>Recognizing the essence of capitalism has one virtue among others:
>e.g., you'll see the material ground of the necessity of solidarity
>between "skilled" and "unskilled workers," both of whom suffer from
>exploitation by capital.
Yes, of course. You know that, I know that. It's not as easy to convince the workers involved of that.
> Other theories might (see Steve McGraw's opinions about
>"intellectuals" and longshoremen), in contrast to Marxism, tell you
>that "skilled" workers (or "professionals" or whatever) exploit
>"unskilled" ones, obscuring the fundamental relation between capital
>and labor.
At some point, members of the professional/managerial stratum take on qualities of the capitalist class, though in a division of labor/socialized form. At what point in your schema do workers join the ranks of exploiters? Senior vice-president?
>Changes of the sort that you mention above fall into the purview of
>analyses of conjunctures ("thought"), rather than "theory."
You know, I've heard that one before. And there's often too much attention paid to how different things now than they ever were before at the expense of structural continuities. But this kind of statement reminds me of the ridiculous "analysis" of the Asian financial crisis of 1997/98 I heard from Paul Mattick Jr. (formerly Katha Pollitt's Last Marxist). Mattick started by saying he was going to abstract from states, financial markets, and capital flows, and get down to the heart of the crisis which was...the falling rate of profit! Gee, and why did the crisis happen when and where it did? A mere conjunctural concern.
Doug