?
2. Yeah, a lot of debates on Twitter are bad-tempered, people’s
comments can be cringeworthy. Like any public debate I guess. But
to propose that the real enemy of class struggle are a few largely
well-meaning leftists on the Internet needs to be proved. What are
they largely reacting against? A consistent war against the poor
and the institutions which protect them fought by a fairly-tightknit
alliance of politicians, large businesses, police, army and media-
owners. Can the writer really claim that these activists are the real
danger to a class struggle, the parasite that sucks the life from it?
Or, if instead we thinking more strategically about creating a
genuinely political popular movement for democratic socialism,
aren’t the enemies elsewhere? Is the vampire castle really made up
of hipster Marxist academics? Or is the real bloodsucker something
far more substantial and, well, obvious?
3. Seems unqualified to dismiss the entirety of young dissidents

involved in the student struggles or leftists in postgrad study as
neo-anarchist, as if it were a single strand of dismissing the state in
their politics. There’s a major difference between the common
criticisms of the Labour party now, or of saying alongside Brand
that voting in the British elections is a waste of time, and entirely
abdicating a politics of the state. I don’t think many do this (who do
you mean exactly?) and this criticism is unfair and unsubstantiated.
And as above, to claim that young students are the enemy of class
struggle overlooks the problem of class composition and the
“proletarianization” of students, new academics, as with so many of
those in former middle-class professional positions.
4. Class as the writer presents it comes across as another identity

construction, rather than an identification. Either that, or he would
permit the bogeymen of vampires and neo-anarchists who identify
as ‘working class’ to join its forces. Either way, experiences of
‘class’ vary with even more dangerous imprecision than any identity
politics: what or who counts as working class economically, or
socially, or politically, all varies – not to mention how different age-
groups, regions, identity groups might describe their own ‘class’.
5. If the writer’s intention is to purge the left of its love of grudge

matches and in-fighting, then I’m not sure how well this succeeds,
but it’s clear that new strategic thinking is needed. But dividing
class vs. identitarianism isn’t that helpful. Laclau and Mouffe for
instance covered this territory well in ‘Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy’ and have pointed to how both can work together in a
‘chain of equivalences’, a series of democratic and socialist
movements acting in a broad, pluralistic alliance (though by no
means entirely unified). This is what I think of when I read the well-
meaning class for comradeship and solidarity in the last paragraph.
But the power of ‘class’ as binding of different social groups has
been in decline for decades, for reasons the writer and most of us
know already, and I’d suggest that new forms of identification that
can be more clearly grasped be considered.
Anyway, before fingers are pointed, I say this as someone from an

inner-city background with no money, single parent home, went to
state schools, mucked about, went to a mediocre uni, got into a lot
of debt, have worked and been on the dole, lived my adult life in
council housing etc etc., and I don’t attribute any class virtue to
this. Does it matter though, it is actually useful are these Left-
McCarthyist “which class are you really!” discussions…?
Reply
Bennie Bigins December 21, 2014 at 10:22 pm
WTL;DR
Reply
Ben April 10, 2015 at 11:54 am
I read the whole thing. I thought it was dead on, not only in
content but in tone. Its refreshing how you just say what you
have to say in the gentlest way possible, absent rhetoric like
“vampire castle”. I saw a piece similar to this recently where
the author calls for “bridge building” and then a paragraph
later suggests that the “identitarian” crowd is “caterwauling”
and they recite their lines by rote. Like, good job building
those bridges dude. Yes the in-fighting and calling out and
mockery are a problem. No we don’t solve the problem by
adding more in-fighting, calling out, and mockery
Reply
Ben April 10, 2015 at 11:56 am
(And yeah I could have found a sarcasm-free alternative

for “good job building those bridges”)
Reply
Bearcubus November 22, 2013 at 5:44 pm
Troll.
1) Troll on behalf of paid identity-politics professionals, reasserting
liberalism’s superior contemporary version of radicalism,
postmodern theoretic-anarchism, qua its distractionary retainer
function, targeting and isolating individuals and tiny networks of
socialist putative good-ol’-boys. (Underlying assumption:
postmodern theoretic-anarchists are themselves not implicated in
oppressive and repressive relations, which are voluntaristic rather
than institutionalized.)
2) Troll reasserting liberalism’s claim of monopoly powers of
recognizing and celebrating individual liberty, based on not paying
attention to history or contemporary totalitarian institutions.
3) Snide troll.
In conclusion: Personal claim to marginalized identity establishing
authority of above points.
Reply
ik November 28, 2013 at 4:00 pm
vegan post mod uni professors should be allowed to control

the left as much as labourers who oppress them by eating
cheezburgers. its called intersectionality
Reply
Ben November 22, 2013 at 6:21 pm
You should have just gone and watched ‘Catching Fire’ again.
Reply
Tom November 22, 2013 at 6:33 pm
This is some retrograde shit.
Reply
jake November 28, 2013 at 4:01 pm

go fuckyourself tom
Reply
jake November 28, 2013 at 4:15 pm
yea, so what if my parents put me through private uni, im

oppressed aswel. he has such an outdated worldview. its also
implicity sexist, and hes probably a rape apologist
Reply
mrpettigrew November 22, 2013 at 6:58 pm
boat people hate fuck
Reply
KingCole November 22, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Aren’t you yourself continuing the slave revolt that feeds the
vampires by trying to continue the socialist tradition?
Reply
Anon November 23, 2013 at 10:09 am
On the spot from beginning to end
Reply
Cautiously Pessimistic November 23, 2013 at 1:23 pm
For what it’s worth, I’ve had an attempt at replying here:

http://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/vampires-
arent-actually-real-though-class-is-a-reply-to-mark-fishers-castle-
of-bollocks/
Reply
Angela Mitropoulos November 23, 2013 at 4:13 pm

I disagree https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/6c5c9f48bf00
Reply
Kat Pincaid October 21, 2016 at 1:33 pm
Rubbish. Just evidence of what Mark was saying. Identity

politics is vacuous, and has made an absolute joke of the left.
Reply
Tsk November 23, 2013 at 7:51 pm
I thought everybody knew that Leftists were just Calvinists without

a deity, more interested in consigning others to Hell than changing
the world. As another genuine working-class iconoclast sang,
“She’s the little-est rebel/She consigns them all to Hell…”
Reply
Dorian Gray November 25, 2013 at 2:53 am
I thought everyone knew that little shut-in twerps like yourself

should keep to themselves.
Reply
Or, to put the article’s premise more simply: So many entry exams
to get into a club for a handful of remarkably unattractive,
vindictive people. Becoming a leftist under these circumstances
makes as much sense as running through traffic on a dare for the
privilege of joining a clique of failed bullies.
Reply
I can tell you’re ugly and bitter yourself.
Reply
What a biting and witty comeback.
Reply
Aaron Aarons December 2, 2013 at 4:00 pm
How do you define “leftist” and what is the alternative to

being a “leftist”? Being a supporter of imperialism and
capitalism in general?
Reply
Matthew E. Duffy January 15, 2014 at 2:06 am
join the neo-corpartists and let the tanks, deal with the
capitlaists and the libreals!
Reply
I see you were very careful to frame an ideological false

dichotomy. How utterly original.
Reply
Diego Dellaforte October 28, 2017 at 7:52 pm
Which Side Are You On?
Reply
The fact that so many commenters find it odd that the writer
privileges class identity is astonishing. That’s the whole idea. There
have been many attempts to blur class identity with other, more
cozy and illusory identities, and they didn’t end very well. Amazing,
and horrifying, that people calling themselves leftists have missed
the whole damn point so badly.
Reply
A) The problem isn’t that he privileges class, it’s that he

privileges class as an identity, and uses it in a way that has
nothing to do with actual social position. Treating a millionaire
as a working-class hero based on his accent is absolutely
useless for understanding class as a set of social relationships
that shape our lives. The fact that he’d probably fail his own
class-as-identity test just makes it funnier
B) Did you just call race and gender “cozy” and “illusory”?
Reply
Without knowing the class, racial, ethnic, national or gender

identity of a being who identifies itself as ‘Tsk’, it’s not
possible to determine the relationship between the writer’s
material position in the global economy and his or her
political position. But how is identity as a member of an
oppressed nation, as a woman, etc., more illusory than
identity as a seller of one’s labor power? And what is the
evidence that “attempts to blur class identity with other, more
[supposedly] cozy and [supposedly] illusory identities” have
“ended” worse than attempts to promote class identity, in the
narrow sense, while ignoring other identities — or, more
accurately, other aspects of class identity less narrowly
construed?
Reply
Matthew Brett November 23, 2013 at 9:35 pm
This column makes strong points that I agree with. There is too
much corrosive negativity within movements. However, I believe
that your column will only continue this cycle.
You state that it is right to question behaviour and practices of

groups and movements, and that “such questioning should take
place in an
atmosphere of comradeship and solidarity, and probably not in
public in the
first instance.”
Yet you do precisely the opposite. You publicly condemn a broad

and nebulous group of people that you stuff into the “Vampire’s
Castle.” These seem to be young
people that are forming political opinions and trying to engage in
radical politics.
Rather than doing the hard work of trying to engage with (young)
people that are developing interests in class, race and gender – you
condemn with the same bitter and toxic language that you
disapprove of.
I believe the bitter tone of this article will feed the cycle of
negativity that you are trying to resolve. I believe that it will divide
and deepen feelings of bitterness.
I hope this critique is well received. I do have other compliments

and critiques about your piece that I believe are important, but I
would like to focus on one.
Sincerely & in solidarity, Matthew Brett
Reply
A. D. Ward December 7, 2013 at 11:35 am
Matthew,
I can see why you think the author is being contradictory.

However, I think you miss his point. This “Vampire Castle”
(the academy’s Humanities ghettoes) are not producing
young radicals that are (hu)manning the barricades of social
democratic revolution. Rather, wittingly or unwittingly (I
suspect the latter,) they are producing the foot soldiers of the
Bourgeois Establishment. Call this army “The United Colors of
Bennetton,” or Thomas Müntzer’s, “Rainbow Brigade” if you
prefer the authors Christian equivalence.
In privileging the suffering of marginalized minorities (for lack

of a better word) and policing everyone’s language with such
Jacobin zeal, they serve to crush any solidarity among
democratic socialists or working-class peoples that might not
be “there yet” regarding their radical and post-modern
understandings of race, gender, and sexuality. In demonizing
folks that fail to toe the party line in their language regarding
this army’s privileged identity groups, they essentially reject
important and strong allies in creating a world where in the
planet isn’t destroyed, their isn’t massive income inequality,
and privilege is no enshrined for a few, to paraphrase Brand.
And in so doing, drive the working classes into the arms of f
not the National Front or “Tea Parties,” at least into the arms
of the Obamas and Clintons and Blairs of the political world.
The overarching point of this piece is that “Identitarians” and

their politics while seeming to be radical and revolutionary are
in reality counter-revolutionary movements and allowed to
function within establishment institutions because the
buttress existing class dynamics and make real revolution
impossible.
And none of this is to say that the “Identiarian” critiques are

invalid.
Reply
Aaron Aarons December 11, 2013 at 1:30 am
Supporting militant struggle against imperialism and

colonialism is a lot more likely to incur the wrath of
establishment institutions, and is certainly more likely to
get one put on a terrorist watch list or even imprisoned.
than is support for abstract working-class solidarity.
But I’m all for general, cross-ethnic, cross-national

working-class solidarity when it emphasizes solidarity
with those most oppressed. For example, I don’t support
solidarity with workers who complain about workers of
other nationalities taking their jobs, either through
migration or so-called “export of jobs”. In fact,
equalization of wages between workers of rich and poor
countries is a good thing, and the proper responses
include strikes and boycotts to force an increase in
wages in the poor countries, as well as struggles in the
all countries against various forms of “rent”.
Reply
Fred Welfare December 11, 2013 at 4:20 am
At the risk of seeming naive, an objective diagnosis

would indicate that local police are monitoring a
significant number of interactions and movements;
state and federal police agencies are monitoring
most economic transactions and cyber-actions.
Their reactionary response to behaviors that cross
gender-lines, class-lines, and color bars as well as
their general delimitation or hysterical reaction to
theoretical labor proves that the intersectional
trifecta or bias is productive for the capitalists and
the state. It does seem, from their viewpoint or
belief system if I can take it, that it improves their
fitness. There is the view from the legal
perspective which I think these practices violate,
but these intersectional practices persist at ever
increasing rates. It’s segregation, segregation, and
isolation with a dose of spite.
Reply
Aric June 9, 2017 at 7:35 pm
“For example, I don’t support solidarity with

workers who complain about workers of other
nationalities taking their jobs, either through
migration or so-called “export of jobs”. In fact,
equalization of wages between workers of rich and
poor countries is a good thing, and the proper
responses include strikes and boycotts to force an
increase in wages in the poor countries, as well as
struggles in the all countries against various forms
of “rent”.”
But this is the entire point, you see. If you don’t

recognize the false conscious that prevades so
many lays of society (and is in fact inescapable)
and act as if everyone needs to be a perfect
comrade all the time, how will we ever recruit and
radicalize? In our day and age, some ought to
know better, but I’m perfectly happy to patiently
explain in a comradely fashion why it’s
disrespectful, or even better yet, give an
alternative explanation of why class society is so
fucked up in a particular way while connecting
struggles.
Reply
Jennifer Armstrong November 23, 2013 at 11:07 pm
A very nice, well-articulated and insightful article that needs to be

spread.
Reply
Mike Ballard November 23, 2013 at 11:20 pm
What is radical liberalism?
Radical liberals are the non-revolutionary left. They sometimes call

themselves Greens, labor, liberal, socialist, communist, anarchist or
some ideological subset of human identity; but they never advocate
for social revolution. As a plus, many radical liberals advocate
reforms of the system of wage labour which give some of the
collective product of labour, including some labour time, back to the
producers of the wealth of nations. Sometimes radical liberals even
advocate for national liberation. Specifically though, radical liberals
never advocate for a change in the mode of production and
exchange.
Marx and Engels were social revolutionaries who advocated the

abolition of the wage system, common ownership of the collective
product of labour and production of wealth for use, with its
distribution based on need e.g. communism. The defining
characteristics of a social revolution are rooted in a change in the
mode of production and exchange. Radical liberals content
themselves with advocating reforms of the rule of Capital; but never
the total obliteration of Capital as a social relation. They typically
advocate a fair wage system with social justice and usually call it,
‘being realistic’. With their political pragmatism in hand, they
barrack for good rulers to replace evil rulers and,
never for a free association of producers, democratically managing
the whole the collective product of labour. The self-described
anarchists and Communists amongst them sometimes advocate for
an equality of wages, not the abolition of the wage system. Some
radical liberals calling themselves libertarian socialists advocate for
worker owned cooperatives to replace corporations with the aim of
restoring fairness and social justice to the marketplace for
commodities through genuine competition between enterprises of
wage-slaves engaged in self-management, not an end to
commodity production and sale and distribution of socially owned
use-values on the basis of need.
Radical liberalism dominates political, social and cultural discourse

on the left. With their identity politics in hand, they dream of ending
racism, sexism, ageism, classism etc. while promoting
environmentalism to achieve social justice under the rule of Capital.
For radical liberals, changing the mode of production is an out
dated way to approach social justice, one which smacks of
bureaucratic State socialism.
Radical liberals may talk of revolution; but they haven’t got a clue
about what a social revolution from class dominated to classless
society would entail in terms of sublating the capitalist mode of
production, although many of the more reactionary amongst them
advocate a return to pre-capitalist modes of production. Radical
liberals do not realise that the commodity itself is the building block
of class ruled society. As history of human social relations has
demonstrated, the commodity undermines any attempt to maintain
equal political power between all men and women.
Social justice will never be achieved under the rule of Capital.

Capital is inherently a system of generalised commodity production
with unequal political power between men and women of differing
classes and even within those classes, as individuals within classes
are stratified with varying dynamics of dominance and submission.
Social justice means equal political power between ALL men and
women or it remains an meaningless abstraction. Thus, the search
for social justice via radical liberalism remains a mirage, an echo
from the last stages of philosophical Idealism, the epoch of the
revolutionary bourgeoisie.
I have met a lot of nice Stalinists, Trotskyists and anarchists but,

I’m not one of them.
Reply
Aaron Aarons November 26, 2013 at 2:41 pm
So, until we have achieved full social justice via the abolition
of commodity production, we shouldn’t be fighting capital’s
destruction of the planet and its inhabitants, or the special
oppression of women, people of color, et al.?
Sounds like just an ‘ultra’ version of white male imperialist-

nation leftism to me!
Reply
Mike Ballard November 26, 2013 at 11:41 pm
Right. That’s what I said. Roll over and play dead, just
like a ‘white male imperialist-nation’ leftist always
advises.
What I wrote was,”Radical liberals content themselves

with advocating reforms of the rule of Capital; but never
the total obliteration of Capital as a social relation.”
Perhaps it’s time for radical liberals to see a strategic
goal beyond the rule of Capital, to wit:common
ownership of the collective product of labour in a society
where equal political power between all men and women
is the norm.
You see Aaron, contra Thatcher’s TINA, there is an

alternative and that alternative should become part of
the left’s conscious praxis. Organising classwide unity
would at the same time necessitate union between men
and women producers, between members of the human
race of various hues, cultures, geographical locations
and so on. Tactics based on dividing the human race
into competing identities would only, indeed, is only
serving the interests of those who wish to continue to
rule us within the wage system. They would never
eventuate in the establishment of the strategic goal:
abolition of the wage system, production of wealth
based on our own assessments of use while living in
harmony with nature. Production of wealth to meet our
needs, not the needs of a tiny ruling class to rule us by
appropriating the lion’s share of what we produce.
Reply
If you want to promote working-class unity across

race, gender, national, etc., lines, you should be
organizing the most privileged workers to fight
openly in the interests of the most oppressed. For
example, how about organizing among U.S. citizen
workers to actively oppose any repression or
discrimination against non-citizens, documented
or not? And, how about getting U.S. workers,
instead of opposing the “export of jobs”, to
actively, materially, support the workers who
produce the imported raw material and products
they process or consume in fighting to improve
their conditions?
Reply
Mike Ballard November 28, 2013 at 12:49

am
Getting all workers, whatever their perceived

race or actual gender, to grasp the
importance of abolishing the wage system
and establishing common ownership of the
collective product of their labour is my focus,
Aaron. I think that’s the the most effective
way for you and I and all class conscious
workers to spend our political time under the
rule of Capital. Our solidarity as a class
should know no national borders. That has
been my stance and praxis since I was in my
20s.
Reply
Aaron Aarons November 29, 2013 at

3:04 pm
“Our solidarity as a class should know

no national borders.”
What would you think of a wealthy

white woman who proclaimed, “our
solidarity as women should know no
national [or class or race] borders”
while refusing to deal with the
particular problems of working-class
women?
Reply
Mike Ballard November 30, 2013
at 12:36 am
I’d think she’s barking up the

wrong tree, if she thinks women
will ever be liberated within the
political-economy of class
dominated society. Unequal
political power between men and
women will never serve to liberate
the human race, no matter which
class dominate political State they
live within.
The particular problems of

working class women can be
modified under the rule of Capital
e.g. wages, working conditions
through the praxis of class union,
but the strategic goal of
abolishing classes is the only way
to achieve emancipation. This is a
position your hypothetical wealthy
woman (with less melanin than
Oprah) would probably not find to
be in her class interest.
Reply
Aaron Aarons November

30, 2013 at 2:51 am
You are not dealing with the

point I was making with this
analogy. My hypothetical
‘wealthy white woman’
would have many options for
showing solidarity with poor,
working-class and/or non-
white women in their
concrete struggles, and her
failure to do so would make
her abstract declarations of
‘solidarity’ meaningless —
or worse, if she tried to use
such ‘feminist solidarity’ as
a weapon against working-
class women uniting with
men in working-class
struggle or ‘third-world’
women uniting with men in
anti-imperialist struggle.
And her position wouldn’t be
any better if she argued,
perhaps correctly, that the
abolition of patriarchy would
end the special oppressions
of workers and people of
color.
Reply
Mike Ballard
December 2, 2013 at 3:55
am
I think that is my point.

Without classwide
solidarity for social
ownership of the
collective product of
labour, mere assertion
of identity results in
‘radical liberalism’ and
a loss for emancipation
from the rule of
Capital. My point is
that workers, whatever
they prefer to describe
themselves as being
their individual
identity, need to unite
as a class, not divide
themselves and fight
and guilt trip each
other as to which of
them is the most
oppressed identity.
Reply
Aaron Aarons
December 2, 2013 at
8:49 am
It is not a
question of
identity but of
the actual
position of
different groups
of workers in the
global economy.
The super-
exploitation of
some groups of
workers,
particularly,
those in neo-
colonies, would
be a fact even in
the unlikely event
that those
workers
somehow failed
to notice it. But,
just as it is a lot
easier for a white
person to say
that “I don’t
notice race” and
believe it than it
is for a person of
color, it is a lot
easier for
imperialist-nation
workers to be
blind to the
differences
between them
and “third world
workers” than it
is for the latter to
not notice it.
I think that old

song with the line
“You’ll get pie in
the sky when you
die.” needs to be
changed, with
first-world
workers now
singing to the
rest of the
working class,
“You’ll get an
equal share of
the pie when the
global working
class finally
unites to
overthrow
capital, but trying
to do anything
about global
inequality before
that happens is
divisive.”
A D Ward December 7, 2013 at

11:52 am
This is the problem, you see the

call for class solidarity as an
equivalent category to sex,
gender, race, when it is an all
encompassing totality. You see,
ALL PEOPLE are included under
“class” and “class” does not exist
as a separate and equal category
to sex, gender, and race.
A “black, gay, Christian, trans-

woman,” is just as exploited by
the neoliberal paradigm as
whatever boogeyman identity you
want to stack up against her.
The point is that the problem is
Capital, which is founded on a
desire to control others, and the
solution to those problems are
only going to stop when we agree
that we are all in this together. As
cliched as that may be.
We should be lumping, not

splitting.
Reply
Fred Welfare December 7,

2013 at 9:26 pm
Class is an economic term

and usually refers to a
person’s income or wealth.
If we are oriented towards
both a growth mentality and
social change, where
qualitative improvements in
living conditions for
everyone accompany a
certain degree of equal
respect, then the ideological
and the political have to be
considered simultaneously
with the economic
problematic. One approach
to this was the intersectional
“trifecta” of race-sex-class
because we feel these
attributes but working out
the legal technicalities, the
policy statements, and
modes of effective activity is
more complex that simply
identifying a set of
contradictions. These
contradictions, as many
posters have pointed out,
are overlays or substitutions
for more serious
contradictions. Reigning in
the filthy rich, even figuring
out exactly how they exploit
(surplus value indeed) in
particular is the real
detective work. Profit via
surplus value is only one of
the means, far deeper and
more disastrous is the
ownership of rental property
and the control over the
mortgage of property, also,
there is the question of
interest, a thorny and
complicated problem which
is also related to taxation. It
is cute to think in terms of
wiping out the given system
but it is not feasible. The
question is whether reform
is better or worse than
replacement.
Reply
Pavel December 8,
2013 at 5:55 am
Class refers to one’s

relation to the means
of production and not
to how much income
one has, differently to
how it is viewed by
radical liberals. That, I
think, explains the
difference between the
marxist and the radical
liberal view of
‘intersectionality’ and
identity politics more
generally.
Reply
Fred Welfare
December 9, 2013 at
7:04 am
I understand that
a Marxist view
uses the term
‘class as relation
to the means of
production’ as an
abstract
statement since
the means of
production refers
to forms of
technology of
which there are
many but more
incisively, as you
mention the
distinction
between liberals
and marxists,
within the
relations of
production, there
are many
differentiations of
role and group.
In order for a
unity of the
working class to
emerge, several
contradictory
relations would
have to
simultaneously
come to a head.
Also, regarding this:
What I [MB] wrote was,”Radical liberals

content themselves with advocating
reforms of the rule of Capital; but never
the total obliteration of Capital as a
social relation.
Does that mean that most militant trade unionists,

or those involved in other forms of struggle over
wages and working conditions, are “radical
liberals”?
Reply
Is race one or many when race is not the

substitution for a certain class level? The
race issue begins historically in the relation
of inferior tribes to colonial powers as seen
during the early empires: Egyptian, Persian,
Greek, and Roman and then through the rise
of Western Culture. Race is often understood
not a biological differences, a vulgar
prejudice, but as cultural difference.
Although cultural difference may refer to
weaponry or other technology, or to
knowledge, the issue strikes home at the
level of lineage and family where the conflict
over race prejudice and intermarriage is most
violent.
Reply
Tim Holmes November 24, 2013 at 1:46 am
1. I think this could have been said in about a third of the space
and without the jargon. Would make a much better read – because
there’s a BIG kernel of truth in here – but it’s obscured by
theorising here, in my view. I’d be interested to see how you’d write
it up for a tabloid-reading audience. And I mean that quite
seriously. Give it a go. Because you make some really important
points.
2. You seem to me to be confusing “the ruling class” and “posh

people”. The two are not the same, any more than trustafarians are
the same as the FTSE 500.
3. Anarchists have spurred groups like Climate Camp, UK Uncut,
Plane Stupid – they’re out there “getting their hands dirty” all the
time, and are always willing to work with sympathetic insiders, or
use the mainstream media. There is, yes, a nay-saying fringe in
self-imposed exile, but that’s not the whole story, not by a long
shot. I wouldn’t even regard it as the mainstream of the movement.
4. But even then, “outsiders” matter, often a lot. The Labour Party
didn’t create the welfare state on its own: it did so because
organised popular movements forced it to.
Reply
groovey post left dude November 28, 2013 at 4:22 pm
I got my hands dirty at Climate Camp during my gap year. I

work in hedgefunds now but i feel pretty qualified to speak of
hardship.
Reply
Ben April 10, 2015 at 12:10 pm
^ Thats interesting how you “know” all about a stranger

on the internet, absent any actual evidence
Reply
Jason November 24, 2013 at 9:47 am
None of what you write is untrue, but you need to be honest and go
the whole way. Calling the intersectionalists, for that is who you
mean even though they are not named, “petit-bourgeois” doesn’t
entirely do justice to what’s going on here. I suspect you just think
calling someone middle class is the ultimate insult.
Moreover, coming up with cutsey phrases like “vampire castle” isn’t

going to address the problem any better than saying “capitalist
realism” allowed you to dodge the reality that we do need economic
growth, something the left has been dissembling about for
decades. There is a reason the left has absolutely no purchase in
society and it’s not that people have had their minds bent out of
shape by “neo-liberalism”. It’s that it doesn’t, and is incapable of,
speaking to ordinary people’e experiences.
As someone else here said: Leftists are just Calvinists without a
deity, more interested in consigning others to Hell than changing
the world.
Reply
Yeah, that was you who said that, posting under another
name. It’s very sad and weird that you think your opinions
come from a position of strength or have any impact on the
world, and yet to find someone to agree with them, you have
to exhibit signs of mental illness and pretend to be two people
at once.
Reply
Various sections of the amorphous phenomenon referred to

as “the left” have done a fairly good job of “speaking to
ordinary people’e experiences”, which is why imperialist
agencies, ranging from militaries to counter-intelligence
agencies to media conglomerates have spent many trillions of
dollars to defeat “the left”, sometimes by mass propaganda,
sometimes by mass murder, mostly by something in between,
including selective assassination.
Of course, if you mean by “ordinary people”, white men, you’re

probably right.
Reply
joe November 28, 2013 at 4:25 pm
Agree 100% Jason. These white male oppressors need to

stop calling us ”middle class” every we time we try to make
them face up to their privilage.
Reply

Insofar as the labor unions oppose governmental intervention
in the form of management, wouldn’t it seem obvious that
they would ally themselves with left liberals, libertarians, who
desire extremely limited government as opposed to the
welfare state?
Reply
Libertarians are out there saying that all sorts of labor

laws should be repealed – minimum wage, child labor,
safety standards, you name it. Good luck finding a labor
union that opposes those government “intrusions”
Reply
Seventeen Eighty-Nine November 24, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Very good article.
Though the way Mark Fisher treats class here is also somewhat
essentialist (as if the class background of any given individual is the
relevant point!). This can tend to reproduce the identitarian frame
he rightly critiques, and obscures the *political* character of class
– which is surely what matters, for anyone interested in social
transformation.
Reply
BigDave November 24, 2013 at 12:45 pm
This is an article that needed writing. It reflects what I’ve thought

about a proportion of my so-called comrades on the left for the
best part of 40 years. If a genuine class fighter is accused by the
state of murder, or a serious but gender/race/etc-neutral crime, we
all rally round and say that he/she was fitted up. Make the charge
rape, domestic violence, racism, etc., and there is a whole section
of the left that assumes guilt, and continues to do so, in a style that
would disgrace even The Sun or The Daily Mail, long after charges
have been dropped or the person has been acquitted.
I’ve been rounded on by the bullies simply for agreeing with a

quote about an industrial dispute, whose origin was one such
person, a genuine class-fighter who has achieved pariah status in
the “Vampires Castle”, on the basis of unproven allegations from
one person. At the time I didn’t even know who he was, and there
was nothing wrong with the quote that someone else had lifted
from him.
Reply
And what if they’re not accused by the state? What if they’re

accused by another person, or even another genuine class
fighter? I suppose she was probably just making it up?
Reply
It says “unproven allegations by one PERSON”.
Reply
Lola November 24, 2013 at 10:37 pm
Yeah, it’s not often “the state” is the sole accuser is it.
There’s usually a victim, and plenty of lefties who are
quick to judge or accuse them of lying in case it shatters
their fragile network. The left is no better than the right
or the state when it comes to letting down victims of
domestic violence.
Even when there’s photographic evidence and a number

of victims and witnesses they often won’t believe it.
Reply
How about giving us some examples where there

was “photographic evidence and a number of
victims and witnesses” and we — the left, and not
just loyal members of some bureaucratic group —
wouldn’t believe it.
Reply
Dee November 25, 2013 at 1:32 pm
I’m a genuine class fighter, too. Can I not speak out against
sexism, racism, as it arises for me?
Women who report incidences of rape and violence, should be

believed and and supported. A left that doesn’t do so, are no
comrades of mine.
Reply
Yes, you can and you must speak out against sexism,
racism. I also agree that if a woman (or a man for that
matter) speaks out against rape and/or violence
(especially in a relationship), they should be supported,
and yes, it should be pursued on the basis that you
believe what they are saying. However, if it is not proved,
you shouldn’t presume to be judge, jury and executioner.
I was verbally abused by my ex for years. It never spilled
over into physical violence but it did have a bad effect
on me. There were occasions when I shouted back, and
she challenged me to hit her. I never did of course. It is
usually, but not always, the male who is the perpetrator,
but you can’t assume guilt in every case on the basis of
a statistic.
Reply
Dee November 26, 2013 at 11:15 am
How do you prove rape then, Big Dave?
Reply
I wouldn’t know. How do you assume who is

guilty in the absence of proof? No-one said
it’s easy.
Reply
Dee November 26, 2013 at 2:30 pm
If a woman says she was raped, the

chances are she was. In fact, rape is
under reported.
Reply
Aaron Aarons November 26,

2013 at 2:49 pm
Yes, in the great majority of cases

where a woman alleges rape, she
is telling the truth. But what
actions can or cannot justifiably
be taken against the alleged
rapist on that probabilistic basis?
Reply
By investigating, remember Mao’s famous

saying, “If you do not investigate, no one will
listen to you.”
Reply
Verbal abuse is at least material that can be used

to form a claim against the abuser. What about
cases of psychological abuse or emotional abuse
in which the abuser may use the old standby, “it’s
all in your head.” The use of mind to affect others
moods, capabilities and feelings is all too human.
The internal thinking of persons is distinct from
their speech usage. Often a person can determine
that another is abusing them emotionally or
psychologically but can only take a defensive or
counter-offensive position towards that source. To
claim that these intuitions are assumptions
borders on denial or autism.
Reply
I agree but the subterranean problem is when “they

think” that someone has done something for which no
evidence is profferred and on that basis employ
intersectional forms of identity discrimination. The
judicial problem of establishing an event and
prosecuting for the law is purely empirical and by case,
but the more generalized action form of using a false
belief to harass others is devious formal rationality.
Reply
Doug Tarnopol November 24, 2013 at 1:48 pm
A brilliant and much-needed essay. I have shared it with everyone I

know, which happens to include, just so you know, Noam Chomsky
and Norm Finkelstein. Don’t mean to name-drop; just wanted to let
you know they will have seen it. And I’m sure they will much
appreciate it, as did I. Well done!
Reply
I shared your comment with Marx and Jesus. Don’t mean to

name-drop; just wanted to let you know they will have seen it.
Reply
Doug Tarnopol November 25, 2013 at 1:25 pm
Looks like someone missed the point of the essay.
Reply

No, I got the point loud and clear. And I reject it
utterly.
Reply
Noam Chomsky November 29, 2013 at 2:27 pm
I read it and i thought it was shite, ya bellend.
Reply
John Halle November 24, 2013 at 2:49 pm
I appreciated this and strongly agree with its central point-with

maybe a few small qualifications. I should say that I was a bit
disconcerted by the tone which implies that the author is a voice in
the wilderness in making these arguments. In particular, the notion
that the multiculturalist agenda is not only not hostile to but
entirely consistent with neoliberalism has been a staple of Adolph
Reed’s critique for two decades. Walter Benn Michaels’s The
Trouble with Diversity also lays out the argument well, as does
Barbara and Karen Fields Racecraft (though a bit too obscurely for
my tastes). I’ll also mention my take downs of diversity pimps MH
Perry and Tim Wise as application of the basic theory, the former
published here at North Star the latter at Doug Henwood’s Left
Business Observer blog.
Reply
neo-anarchist? November 24, 2013 at 4:16 pm
This is a great piece. I am a little bit disconcerted by your

comments on ‘neo-anarchists’ though. In short, it looks like – but I
hope you’ll tell me this is not what you really meant – you are
saying that the only viable strategy is to enter parliament or work
through established media and political organizations… everything
else is ‘purism’ and ‘fatalism’. The history of the anarchist
movement – as well as the best part of the socialist and communist
movement – shows us the opposite: it is possible to change the
world without sitting in parliament. Surprisingly enough that is
what Russel Brand rightly pointed out in his interview with Paxman:
whatever the history of the Labour Party, it is today an integral part
of ‘an indifferent system that really just administrates for large
corporations and ignores the population that it was voted in to
serve’. Obviously there are forms of political engagement which are
meaningful and powerful even if they refuse the possibility of
changing the labour party or the corporate media ‘from within’. It is
possible to attempt something like that – and it seems to be the
strategy you seems to argue for – but attacking comrades who
work through other forms of resistance… well it sounds like the
Vampires’ Castle.
Reply
OllieS November 24, 2013 at 5:54 pm
Because Alan Sugar is from a working-class background, is he

working-class? Of course he isn’t, but you’d think that after reading
the laughable idea of class in this post. Class is relationship to the
means of production, not your background or accent (although the
author is apparently unaware that Brand went to Hockerill College,
one of the best schools in the country, in a wealthy area).
The practical politics of this post are extremely boring; I’ve heard it
all before. ‘Class’ is important, even if these *great leaders* of our
class aren’t at all interested in challenging racism or sexism. The
idea that the ‘vampire’ left is a liberal pressure group, but the
People’s Assembly isn’t, is laughable.
And really, the ‘neo-anarchists’ identified here consist only of about

50 people. To act as if they’re some dominant trend which is the
main thing holding the left back is again, laughable.
Reply
Jessica November 24, 2013 at 8:00 pm
He doesn’t mention “great leaders”. Who is a racist or sexist?

You keep saying laughable. Ollie, you live off rent from your
tenants.
Reply
Jessica November 24, 2013 at 8:03 pm
Brand may not be working class in his relation to the

means of production, but in the Paxman interview he
was condescended to because he doesn’t speak
‘properly’. There is such a thing as cultural capital. Your
comments are typical of posh white guys who heap shit
on people of identical background hoping it won’t stick
to themselves. Amazing.
Reply
Well said, Jessica. There’s a lot of that going

around.
Reply
Aaron Aarons November 29, 2013 at 5:39 am
And how Brand’s being looked down upon because

of his accent fundamentally different from another
person’s being looked down upon because of their
darker skin color or their having a vagina?
Reply
gregoryabutler November 24, 2013 at 11:58 pm
So only straight White males are “working class” and Black, Asian,
women and gay workers (in other words, the MAJORITY of the
working class) are “vampires” if we dare to raise our demands?
Whatever, dude
Basically, this nimrod wants straight White male national socialism

– call it “Whitemanism” for short.
Reply
This essay is as drudgingly joyless and self-centered as the shit it

condemns and by the end of writing it you should have realized it
was ready for the bin. I do commend your effort but you put it
toward the wrong thing.
Reply
uncle ishtar November 25, 2013 at 8:33 am
My response http://notjusttheminutiae.tumblr.com
/post/67991755129/k-punk-and-the-vampires-castle
Reply
Slothrop November 25, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Great piece. Particularly this:
“The Vampires’ Castle feeds on the energy and anxieties and

vulnerabilities of young students, but most of all it lives by
converting the suffering of particular groups – the more ‘marginal’
the better – into academic capital. The most lauded figures in the
Vampires’ Castle are those who have spotted a new market in
suffering – those who can find a group more oppressed and
subjugated than any previously exploited will find themselves
promoted through the ranks very quickly”.
Seen this first hand over the past few years. Cynical and careerist
“politics”.
Reply
Adam November 25, 2013 at 5:19 pm
I found this to be quite enjoyable as someone who is avowedly

liberal rather than “of the Left”.
As a white male who is relatively privileged in economic and social

capital, I feel like I have a very hard time these days even getting to
the part in the argument wherein I advocate non-Revolutionary
progressive tax reform, shareholder participation changes in
corporate governance, modest trade union re-strengthening, neo-
liberal free-trade agreements with better environmental, labor, and
corruption oversight, and the rest of the cavalcade of bourgeois
horrors that I think make for a better future than the one offered by
the revolutionary Left.
Somehow it all becomes about my right or authority to speak on

whatever issue it is that sparked the conversation. Other people
who share similar genetic or historic features to me just don’t seem
to have deposited enough into collective oppression credit
accounts that I can draw from to allow me to unmute myself.
Now, I also think, along with some of the other commenters here,
that Fisher is constructing class in a way that is way too similar to
the way that he criticizes other identity features being constructed.
But still, I mean, jeez, how is anybody supposed to figure out that I
really *am* an opponent of the general Socialist program — and a
dissident of the dialectical ideas and theories that underpin it — if
they can’t stop gawking at my oppressive Y chromosome and my
oppressive skin color and my oppressive heterosexual predilections
long enough to hear it?
Reply
I have no doubt that you are “an opponent of the general

Socialist program”, and the fact that you have, due to your
various privileges, a material interest in opposing
fundamental change is perfectly consistent with that. Given
that consistency between your material privileges and your
politics, I have no interest in listening to you lecture on what’s
wrong with “the general Socialist program”. Maybe you
should join a privileged white men’s support group, where you
can share your laments about not being listened to.
Reply
Adam December 2, 2013 at 8:05 pm
Hi Aaron,
Apologies if I wrote that in a way that muddled my

argument a bit. I did not mean to imply that it’s
everyone’s duty to accept as valid or useful my values,
premises, analytic perspective on leftist social
movements, etc. Of course that would be great — I think
it’s good for people to listen to their opponents on an
issue, even when the gulf is yawning. But all sorts of
people on any number of issues tune out or dismiss the
arguments of those whose fundamental interests or
desires are sharply at odds with their own, and Fisher’s
post here was not really taking issue with that. In fact,
he doubles down on the presence or absence of a
Marxian class consciousness as a divider that can
prevent meaningful alliances from being formed across
it.
What I did mean to say, and what I think you reinforced

with your reply, is that there needs to be at least some
significant, substantive ideological or political difference
triggering that sort of dismissal. In this case (at least I
hope), it is not my privileges themselves but rather my
politics, which happen to be “consistent” with what you
see as my class interest, that makes me not worth
listening to. Hopefully your having “no doubt” about my
opposition to revolutionary Socialism stems from the
fact that I said so up front and not from you making
assumptions based on my background.
There are going to be a diversity of opinions, even within

the revolutionary or liberation Left, about who can be an
ally on what issue or who should be heard on what
issue. You might think my views on economic structure
and class preclude me from being a good or interesting
voice when it comes to, say, gender/sex equality or anti-
racism. Others might disagree, either by being more
generally open or by saying that some part of, say, your
stance on gender precludes you from being a good or
interesting economic revolutionary.
Whether such ideology-based dismissals of people’s

voices is good or bad is an argument for another day. I
think the point at issue here is whether, at a bare
minimum, the dismissals should be based on actual,
explicit ideological or political differences or whether
they can properly be made based on little more than
snap inferences drawn from someone’s body type, skin
color, parents’ bank account, etc. The latter view isn’t, I
think, good for any movement or society in general. And
when the only way to avoid that kind of dismissal is to
engage in what Fisher here has identified as a set of
quite arbitrary and treacherous acts of performance
under the shifting banner of “privilege checking”, that’s
really no remedy to the problem at all.
Reply
KC Halas November 25, 2013 at 11:37 pm

Stop considering and disappear with your ill gotten gains, proffered
by graft and corruption by your beloved corporate fraudsters.
Reply
MyMoontime November 26, 2013 at 2:21 pm
Thank God I got out of leftist shit while I still have my youth. It ain’t
worth it. Nothing is worth this level of self-denial and flagellation
and moral hygiene. They want to confiscate your drugs and porn,
and they aren’t even giving you an afterlife in exchange.
Reply
Being anonymous means never having to say you’re sorry.
Reply
It means never being doxxed by SJWs who try to get you

fired for saying something they don’t approve of (or
also, say, wearing a shirt that doesn’t meet their
approval).
Reply
Yeah the left wants to take away your drugs and your porn.
Thats super accurate.
Reply
xTrotskyx_1990 November 26, 2013 at 3:00 pm
What a shock it must be to Mark Fisher to receive a series of

excoriations in the manner that he describes in his article. As far as
I can understand, there’s a difference between ‘essentialising’ and
merely ‘categorising’: without the latter, we cannot communicate
ideas. I also can’t find the part where he suggest that we should
ignore or marginalise gender or race, I hope that someone can help
me.
Reply
anechoic November 26, 2013 at 3:10 pm
this article shows why most people on the left continually fall for
the same tricks played on them by the elite class while many of the
comments below reflect why the left will continue swim in it’s own
waste ad infinitum – great article! :)
Reply
Michael Odom November 26, 2013 at 9:06 pm
Agreed. Mostly. The draining and cowing effects (the “vampire”

aspect) of judgmental/ moralizing identity politics has served the
bourgeoisie well in dividing and deflating working class advocacy.
Minorities, even the poorest, who want nothing but to get rich by
exploiting others are their own enemies and everyone else’s. The
black woman on welfare has more interests in common with the
homeless white male than she has with the child of privilege born in
dark skin. As much as we do not help in dropping the battles
against racism & sexism, it is a poor strategy to turn the poor
against one another when we could be pointing to their more
essential (a word that also means ‘extremely important’)
similarities.
Reply
Hmmm... November 30, 2013 at 10:51 pm
What about a black women with wealthy parents who has

ended up living on benefits because her parents don’t actually
support her financially?
Reply
“And one of the things that was clarified for me was the way in
which, in recent years, so much of the self-styled ‘left’ has
suppressed the question of class.”
One of the things that is constantly clarified for me, and

presumably even more for those who are not white, male
beneficiaries of imperialist-county citizenship, is how most of the
left in imperialist countries has, for over a century, suppressed the
recognition of the massive privileges accruing to imperialist-county
citizens, especially but not only white male ones, in the
international exploitation of labor and looting of nature. It’s
meaningless to talk about ‘class’ if your concept of class can’t
distinguish between a Bangladeshi garment worker making
US$0.25 an hour and a homeowner in Britain or the U.S. making
over US$25 an hour. The latter may not be entirely secure, but it is
an insecurity shared with the petty bourgeoisie in general.
Reply
Andrew Coates November 27, 2013 at 12:42 pm
As one of the people who helped organise the Ipswich meeting of

the Suffolk People’s Assembly that mark came to I’d like to say how
much his comments have cheered me up. “One of the things that
broke me out of this depressive stupor was going to the People’s
Assembly in Ipswich, near where I live.”
“What actually happened at the Assembly in Ipswich was very

different to this caricature. The first half of the evening –
culminating in a rousing speech by Owen Jones – was certainly led
by the top-table speakers.
But the second half of the meeting saw working class activists from
all over Suffolk talking to each other, supporting one another,
sharing experiences and strategies. Far from being another
example of hierarchical leftism, the People’s Assembly was an
example of how the vertical can be combined with the
horizonta….The atmosphere was anti-racist and anti-sexist, but
refreshingly free of the paralysing feeling of guilt and suspicion
which hangs over left-wing twitter like an acrid, stifling fog.”
This has made my day, and my comrades will be informed

immediately (I missed this earlier when skimming North Star).
We are a *real* “People’s Assembly”!
Reply
jason November 28, 2013 at 4:06 pm
vegan academics are oppressed by homeless people who eat

burgers, its called internationality you fuckwit
Reply
Steve December 3, 2013 at 3:34 am
Congratulations Mark, one of the best articles I’ve read in a fair

while. Pretty much every week bring another piece of fraudulent
academy dross that confirms the drift of your arguments, whether
it’s the shoal of “Lily Allen is a racist” garbage that gummed up
twitter taking the heat off Tommy Robinson for a few days, or this
past weekend’s masterpiece from the New Statesman “Movember is
racist”, which has been widely re-posted on sporting
messageboards across Britain, making everyone with politics
slightly to the left of Ed Miliband’s look like total clowns. Ellen
Mieksins Wood wrote a superb take-down of identity politics around
20 years ago, drawing on her experience of American politics that
lacked the unifying force of a progressive left social democratic
project. And it’s no coincidence that the defeatism enshrined in that
curious ragbag mix of anarchism and liberalism you describe has
advanced in the UK thanks to New Labour nearly wiping out the
Labour left here. But fair play to the likes of the People’s Assembly
and Owen Jones, they are keeping hope alive. And Russell Brand
does have that threatening trajectory from mainstream to left
politics that so worried the establishment when Tony Benn started
going off-message in the late-60s. I also remain optimistic because
I remember the huge impact the likes of Livingstone’s GLC made at
the time – for all the social media hot air from the gurus of
intersectionalism, it was this labour movement project in the 1980s
that did electrifying things to advance the interests of feminism, the
capital’s black and Irish communities and LGBT activists – and
remains an inspiration for political alliances to aspire to even now
for the left.
Reply
Most of the article by Fisher discusses identity as an overlay on

more foundational issues. For example, the use of the term, petit-
bourgeios, is undefined and the function of this strata is unclear as
if it always has the same purpose regardless of task: it is
undifferentiated as used by this author. There is the suspicion that
identity politics and the attendant guilt-induction has no cause. So,
what is it the effect of? Then, in closing, class structure is
presented as the culprit entity. Class structure must be ended. The
sense here is that the mode of production and reproduction IS the
class structure and not that capitalism is a particular mode, a mode
of production that is exploitative, deceitful, and oppressive. What
we need to see is how the current mode of production, capitalism,
in all of its effects, is contrasted by the next historical step(s) which
eliminates the exploitation. Our species being and our labor power
do not somehow vanish when the mode of production changes. The
issue is how it should change: how should we reproduce and how
should careers proceed. The labor movement posits unions that
graduate the individual through the occupational system and this
usually works despite rigidities, but the labor union concept has not
been implemented fully and there are several sectors of the society
in which the concept of labor union takes on wholly different
meanings: a trade union is not an academic union is not a cashiers’
union. Is society to be rationalized as a series of occupational paths
regulated by union procedures? Anyway, there is no comparative
parallel for species reproduction. Sexual reproduction is entirely
unrationalized and until this sphere of interaction is freed from
government and religious intervention, freedom as a concept will
never be realized. The absence of a rationalization of sexual
reproduction is a glaring gap that is secretly controlled by political
power, money, and “persuasion.” The hidden side of identity of each
person is related to their relation to parent and offspring which is
today a hodge-podge of competing unknown lineages controlled by
information operations from the state and religion. The description
of identity politics or conflicts as phenomena does not address its
cause or structure.
Reply
Will Shetterly December 7, 2013 at 4:45 am
Anyone who doubts the bourgeois roots of identitarianism only has

to look into its history. It was promoted by liberal academics like
Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw, people who were far more
interested in being part of capitalism’s upper class than promoting
an alternative.
Reply
One of the things that makes Fisher’s polemic worthless on the face
of it is the lack of any concrete, specific examples of what he is
criticizing. He not only gives no quotes and no names, but he
doesn’t even give a substantial paraphrase of the ideas he is
attacking.
Reply
Fisher seems to be criticizing what he calls the moralizing left which

might be catholic or religion-obsessed persons (deeply deceived by
ideological propaganda) and who may also be anti-communist and
anti-socialist (against the welfare state and politicians). These
types of people not only attempt to make others feel guilty and
miserable but narrow down their experience to individuals only
without any awareness of class. Fisher used the terms class
obfuscation and class privilege. Their specific modus operandi
seems to be condemning, a form of mockery and scape-goating.
Their blindspot is gender, he says, and although they are left (?) as
anti-capitalist (hating their position in the hierarchy), they are
individualist, essentializing – no awareness of class. I would like to
hear his version of how neoliberalism mantled the welfare state as
well as his take on the isomorphism between natural selection and
the class structure. Apparently, because he calls them vampire, he
implies that they make you bleed!!!
Reply
Tyrone January 1, 2014 at 1:55 pm
Leave it to some lily white Brit to try to resurrect the legacy of

sexist imperialist Euro-Settler ‘Leftism” Nice to know we in
AmeriKKKa arent the only ones having to put up with racism
apologists in the socialist movement
Reply
Mark Power February 11, 2014 at 6:26 pm
All you collectivists are deranged. I can’t wait for the deflationary
depression to start and the immigrants you love will cannibalize
you.
Reply
Andrew Flood February 24, 2014 at 3:56 pm
A rather late to the party reply to this piece Intersectionality,

Calling out & the Vampire Castle – we need dialogue & change
rather than exclusion
Reply
John Smith March 31, 2014 at 9:14 pm
Wonderful, inspiring polemic. I, personally, already did give up, and

the sh!tstorm this article created only serves to reinforce my
decision. The very fact that mr. rectenwald had to write an
‘explanation’ of your comments shows the sad, sorry condition the
‘left’ is in these days, and serves only to reinforce the veracity of
your claims. The very fact that it had to begin with a ‘critique’ – a
critique merely of ‘form’ at that; not taking into account the
difference between a polemic and a theoretic exegesis – only serves
to show the massive amount of unwarranted power given to what
Petras calls this ‘subjectivist cult of essentialist identities.’
Falling victim to these bourgeois ideologies, as you rightly label
them, is somewhat understandable during times of relative peace
and prosperity (eg. 90s) when they really asserted dominance, but
I had great hope that after the Global Financial Crisis the world
would sober up and realize that the ‘End of History’ was an absurd
postulate. The Right has awoken/is awakening, but the ‘Left’ still
sleeps. All seems lost.
Reply
clemdane April 11, 2014 at 8:26 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is the most refreshing left
wing opinon piece I have read in 25 years. I encourage you not to
just give up on politics, but to break away from the dour,
judgmental Puritans and find likeminded people (like the ones who
responded so well to Russell Brand) and strike out on your own.
Why not create a NEW kind of leftist movement? It’s about time for
a new paradigm. Even if there are only 10 of you to start, word will
spread and you might even end up the head a of a huge grassroots
movement. You are clearly sincere, thoughtful and have the courage
to stand up to some pretty formidable entrenched groups. I wish
you Godspeed!
Reply
peter gentle May 24, 2014 at 8:41 am
“Brand’s forensic take-down of Paxman was intensely moving,

miraculous ….” Well, in that case, you must be refering to a
different interview from the one I saw. Brand revealed himself to be
what he is: a comedian, and someone only a desperate editorial
borad at NS would want as a guest editor. Brand’s is a politics of
pose, nothing more. He had no ideas whatsoever worth noting,
simply talking about ‘revolution’, though what that revolution would
look like – a revolution in what? – and how to get there was
conspiciously absent from his rants. That he gets caught up in
‘intersectionality’ was another lesson on what the left has beocome
– a small, sectarian irrelevance.
Reply
Jeremy Paler September 26, 2014 at 1:10 pm
This is older, I know, but…
I think the only point I agree with here is that class has been down-
graded as an intellectual talking point, especially in America. A
friend of mine in the DC State Department told me he doesn’t think
class really exists in America, and this dude identifies as an
“extreme radical leftist.” I just don’t get it.
Everything else, though, honestly sounds like the mad complaint of

a white man who can feed himself. That doesn’t mean the critique is
useless, it means it’s silly. How are you going to worry about class
itself when most of the people with those all-important minority
qualifiers are fairly poor–poverty is one of the *biggest* things
critics of anti-minority culture talk about. There is a powerful
dialectical relationship between those minority-status qualifiers and
practical poverty. Homosexuals of either gender often live in
poverty when or if they try to start a family. Needless to say the
same is true of American-born racial minorities and some
immigrant minorities, though not all. Class struggle is thoroughly
foundational to why these minorities seek and are given succor in
the first place.
“The fifth law of the Vampires’ Castle: think like a liberal (because
you are one). The VC’s work of constantly stoking up reactive
outrage consists of endlessly pointing out the screamingly obvious:
capital behaves like capital (it’s not very nice!), repressive state
apparatuses are repressive. We must protest!”
That doesn’t sound like a liberal, that sounds further to the left of
anything a liberal would say. Quoting a radical Marxist like
Althusser is not exactly a liberal thing to do.
“big Other”
I always laugh a little…
“partly to cover up their own invariably wealthy, privileged or

bourgeois-assimilationist background”
Oh? Invariably you say? In America most academics I know wound

up where they did *because* they grew up without a voice or the
ability to act on their environment. Their fathers were janitors or
military men–the last couple decades’ worth of single parenting will
no doubt even further express lower socioeconomic backgrounds in
the academy, provided government aid remains. If they only wanted
the money they’d have used their talents elsewhere. Most also
reject “bourgeois-assimilationist” tendencies like having children,
or marrying, and surprisingly many never own property except
perhaps a car. Muttering nonsense does not a criticism make.
What the hell were you doing on Twitter? What kind of person who
worries about anything Old Leftists worry about waste their time on
140 characters in the first place? Read a book. Write a book.
Discourse–not soundbites.
I learned absolutely nothing from your diatribe.
Reply
www.mydirtyhobbycom.de December 1, 2014 at 8:51 pm
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I remembered this piece from 2013. It’s quite good, though you
would have been more on track if you had focused on the
narcissism of the left. It got to the point where I had to wash my
hands of my own left wing identity. The state that the left is in now
leaves it indistinguishable from the radical right. There is not a
straw man they won’t construct, or a fabrication they won’t make in
service of their vaguely defined causes.
Every ideologue believes their cause is moral and just, and every
ideology is horse shit.
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Dan January 15, 2017 at 8:16 pm
I am tired of situations like one time when I was called “sexist”

because I mentioned that wages are exploitative in nature during a
discussion about the wage gap. It was a socialist meeting for crying
out loud. I can’t even. Great article Mark.
Reply
yutk January 26, 2017 at 7:46 am
One of the endpoints of a Vampire Castle career is making a living

out of one’s opression status and sacred opinions itself. I’ve seen
someone offer seminars and workshops for greater social justice
enlightement, with the blessing inherent in their status, and the list
of their actual opressions included being aromantic (not letting
society pushing them in relationships, and very queerly being
unwilling and unwanting to enter one), polyamorous AND a
widower, in the same time. And left-handed, the poor soul. These
people never realize when they cross the self-parody line.
Altough as far as I recall they were not opressed into pretending to

be a member of humanity while being in reality a human-appearing
dragon from a parallel dimension reality of an anime which came
out ten years after their birth, as otherkin often claim.
“Why do you want the minimum wage raised, you shitlord, instead
of feeling guilty for having a job at all while disabled unemployed
people exist? You are living on stolen land, why are you so entitled
to think you deserve healthcare too? Go in a corner and feel guilty
instead! Why do you want abortion rights, flaunting that cis uterus
you unfairly received at birth? Why do you want racial equality
when you are a man and black women have it worse than you?”
These are usually not explicit, but “how dares anyone go to a
protest who did not appear at the protests for my particular cause,
you are all fake and opressive” was a reaction I got very tired of
seeing, instead of any more concrete criticisms of the recent
women’s marches, for example.
Reply
Serge May 16, 2017 at 12:44 pm
My friend once posted “Someone please explain to me why I

wouldn’t want to be a Social Justice Warrior? It sounds badass and
amazing.”
To which I replied: “Because there’s a lot of crazies in the far
regressive left. Justice is an institution and methodology that is
ultimately based on punishment. Justice may be blind but the
people doing the judging and dolling out the punishment are not.
Justice is about controlling people through laws, dogma and fear of
reprisal. To judge someone socially is to ostracize them. To exclude
them from the group. To define someone elses reality and
experience for them. Warriors kill. They vanquish their enemies.
They have no moral code. When you put all that together, no I don’t
think it’s a good term. It implies the punishment of people through
blind and immoral force, by self made and aggrandizing judges. It’s
no different at all from what the churches of the world have done
for thousands of years. Control thought through fear of social
justice. The rule of the mob. It should be the awakening and
enlightenment brought from love and compassion, not the imposed
self-flagellation by people who talk about privilege without talking
about it’s price.
I prefer to just fight for equal human rights, in all its forms but still
with my feet firmly rooted in science, rationality, compassion,
patience and love. Call me a Human Rights Soldier.
Reply
DJEB July 7, 2017 at 9:01 am
You’re luck you weren’t labelled a “Nazi” and sucker punched,

or didn’t have some brave pomo professor duck out from
behind a woman and hit you in the head with a bike lock for
the crime of peacefully talking to someone..
Reply
LKA July 16, 2017 at 1:04 pm
What reality are you living in where a comment like

Serge’s would get them labelled as a Nazi and sucker
punched? Hint: It’s most definitely not the one we’re
living in.
Maybe the worst that Serge would get is “nazi-
sympathizer” by some idiotic nameless twitter accounts
(oh no!)
Reply
Prprp August 26, 2017 at 2:05 am
“Warriors kill. They vanquish their enemies. They have no

moral code……Call me a Human Rights Soldier.”
Imagine being this ignorant about history and virtue ethics

relating to violence
Reply
Joo Heung Lee July 6, 2017 at 5:13 pm
The for-the-most-part inane comments show just how trenchant

the problems of the Left are, and probably contributed to the
author’s tragic suicide. Mark Fisher hit the nail on the head. We
should honor his memory through political mobilization by exiting
the vampire castle. Class consciousness needs to make a
resurgence.
Reply
A July 14, 2017 at 12:58 pm
Fantastic article. Will take another read at least. Thank you
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Mike Ballard December 2, 2013 at 10:52 pm
The ‘super-exploitation’ you write of is not the ‘fault’ of workers in

other parts of the world. In fact, it’s just how the wage system
operates. Labour power is a commodity which capitalists buy at the
lowest price they can. If the type of labour power a capitalist needs
is for sale by workers in one country for half the price it is in
another, where do you think the capitalists are going to go to buy
it? Capitalists aren’t nationalists, although they do promote
patriotism amongst their wage-slaves. Capitalists are only in it for
the money. Lower wages and working conditions make for higher
rates of profit. Therein lies the secret to the fetishism of ‘super-
exploitation’.
The best way to deal with capitalists is from a position of power and
our power as a class lies in the conscious praxis of global solidarity
as a class. Your constant attempt to guilt trip members of your own
class, assuming you are a worker, is typical of the radical liberal
approach to gaining ‘social justice’ under the rule of Capital. After
2,000 years of this moralistic approach, one would think the left
would have learned that ‘social justice’ will never be achieved by
brow-beating the producing classes into submission to a Deity’s
aphorisms. It will leave them divided and fighting each other over
the ‘correct’ interpretations of what said Deity meant and which
BOOK lights the correct path to a jolly afterlife.
What the producers of all wealth (outside that found in nature)

need is a clear understanding of how the wage system works and
how to abolish it. What they need are proposals on what to replace
the wage system with. What they don’t need are holier than thou
leaders preaching to them about their sins of omission and
commision.
Sure, chide, even shun your fellow workers for racist and sexist
expressions. Why? Because thinking that there’s more than one
race is wrong scientifically and wrong politically because it weakens
class solidarity needed for emancipation. The same goes for other
divisive ideologies e.g. sexism etc.
Reply
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Exiting the Vampire Castle

This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in

‘Left-wing’ Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting zone. Earlier this

The open savagery of these exchanges was accompanied by something

Brand’s intervention was not a bid for leadership; it was an inspiration, a

Class consciousness is fragile and ﬂeeting. The petit bourgeoisie which

But, once class had re-appeared, it was impossible not to see it

Someone passed me a post written about Brand on Facebook. I don’t

Where to go from here? It is ﬁrst of all necessary to identify the features

Inside the Vampires’ Castle

The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not

I’ve noticed a fascinating magical inversion projection-disavowal

The Vampires’ Castle feeds on the energy and anxieties and

The second libidinal formation is neo-anarchism. By neo-anarchists I

They are also overwhelmingly young: in their twenties or at most their

The second reason is what Jodi Dean has called communicative

So what can we do now? First of all, it is imperative to reject

Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism and the

 Facebook 8K+  Twitter  Reddit  Google  Tumblr

Tagged as: class struggle, identitarianism, posh left

{ 149 comments… read them below or add one }

automnia November 22, 2013 at 3:39 pm

Ruralrighton November 22, 2013 at 3:41 pm

A Concerned Vlogger November 22, 2013 at 4:11 pm

im going to drown you in a var of piss

murray November 22, 2013 at 4:30 pm

“This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any

We were close, so damn close.

charles November 28, 2013 at 4:20 pm

my dad didnt buy me the car i wanted. im sick of arseholes

John Smith March 31, 2014 at 9:05 pm

hahaha. That’s precisely what I heard when I read

duras November 22, 2013 at 5:14 pm

good thinking mark! agree that we need to do something about

. November 22, 2013 at 7:02 pm

John Bull November 22, 2013 at 5:31 pm

Interesting article. Now that these arguments are out in a public

1. The whole play of attacking left-wing critiques of bigotry that

3. Seems unqualiﬁed to dismiss the entirety of young dissidents

4. Class as the writer presents it comes across as another identity

5. If the writer’s intention is to purge the left of its love of grudge

Anyway, before ﬁngers are pointed, I say this as someone from an

Bennie Bigins December 21, 2014 at 10:22 pm

Ben April 10, 2015 at 11:54 am

Ben April 10, 2015 at 11:56 am

(And yeah I could have found a sarcasm-free alternative

ik November 28, 2013 at 4:00 pm

vegan post mod uni professors should be allowed to control

Ben November 22, 2013 at 6:21 pm

Tom November 22, 2013 at 6:33 pm

This is some retrograde shit.

jake November 28, 2013 at 4:01 pm

jake November 28, 2013 at 4:15 pm

yea, so what if my parents put me through private uni, im

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KingCole November 22, 2013 at 7:48 pm

Anon November 23, 2013 at 10:09 am