It's Heating Up ( is "class" in the US today a meaningful conceptfor analysis and organizing?)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Oct 27 09:26:07 PDT 2000


Max Sawicky wrote:


> . . . it's the various marxist supra "classes" of "proleteriat" vs.
> "capitalist",
> "slave" vs. "master", "worker" vs. "owner", "wage value" vs. surplus value",
> etc. that confound me. e.g., 50% of US citizens are reputed to own company
> stock. what "class" are these mini-owners by marxist definitions?
> norm

Norm, consider the following:

1. There is a high intensity lamp on my computer desk to the left of the monitor. 2. Bloomington & Normal are adjacent cities in central Illinois. 3. In 1907 the population of India was greater than the population of Nicaragua.

4. There is water in the coffee maker in my kitchen but so far no coffee in the basket 5. You have written several lbo posts 6. Some kinds of looseleaf binders are more convenient than others to write in. 7. One predator of rabbits is the fox. 8. Life on earth goes back to somewhere between 43.5 billion and 4.5 billion years ago. 9. From the vagueness of No. 8 one can tell that Carrol Cox hasn't read on the topic recently. 10. Some shirts are made of cotton.

Now will you explain to me, based on the preceding information, why there are more white sharks off the coast of Australia than in Lake Michigan.

Will you also explain to me why it is that you think you can (apparently) throw some darts at the table of contents of the Encyclopedia Britannia and then ask any question that comes off the top of your head based on where the darts land and expect to get an answer?

Carrol



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