Class analysis (was Re: class)

Hinrich Kuhls kls at online-club.de
Wed Apr 18 11:56:50 PDT 2001


"The first question to be answered is this: What constitutes a class? -- and the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to another question, namely: What makes wage-labourers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three great social classes?"

What constitutes a "middle class"? - What constitutes "modern middle classes"?

Does it mean anything to restore marxist categories of class analysis in 2001?

Is there any marxist class analysis of the United States of America for the years from 1945 to 2000, that not only shows the numerical force of the "big classes of modern society" (and their respective factions) and its change but also the share of the social classes (and its relative change) in the national wealth (including an analysis of the second level redistribution of primary revenues)?

And in case there are multiple marxist class analyses: which one could be recommended as a starting point for a discussion of steps towards a concrete socialist political programme, i.e. for a discussion of the question how - and why - this specific class structure, the distribution of revenues, and the accumulation of capital ("the process of capitalist reproduction as a whole") is reflected in the consciousness of different fractions of the working class in specific forms?

"The various forms of capital, as evolved in this book, thus approach step by step the form which they assume on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals upon one another, in competition, and in the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production themselves."

Hinrich



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