>Leo asks:
>
>>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.
But if race was produced through slavery in the U.S., then that is directly related to the relation of surplus extraction, since it was (and remains) all about one's systematic relationship to the division of labor and access to property ownership. Gender too: women under capitalism (and other economic systems) have had a specific relation to the division of labor (unpaid domestic work, "women's" jobs) and access to property (it wasn't all that long ago that women in the U.S. couldn't even get a credit card).
As an empirical matter, it almost always seems that people who try to assert some special status for class are trying to devalue the other social categories. "We'll address the woman question after the revolution!"
Doug