[lbo-talk] working class?

[Charles Brown]

Wojtek  :
As I previously argued, the notion that capitalist relations of production
"produced" the class of people labeled as "working class" - that notion is
historically inaccurate.  There is plenty of scholarship suggesting that
"working class" of the 18th or 19th centuries was in fact a product of the
feudal relations - capitalism simply found a certain use for this class.

^^^^
CB: Better said capitalist relations of production _are_
wage-labor/capitalist relations. Capitalist relations of production replaced
feudal relations of production. (Wage-labor is the working class).

Capitalist relations of production are a revolutionary change from feudal
relations of production, so the notion that feudal relations "produce" the
classes of capitalism is misleading. Feudalism "produces" the classes of
capitalism by giving themselves up. 

It's like saying a catepillar "produces" a butterfly,..yea , sure, but...it
turns into a butterfly. Feudalism turned into capitalism.

^^^^^

Further more, "capitalism" (i.e. industrialization) profoundly changed the
nature of that original working class by differentiating it beyond anything
recognizable.  So what capitalist relations of production actually produced
was not the working class it initially exploited (that was the product of
agrarian relations) but the middle "yuppie" class - skilled and while collar
workers. 

^^^^
CB: By this you'd have to say that both the "original" capitalist class and
the "original" working class were "produced" by the prior agrarian
relations. The capitalist class has changed as much as the working class
during the course of capitalism.