>Carroll
>
>>Class analysis is, first of all and directly, aimed at understanding >the
>>dynamic of capitalism, and secondly to determine what are the long->term
>>objective interests of the various classes. (Only practice will >reveal
>>the extent to which any given fraction of the working class will >become
>>politically active.)
>>
>
>
>
>Only one disagreement with this: class analysis will not directly
>determine who will support you.
If by this you mean that class analysis alone won't determine who'll support you, I tend to agree. However, theoretically, over the long term, class analysis gives a pretty good source, I think. Remember too, that Marx was writing in a time when the nobility was still powerful in many places and peasantry was far more widespread (than today, I suspect, but I'm not sure).
>But if it is meaningful, it will define
>the limits of who will oppose capitalism. That is Engels was a
>capitalist. (He owned factories and lived entirely on others labor
>rather than his own.) But, to put it mildly, he did a great deal to
>advance the interests of the working class. Class analysis is useless
>(mostly) when applied to an indidual. On the other hand we can easily
>predict, via class analysis that the majority of capitalists will never
>oppose capitalism. Class analysis can rule out trying to win socialism
>by trying to convicne the majority of captialist to become socialists.
>Don't laugh; it has been tried. I believe that at least some of the
>Fabian socialists in the 19th century tried to do just that.
Yes, this is all true enough.
>
>This is why I think the anarchist analysis of a coordinator class - a
>class that has the same relation to the means of production as the
>working class, but a different relation to work is important. It
>identifieds a segment of the population among whom you cannot win a
>majority.
But class analysis points out to coordinators who pay attention that, strictly speaking, they aren't better off under capitalism than any other worker (vide the mass shedding of middle-management types in the past few decades).
This "coordinator class" really just seems to be acting in the same conservative manner of many workers who are rightfully concerned about surviving: X (be it communism, socialism, or anarchism) might result in my losing my (possibly well paid, possibly only one possible) job, so I won't support it. Kind of like, "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't." That attitude or the work that engenders it doesn't make one a member of a distinct class.
Todd
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