>marx used very similar categories in his own social
>scientific work in the 18th brumaire to ask the very same questions i was
>asking and have asked in my research: under what conditions do those
>segments of the working class start to see their objective interests as
>members of the proletariat?
Of course, such work is worthwhile in _politics_; however, as I noted in another post, Western Marxists' & leftists' tendency is to confuse levels of analysis. One cannot move directly from the analysis of the central mechanism of capitalism given by Marx's _Capital_, etc. to the task of overcoming divisions and unifying all who can be unified through the course of struggles; *conversely,* one doesn't modify the account of the central mechanism & the meaning of class given in _Capital_, based upon one's empirical studies of what this or that working-class individual or groups of individuals have to say or do. (Efforts to define "the middle classes" do just that -- lose sight of what makes capitalism what it is at the level of mode of production. You might take a hint from your own criticism of Erik Olin Wright.)
A while ago, Carrol posted a two-part post on "Some Chat on Psychology, Theology, and other Pseudo-Sciences." Have you read it? In case you haven't, I'm reposting relevant parts here.
***** and if you're a structural marxist, all that matters to you is the actions of classes -- and in marx's theory classes are NOT about flesh and blood people, ------
Carrol: That is true. And that is also the reason Lenin is so important. Marx offers us an historical account of the dyanamic of capitalism, but (rightly -- he couldn't do it all) gives us very little political guidance. Leninism may be tentatively labelled "Political Marxism," and when we explore the barriers to the unifying of the u.s. working class we are developing Leninism, which (in so far as one can make the distinction) is a far more open matter than is marxism proper. (I am perfectly aware that I am choosing terms or making statements which could be argued over at book length.) The political unifying of the class cannot take as its ground the abstract working class of *Capital* -- but a historical account of the core dynamics of the capitalist system cannot take into account what you call "flesh and blood persons." Flesh and blood persons do not enter into an understanding of basic modes of organization of modes of production. (That is also why, incidentally, the transformation problem is a non-starter. The understanding of the fundamental dynamic of capitalism not only does not need to understand prices, an attempt to understand prices only gets in the way of such a basic understanding.)
If I am following you correctly, you have already totally and disastrously confused two separate realms of analysis, and probably nothing very clear can follow. But we will hope for the best and plod on here. Marxists who have (somewhat clumsily) been labelled "left conservatives" (on this list mostly non-marxists) make a fundamental theoretical error of confusing the analysis of the working class in *Capital* with the *political working class*. The working class in capital is (and ought to be) sexless/ ageless / stateless / etc / etc / etc. Only a working class conceived at that level of abstraction makes possible the analysis found in the four volumes of *Capital*. And so, of course, the introduction of psychology (even if psychology were a valid science) into *Capital* would be utterly inappropriate.
So Marxism (here identified with *Capital* and the main commentaries on and further developments of it) can hardly have anything to do with the "agency/structure" debate, age old or pristine. We are dealing with the history of a mode of production, i.e., with an account of the social relations through which the surplus is transferred from direct producers to the appropriators of that surplus. So if by "agents" you mean flesh and blood people, no agents appear in the analysis, nor should they. So your "all that matters to you is the actions of classes" is, *at this stage* of the argument, when we are only interested (this is one way of putting it) in the difference between capitalism and the tributary social formations which preceded it, true but pointless. If you argue with it you are arguing with a tautology. That's what we *mean* by class here. But that has no direct bearing whatsoever on how Marxism conceives/needs to further conceive of flesh and blood people. ------
Kelley: but classes acting as entities in and of themselves. ------
Carrol: All a working class as an entity does is produce surplus value. All a capitalist class does as a class (at this level of the analysis) is appropriate surplus value. I'm sure, however, that by acting you mean something more than that -- which means you badly confuse the analysis of capitalism as a historical event with class as a potential rather than actual actor. The working class may never become an actor in this sense, in which case the worst nightmares of the Greens will come to pass, but that is another matter. Whether the class (in the U.S. or elsewhere or everywhere) will become an actor depends on a series of conjunctures of massive contingencies and political work. (Political work by itself will never accomplish the task. That is why the scholasticism of those forever digging about for the "errors" of marxism is so futile. We won't have a chance to make those same errors again in any case because the same complex of contingencies will never occur again. Doug's view of marxist history is a very close analogue to the way in which the French generals prepared for World War 2 -- he is agonizing over how to avoid mistakes in a situation which will never occur again, so naturally he cannot even began to speculate on what mistakes we may make in the future.) *****
Yoshie