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all I can say is that this essay rocked. I just reposted it for those there who are learning bits and pieces about marxist theory.
Btw, just wrote a bit about mainstream theories of social class as conceiving of society as like the cookies we call Magic Seven Layer Bars (aka what I've previously called Dobosh Torte Feminism) here: http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/11/29/class-society-seven/
An interesting question was raised in comments, about the degree to which people who learn marxism as academics have gone on to read the work of Lenin and Trotsky. Totally guilty here: I learned the rudiments doing activist worked where I encountered marxists 'organizing' in our groups. But grad school provided few reasons to study the rest. Reading Loren, I have to wonder, what does Lenin have to say that improves on anything Marx wrote? Trotsky? Others that supposedly aren't studied in grad school. (My own thought is that what is studied in grad school is what fits into a narrower range of social theory to begin with, which is why it often gets weeded out. Dunno. Just speculating here.)
"the sanctimonious Bitch | Lab, a multi-degreed asswipe who writes a tedious blog of regurgitated theory..."
-- Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon