Communes (Re: "post-leftism")

[Dddddd0814 at aol.com]

>Essentially, my argument has been that it is pointless to classify 
human beings (by income, lifestyle, preferences, taste, etc etc) but 
that it is important to have as fundamental an understanding as possible 
of social relations. Class 
tells you _nothing_ about an individual. And _no_ description of an 
individual can have any relevance for "class analysis. 
This cannot be emphasized enough. Engels was a small capitalists (not a 
petty producers - but a true capitalist who lived entirely off the 
surplus value other wage laborers). A fair number of Kluxers and 
American Nazis are working people. Class analysis is meaningless at the 
individual level. 
Class analysis is a first cut of analysis. It is mainly useful in the 
negative; certain tactics will almost never be useful. For example we 
can't expect to get rid of capitalism by converting the major owner of 
the means of production to Marxism. Or (just so the post contains 
something Carroll can disagree with) - the majority of cooordinators 
will always oppose strongly anti-hiearchal divisions of labor and income. 
But a there is a great of deal of more finely grained analysis to be 
done that is extremely useful, but is not neccesarily class analysis. 
One example would the divisions of various strata of income and wealth 
with the working class... 

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"To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social 
*status* in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the 
united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united 
action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
"Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social, power.
"When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the 
property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby 
transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the 
property that is changed. It loses its class character."

M&E, CM, Ch.2, pg. 24