working class? (was Re: [lbo-talk] Farrakhan invites gay speakertoMMM)

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Miles:
> 1.  We can study how people self-identify as working class or middle
> class; for this, we need to respect the common sense distinctions
> people make.
> 
> 2.  We can create a theory to analyze social classes in the U. S.;
> for this, common sense distinctions are irrelevant.

John:
> 
> I think Ravi is looking for a concrete definition for a term that simply
doesn't have one.
>

I understand what is at stake, all I am doing is questioning the usefulness
of the concept of class as it is used today.

The concept of class as defined by Marx (e.g. in relation to the means of
production) made both empirical and theoretical sense.  That is to say, it
served an analytically useful purpose in Marx's theory of the production of
wealth under capitalism, and denoted a large clearly identifiable group of
people.    However, I think the concept lost most of its usefulness today,
because the empirical conditions and the theory needed to explain them have
changed.  To make a longer story short, you cannot identify a coherent class
of people by mere relations to the means of production - because there are
other, more powerful identifiers.  Secondly, the value is no produced by the
working class in the classical sense (i.e. people manufacturing the
product), but by the army of marketers, traders, regulators, etc. without
whom the value (as defined by the GDP) would shrunk manifold.  Whether these
factors render the notion of class useless may be subject to debate - but
some serious rethinking is needed here.

But these theoretical considerations of the notion of class are something
altogether different from the way the concept is used in popular discourse
on the left.  The point I raised was that the popular or ideologically
motivated concept of class has little to do with its analytical aspect as
defined above.  Instead it is just a left-wing expression of
anti-intellectualism and populism - which are essentially right wing
concepts.  I think this use of the concept is pretty much useless because it
alienates people whose support would be quite important for the left -
knowledge workers and related occupations who identify themselves as
non-descript "white collar" or "middle class."  I would go as far as saying
that any benefit gained by anti-intellectual populism cost the left double
or triple by the loss of support of the "middle class" 

Wojtek