[lbo-talk] What is the working class?

[brad bauerly]

My, my you are a slippery one.  I am not sure if this is worth continuing,
but I am a glutton for punishment so...  I did not say that there is a class
identity, you did.  I said that there is a relationship between identity and
the social structures of class (something about identities crystallizing
into structures over time, or some such thing).  You are the one who
insisted that class is not structural but is an identity or should be
addressed as an identity (at least sometimes you did).  Class is structural
because it is based on accepted social structures (this does not mean that
they are out there and real...the king is only king because we accept
that he is the king).  Take you job as an example.  You work for someone (I
assume you are not self employed) who has a legal right to extract surplus
from you (I know Shane it is not really surplus value in a strict tight-ass
Marxian sense).  The legal system of property ownership which gives the
owner/s of the company you work for the right to do this is what I would
call a class structure and there is a whole system of law enforcement to
ensure that this can and will happen.  Like I said it is also an identity
because we all have to acquiesce to this legal system/structure for it to
function.  It is the relationship between the structure and the identity
that is really important (I feel like I have said this about ten times
already).

This is the quote from Marx that I was referencing: "The religious
reflections of the real world can ,in any case, vanish only when the
practical relations of everyday life between man and man, and man and
nature, generally present themselves to him in a transparent and rational
form." (Capital Vol. I p. 173 Penguin addition).   My understanding of this
is that it is a critique of the basic enlightenment critique of religion as
an irrational superstition from the past.  Instead, Marx approaches religion
as the attempt to make sense of a world in which people are alienated or
that doesn't make sense without religion and superstition.  I apply this
same process of understanding/subjectivity to all forms of identity
politics.

Brad