I wonder how accurate it is to describe the structural thinking as a recent progress. Seems to me that Marx already believed that (using my own words here, but see the source) both the rich and the poor are mere cogs in the machine, it’s just that the rich are okay with their role because the machine leaves them some autonomy, while the poor are stripped of all autonomy and their lives are made unbearable. The rich of today are not villains who designed the machine, they inherited it just like everyone else, and they cannot individually leave it just like no one else can.
Perhaps the structural thinking is too difficult to understand for most people, who will round the story to the nearest cliche they can understand, so it needs to be reintroduced once in a while.
Much of the progress in modern anti-racism has been about persuading more people to think of racism as a structural, systemic issue rather than one of individual villainy. See: https://transliberalism.substack.com/.../the-revolution...
I wonder how accurate it is to describe the structural thinking as a recent progress. Seems to me that Marx already believed that (using my own words here, but see the source) both the rich and the poor are mere cogs in the machine, it’s just that the rich are okay with their role because the machine leaves them some autonomy, while the poor are stripped of all autonomy and their lives are made unbearable. The rich of today are not villains who designed the machine, they inherited it just like everyone else, and they cannot individually leave it just like no one else can.
Perhaps the structural thinking is too difficult to understand for most people, who will round the story to the nearest cliche they can understand, so it needs to be reintroduced once in a while.