[lbo-talk] What is the working class?

brad bauerly bbauerly at gmail.com
Sat Dec 5 12:30:18 PST 2009


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



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