>For class to be different than race, gender, sexual
>orienation, and other forms of social identity, it must be unique and
>distinctive in these qualities. But is it so?
I take violent exception to Todd Gitlin & the like.
_Nonetheless_, class is _different_ from such categories as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., _even though_ _all_ of them are _relational_ categories. Class refers to the relation without which the extraction of surplus _cannot_ take place, _even theoretically_, not to mention empirically. Other relational categories you mention (which should be as _integral_ to Marxism in theory & practice as class, pace Gitlin & the like) are likewise effects of relations of social power (domination & subordination), but they are _not_ directly based upon the relation of surplus extraction. For example, it is _not_ true that the able-bodied, as a "class," extract surplus from the disabled; that heterosexuals, as a "class," extract surplus from GLBT people; that men, as a "class," extract surplus from women; that whites, as a "class," extract surplus from blacks & other peoples of color; and so on. One can't & shouldn't conflate contradiction between capital and labor with other contradictions that should be properly seen as contradictions within the proletariat.
Further, various so-called "identities" were & are not constituted in the same fashion. Race, for the obvious historical reason, was & still is far more tightly entangled with the relation of production than other categories. The category of "blacks" was originally created by modern capitalist slavery: it referred to people who were literally reduced to commodities & at the same time forced to labor without wages for life & whose descendants were doomed to the same fate, thus unlike peasants, wage laborers, indentured servants, and so on. The divisions of labor, criminal justice, etc. are today responsible for the continued reproduction of races. In contrast, categories of gender & sexual orientation (which mutually reinforce each other) are best seen as constituted by the relations of domination & subordination that exist in the social & biological reproduction of human beings, which in turn affects the relation of production; hence, reproductive rights & liberties (including the right to give birth) & socialization of reproductive labor are the key for feminist & queer liberation struggles. The category of the disabled should be thought of as an effect of the practice & ideology in which some human beings are dominated & marginalized because they are either "unproductive" or "less productive" -- "burdens on society" in effect -- _seen from the vantage point of "efficient production uber alles"_.
Yoshie