[lbo-talk] in which I'm accused of repressing the reptilian brain

[wrobert at uci.edu]

I guess I look at this in Althusserian terms, that is to say, if you make
class an expressive category, ie somehow class explains everything, then
yes, class will never do what you want it to do.  However, if you think of
class as a determining, but far from the only determinate category, then
it has relevancy (aka the overdetermination thesis.) robert wood


>>I suspect "working-class" is a category utterly
>>useless except during particular peirods of working-class militancy.
>>When those periods end, workers cease to be workers and become merely
>>residents of a territory.
>
> I'm sympathetic to the idea that working class -- class in general --
> is fictive and useless, or at best secondary, but to say it's an
> empty category that is filled only during certain times of
> "militancy" is ridicilously idealist (and, not contradictorily,
> Leninst). If class is going to be used at all, it has to be used to
> describe what's happening, not what intellectuals and philosophers
> think should be happening.
>
> For gods sake, man, either use it or don't.
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