[lbo-talk] "Capitalists" and "the rich"

[Carrol Cox]

The process of describing people empirically then aggregating the result
into x number of categories seems to be an entertaining academic
pursuit, but I'm not certain what it has to do with understanding
history -- i.e. with grasping the changing relations which among
collectivities within which individuals act. It does not, for example,
tell us a great deal about which sectors of the population will enter
into political activity in a mass way under some future set of
conditions. When such political activity is once underway _then_ and
only then does it become possible to understand (and one hopes expand)
that activity through more concrete analysis of the class positions
those in action occupy. Mere categorization is perhaps of interest to
marketing but is of close to null political or  historical interest.

Carrol