On 2010-12-02, at 2:30 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
> Somebody: Marxism has problems dealing with low wage service industry workers just as it has with high wage skilled workers. Like Wojtek pointed out, geographic dispersion and lack of concentration matter as much, at least, as class position. In fact, class as a unit of analysis really only succeeds when dealing with the bourgeoisie, the most cohesive and self-conscious class in history.
What kind of problems, specifically?
Marxist parties rightly thought industrial workers strategically concentrated in large enterprises were the most organized, militant and politically conscious segment of the workforce, and consequently the most likely to join their organizations. But this did not preclude efforts to recruit all wage- and salary-earners, including the unemployed, in whatever sector of the economy and region of the country they were found. In making the effort, the Marxist parties well understood that the working class was divided by occupation, income, region, ethnicity, class consciousness, and other factors - no class, including the bourgeoisie, is monolithic - and I fail to see how such inevitable intra-class differentiation detracted from the explanatory power of historical materialism.