Ace on The Jews

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Wed Mar 13 05:25:41 PST 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Murray" <seamus2001 at attbi.com>
>
> But to speak of capitalists as a group is no different from
speaking of
> politicians as a group in the political realm. To say that
politicians run
> the Congress s not pejorative, it is definitional (if possibly
simplistic in
> a capitalist system where politics is not autonomous from the
capitalist
> hierarchy).
>
> -- Nathan Newman
======================

-So it's an apriori that 'functional description' is not a group? -We're back to all the pitfalls of epistemology/ontology of -collectivities and their 'identities', 'functions' and 'powers' -no? Are capitalists not a group? Pejoratives aside? That we're -both asking about the politics of definitions is healthy, imo and -I'm happy to be wrong.....

Capitalists do not have functions; they are the functions. They do not form collectivities; they are the collectivity that wields power by definition.

Are capitalists a "group"? Not in the sense of having a social idenitity outside their functions, which is where Jews and blacks and gays and other identity groups differ. To the extent that you define a "capitalist" as those wielding economic power over others through control of capital in society, they are an identifiable group whose characteristics are identical with their identity. All capitalists control capital; all those who control capital are capitalists. Thus a group identified.

Jews may have a pervasive presence in Hollywood, but not all those in Hollywood are Jews, and not all Jews are in Hollywood.

Very different

Nathan



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