> > Why not? If class is about power, it sure seems like one to me. A
> > Wal-Mart store manager can determine the hours and earnings of
> > workers and decide on promotions. Of course he's subject to the same
> > kind of control from those above him, but having any power over
> > others is very different from being an hourly worker who just takes
> > orders.
> >
> > Doug
Just for fun, I thought you'd like this bit where Marx admonishes people for leaving the people out of it and for leaving out of it the _conditions of production and producers of these ideas_.
Let me repeat that: "conditions of production and producers of these ideas."
Shall I type it out one more time? :)
Did everyone read it? Marx thought it- eminently important to pay attention to the individuals and the production of these ideas -- the conditions of their production and the condition of the produce that shape these ideas.
Fascinatin'!
The division of labour, which we already saw above as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labour, so that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood), while the others' attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves. [...]
If now in considering the course of history we detach the ideas of the ruling class from the ruling class itself and attribute to them an independent existence, if we confine ourselves to saying that these or those ideas were dominant at a given time, without bothering ourselves about the conditions of production and the producers of these ideas, if we thus ignore the individuals and world conditions which are the source of the ideas, we can say, for instance, that during the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts honour, loyalty, etc. were dominant, during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc.
The ruling class itself on the whole imagines this to be so. This conception of history, which is common to all historians, particularly since the eighteenth century, will necessarily come up against the phenomenon that increasingly abstract ideas hold sway, i.e. ideas which increasingly take on the form of universality. For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class. "
From The German Ideology http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
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