In doing some research regarding the plea Nancy Pelosi made to the American people on Friday to concentrate on our “shared values”, I uncovered this from Socialism and The Common Good: New Fabian Essays by Preston T. King, pages 153-154:
Citizenship and class
The other main strand of opinion in the early years of the Labour Party, reflecting the Marxist tradition, emphasizing a class-based strategy. The approach sees the market as inherently capitalist and its relationship as exploitative and dehumanizing.
This clashed with the citizenship approach which assumes that there are common values between different groups and classes in society which are genuine (not the product of what Marxists would call false consciousness). these values can provide a basis for political action to secure the rights and resources of citizenship within a mixed economy with some degree of private ownership. The citizenship approach rejects Marx’s argument that since class determines political interests there can be no common basis for citizenship while there is some private ownership of the means of production and associated class divisions.
The class approach sees a sense of solidarity and common purpose among members of the class as a necessary prerequisite for the fundamental transformation of society which alone will end exploitation and bring about socialism. The citizenship approach is much more at home with individualism: it sees citizenship as securing the framework of rights and resources within which individuals can pursue their own conception of the good in their own way; and the communal basis of society is reflected in agreement about the common resources and means of citizenship rather than in terms of common ends.
She’s using the citizenship approach to encourage and prepare us to accept socialism.
So there you have it.
