<DIV> <DIV> <DIV>Wojtek,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Arguing that Marx introduced class analysis as a meso-level analysis is employing a bourgeois sociological category to Marx's analysis.  First of all, Marx, while did talk about individual as a social construct (for instance in Grundrisse) never saw individual-nation relationship as a micro-macro problematic.  Besides, nation state was never a primary unit of analysis for Marx, class was.  Class, for Marx, in the final analysis, is transnational  (hence, using your term, more macro than nation, in spite of his assertion that the working class will first rise in its own national space) and it is in that transnational space where class, a form of alienation, eventually gets abolished.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>However, I would agree with you that class does not explain reality in a deterministic way.  For instance, within the specific context of global capitalism today, one can't even talk about class in a meaningful way without understanding the dialectical ways through which it interpenetrates with race and gender.  Majority of the global proletariat is already racialized and gendered.  IMHO, today we can only talk about class as a practical narrative (there was already an anticipation of that in the Second Thesis on Feuerbach), as a "hegemonic articulation," (using Laclau and Mouffe's poststructural re-reading of Gramsci's term), not as a REALIST concept that is somehow predominant  in relation to other variables in a transparent, OBJECTIVE way.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Manjur             <BR><BR><B><I>Eubulides <paraconsistent@comcast.net></I></B> wrote:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"><BR>----- Original Message ----- <BR>From: "Wojtek Sokolowski" <SOKOL@JHU.EDU><BR><BR>Class is too broad of a concept to be of much analytical use. I prefer<BR>much<BR>smaller and better defined social groups. Observe that many groups, from<BR>organized religion, to unions, and civil society groups vie for and get<BR>the<BR>attention of people who support themselves for selling their labor. What<BR>is<BR>more, the type of work matters - professional workers have different<BR>affinities than manual or service workers, etc.<BR><BR>The genius of class notion in Marx's analysis was that it pointed to the<BR>notion of objectively defined social group (i.e. introduced the meso-level<BR>of analysis) in the theoretical landscape that saw only individuals<BR>(micro-level) and nations (macro-level). But today we can do a much more<BR>refined meso-level analysis, so jettisoning the concept of class is not<BR>the<BR>rejection of the social group influence. In fact I identified many such<BR>influences of various types.<BR><BR>Wojtek<BR><BR>-----<BR><BR>James Madison lives!<BR><BR><BR>___________________________________<BR>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></DIV><p>__________________________________________________<br>Do You Yahoo!?<br>Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around <br>http://mail.yahoo.com