----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Two points, perhaps superficial, bother me here. First, your use of
> "manichean" is a sort of hyperbole, using a cosmic ontology as
metaphor
> not for a state of being but for a hisotrical process. (Class is a
> process, not a 'thing.')
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Metaquibble alert. I used manichean to bring a little change to the recent intensive use of binary etc. I wasn't trying to score points. I know class is a process dadgummit!
>Secondly, it seems to me that critics of
> marxism all too frequently fall into dogmatism -- that is, they
assume
> that there must be a more or less direct relationsship between
> fundamental theory and practice.
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Well I'm dogmatically anti-dogmatic. My concern is whether the constitutive conditions for class polarities is a sufficient guide to the *causal* complexities regarding ownership realities of the present and how to deal with the ways the case of Enron points to the weaknesses and limitations of theories of class position given the need for causal analyses. Otherwise class analysis becomes akin to theistic explanations of why there's something rather than nothing -- it explains everything under capitalist relations of production but *nothing in particular*. Since empirics are about particulars and the dynamics of causality, it would seem Enron poses interesting questions regarding class analyses, no? So my question still stands; given todays laws and social relations of production, to what extent can we call the people who showed up at the Enron hearings [as representatives of workers who own revenue yielding assets in the MOP, however small in quantity in actuality]capitalists? More substantively are they exploiters, exploited, or both or neither?
Ian