James Heartfield wrote:
>
> Philip:
>
> "Marx's claims about class are NOT
> transhistorical. Marx's position is exactly like Geertz's. The history of
> all hitherto existing societies IS the history of class struggle but the
> classes are not the same,"
>
> Yes, and I would say that, notwithstanding the quote about all hitherto existing societies, it is not really right to call the estates in feudal society classes (nor the pharoahs for that matter). Class implies a certain sponaneity of self-reproduction that you only find in capitalist societies
I think this is right. When I read M.I. Finley on Roamn slavery years ago I had a narrower conception of Marxism, and rejected Finley's substitution of "status" for "class." But I think I was wrong and he was right. And though de Ste. Croix's Class Struggles in the Ancient Greek World is a truly magnificent work, the title is misleading. The struggles he studies were struggles over status and the division of the surplus, but the relations were external, not internal.
Consider the 'economy' revealed in the Odyssey and cognate sources, and studied by Finley. The level of producctivity on one oikos simply had no effect on the lies of an adjacen okoi, while if productivity increases (say) in Argentine wheat production, it can transform the lives of millions who have no direct relationship with Argentina or Argentine wheat. And in feudal europe, the only way the productivity of serfs of Lord A could in any way affect the serfs of Lord B would be if Lord A used the extra surplus to hire more armed thugs to knock off Lord B and take over his serfs. Again, purely external relations.
Class as Marx ultimately developed it in his Critique only makes sense in capitalism, and is defined by internal relations linking the classes.
Carrol(