> Joanna wrote:
>>
>> And none of the more articulate liberation and environmental
>> movements (whatever their virtues) provide the vocabulary needed to
>> articulate and work through the problem of class.
>
> Yes. This is correct. And can be affirmed and developed without an
> implicit conception of "working class" as identity. That conception of
> class was useful for almost two centuries in fueling the class
> struggle
> (i.e., the struggle for abhstract bourgeois equality). For the most
> part
> that abstract equality (as abstract citizens) has been achieved. But
> the
> struggle for freedom has hardly begun. (See Tamas.) And that struggle
> cannot be grounded in He-Man Working-Class consciousness.
"Consciousness" in Marx refers to "the ability to think"; it doesn't refer to some particular content.
It's the development of this ability that, as part of the "all-round development of all his abilities", constitutes human history as an "educational" process of internally related stages that eventually, in "communism" as the "true reality", actualizes "the true human being" as this "universally developed individual".
"the vocation, designation, task of every person is to achieve all- round development of all his abilities, including, for example, the ability to think" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03g.htm#c.1.2.3
So the importance of "class" derives from Marx's particular conception of how "the ability to think" develops. That conception, as I've many times tried to show, emphasizes the "educational" role of the "wealth" of the individual's "real connections" where "wealth" is "the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal exchange". This is a sublation of the role Kant assigns to "enlarged thinking" in his elaboration of "enlightenment" as "the ability to think" reasonably for yourself.
"the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections. Only then will the separate individuals be liberated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into practical connection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man). All-round dependence, this natural form of the world-historical co-operation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
Marx claims that wage labour develops this "real intellectual wealth" because, among other reasons, "in their real empirical life individuals, actuated by empirical needs, have been able to bring about world intercourse."
"under favourable circumstances some individuals are able to rid themselves of their local narrow-mindedness is by no means due to individuals imagining that they have got rid of, or intend to get rid of their local narrow-mindedness, but is only due to the fact that in their real empirical life individuals, actuated by empirical needs, have been able to bring about world intercourse." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03f.htm
He explicitly claims that, where these "real connections" are absent "from their real empirical life", individuals will not be able to develop "enlightenment" in the above sense.
This account of what's required for the development of "enlightenment" is mistaken, so the role Marx assigns to "class" in this development is itself mistaken.
What has to be substituted for it, however, is a true account of what's required.
Instead of this, what's substituted in, say, the idea that the conditions of Chinese peasants could issue in Marx's idea of "revolutionary practice" is the ignoring not only of Marx's claim that this practice can only issue from conditions that have developed the degree of "integral development", i.e. of "enlightenment", it requires, but also of his claim that "isolation" characteristic of many peasant conditions is inconsistent with the development of the required degree.
Moreover, instead of "enlightenment", such conditions produce "superstition" and "prejudice", the foundation of "despotism", a claim Marx makes as early as his 1843 letters to Ruge and as late as his 1881 draft letter to Vera Zasulich.
"Despotism" of this form is the antithesis of "socialism" in Marx's sense.
Ted