>Dennis Perrin wrote:
>>
>>
>> I worked blue-collar jobs instead of going to college. Served in the
>> military. Spent the past five years working at the lowest levels of manual
>> labor, so I think I have some idea what "workers" are about.
>
>I count about 85% of the population as working class. Marx predicted
>that capitalist society tended to divide into two sharply separated
>classes, and the prediction has come through.
Sharply? If only. You're lumping together $10,000 a year single moms in Bed-Stuy, $17,000 young married couple/5-child HHs in rural Arkansas, $120,000 nurse-cop empty-nesters in suburban Atlanta... Households with huge debts, households with significant assets. People, in other words, with little in common besides Carrol Cox's taxonomy, people who live in totally different material and subjective worlds, who have no means or language for talking with each other.
>This is not relevant to my perspective. I am not interested in what the
>u.s. populace is _now_; I am interested in what some sizeable proportion
>(even a sizable minority) can potentially _become_.
You never say how this magical transformation's going to happen. That's one way of refusing to see the U.S. working class as it is - imagine a different one 15 years in the future!
Doug