objectivity])
G'day John,
>Sorry for sounding more neo-Weberian than the Weberian Marxists, but don't
>those segments of the working class (defined in standard Marxist terms)
>who own their own housing (and thus have a stake in seeing landed property
>values rise) or have pension funds in the stock market qualify as having
>"contradictory class location" ?
Well, I've only quite recently contradicted myself in these terms - a mortgage and a compulsory superannuation plan are mine. But I'm not sure how actually contradicted this makes my like. I don't see, for instance, how rising values help me. My house is already worth more than I paid for it (if you don't count the 120% interest bill, anyway), but that becomes relevant only when I sell it, by which time my intended new home will very likely have appreciated at a comparable rate!
And, in case it's an issue for some, I'm not sure a Marx-inspired society is interested in taking people's family homes away from them. They ain't means of production and families do need family homes, so why not leave us in ours? That being so, what's to lose?
And my super depends on market ups and downs (themselves dependent on an equity market in another country) - which a government pension system, like the one we had when first I hit the job market, did not. Furthermore, it could be argued (couldn't it?) that the little lump of extracted surplus that the 'fund manager' drip-feeds into my superfund is but a continuation of my career-as-parasite. I'm a public servant, after all. And if we pursue the lines this chat is following, that means I've been contradicted all along, doesn't it? I offer the boss no surplus value (at least, not directly) and I subsist (or better) on surpluses extracted elsewhere. Does this remove me so far from the life experience and material interests of private sector workers that I cannot reliably inhabit a like politics and be part of the same movement? Is it useful to frame all public servants as essentially thus contradicted?
Well, I'm with Kate Hinchcliff on that - we'd be well on our way to disqualifying way too many people from 'our' project, then.
Or am I missing the point?
Cheers, Rob.