Class Paradigms

[ComradeMan]

I was looking at the various theoretical class paradigms on the net and elsewhere in order to understand better how people define class at both an academic and popular level and I have come to the conclusion that these theories don't really work other than on the basis of broad generalisations.

Personally-
Education
If I were to analyse myself according to the UK paradigms I would be upper middle class, in Italy I would medio-borghese and in the USA I would be lower middle class whereas in some developing countries I would be part of the elite-!!!!. I could list loads of people I know personally who would fit into these categories differently according to their own individual circumstances.

Income-
Salary/wage- This is also a problem. In the Western models I should be hovering around the middle-class but realistically speaking I would now earn less income than a skilled "working class" tradesman.

To give just one example a university researcher in Italy has to make do with about E700 - E800 a month whereas in the United States I believe they would have a reasonably comfortable income. Yet the university researcher is de facto someone with a high level of education and thus would fit into the Middle/Upper Middle Class category aloaccording to the paradigms.

If we take another, albeit extreme, example, a professional footballer in Europe is part of the new rich so to speak, most footballers coming from "working class" backgrounds traditionally, now can earn more in a week than some may earn in a decade. Okay, I now that professional footballers are a minority and do not probably represent a major shift in class structure but they serve as an example. In the UK skilled tradesmen probably earn more money than university educated graduates in many fields other than economics, medicine and law.

The other problem I have with the whole class paradigm is that social hierarchy and level of income do not necessarily reflect the values of a given person. Many of the British left, for instance, came from very priviliged backgrounds such a Tony Benn, formerly Viscount Stansgate!!! This brings us back to the old business of "bourgeois" left thinkers and class traitors and all that stuff I don't want to get into here.

Whilst I do not deny that historically there have been socially defined classes with little or no movement between them, today we cannot argue that. Another member has recently pointed out the social-class origins of several US presidents, arguably the "Caesars" of the modern world.

My final criticism is that the class paradigm is not universal. Whereas a farmer in Britain was perhaps more of a country gentleman farmer and employer- even if he rented the land from a landowner, the Italian contadino working on the land of a latifondista was more like a medieval serf- and this is within living memory. I also notice that on a vernacular level there are differences. When I speak to my Dutch friend about class, he has a very different view on it and seems not to be able to "see" the class differences that others might! Does this lend credence to the addage of the Netherlands being the country with the "richest poor" and the "poorest rich"?

I know it is a "sacred cow" but this whole idea of class struggle in my opinion has lost sight of a few factors:-
1. Classes and the idea of class change- can we really apply the definitions and terminology that was used between 150 and 200 years ago?
2. As we move further into the 21st century we will see even greater "technologisation" of traditional "industrial" work- factory workers becoming techinicians etc, mechanisation and the like. Who was it who went so far as to see that the working class was defunct and that robots were the future proletariat? Where will that leave the "working class".
3. The academic and popular/vernacular views of class do not correspond either. The class war, which in my opinion should be a war against class, i.e. a divisive and inegalitarian system often becomes a war between classes as such and thus re-enforces the system- philosophically speaking.

Isn't it time perhaps that less emphasis was placed on social-class all over the place and more on the common goals of creating an egalitarian and non-profit driven, non-capitalistic society in which class would be de facto meaningless and thus eventually benefit everyone?

Right, I now people will probably pull this to bits, but I would be interested to here different views. :)

[black_tambourine]

Point by point:

Education - Nobody on the left proposes this as a basis for the class system. It is simply acknowledged that the level and quality of education one has access to is usually in direct proportion to class position, at least to a certain upper-level cutoff point (e.g. the difference in education prospects between the upper tier of salaried "professionals" and the big bourgeoisie properly speaking is probably not all that different).

Income - Exactly the same objection applies as in the case of education. The Marxian definition of class is not based on income, but it is acknowledged that the level of income is, in most cases, directly proportional with class position. And what is your definition of "skilled tradesman"? An electrician? A contracted plumber such as the formerly famous Joe? Because professions along these lines are not considered "working-class" at all in the Marxian analysis. And the example of the football player is irrelevant for precisely the reasons you stated - that it does not happen often enough to have any effect on class structure as a whole. Perhaps you could help us out by defining just what you think Marx's idea of class was.

As for members of the bourgeoisie not subscribing to bourgeois ideas - surprise, human beings have intellectual free agency! It's just that in most cases, the bourgeoisie choose to espouse the ideas that are in their objective class interest.

And please don't tell me you are using the tired, idiotic canard of " came up from a log cabin, and so can you!" to deny the existence of social stratification. At this point you're getting beyond even liberal pusillanimity and may as well subscribe to the [I]National Review and be done with it. Apart from all of the blatant empirical factors that militate against social mobility (unequal access to education and social services, endogenous disincentives for saving at lower income levels, high barriers to entry for any would-be capitalist "starting out small", the fact that you can't get that fucking much done in the way of personal development if you spend the better part of your day, week in, week out, doing degrading, mindless, physicially deleterious menial labor under the boot of someone who, if not for the value of your labor-power, would not care if you lived or died, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.), there is the structural problem of capitalist economy as a whole: capital needs labor, needs a vast pool of human beings that are divorced from the means of production and are politically disempowered, so as to be a ready source for surplus-value and thus profit. Modern capitalism requires socioeconomic stratification by its very nature, and will achieve it by hook or by crook. Capitalism without stratification, a perfectly competitive Smithian/Proudhonian utopia of small artisans and shopkeepers, would require rolling back standards of living to the eighteenth century - it would simply not be compatible with the level of the productive forces in the present-day economy.

Now, in isolated cases, such as the social-democratic nations of Scandanavia and the like, one can have a minimum of the required stratification, thanks to a fortuitous convergence of factors such as a historically strong and centralized labor movement, a skill-intensive economy focusing on value-added goods, and a bank-centric financial system that emphasizes long-term viability of productive firms over short-term profitability. However, even in these cases the existence of stratification was undeniable in the best of times (Private ownership of the means of production has actually been more concentrated [divided among fewer people] in Sweden than in the U.S.!) and is steadily getting more evident, as the need to compete with the more optimally exploitative neoliberal model asserts itself.

Did you ever stop and think that the difference between a British and Italian tenant farmer may have been more due to, I don't know, uneven development between national economies? The feudal economy, along with the peasantry, had all but vanished in England by the 18th century. All of the abject poverty was thus concentrated among the urban working class. In Italy, not so much. There you go.


I know it is a "sacred cow" but this whole idea of class struggle in my opinion has lost sight of a few factors:-
1. Classes and the idea of class change- can we really apply the definitions and terminology that was used between 150 and 200 years ago?
2. As we move further into the 21st century we will see even greater "technologisation" of traditional "industrial" work- factory workers becoming techinicians etc, mechanisation and the like. Who was it who went so far as to see that the working class was defunct and that robots were the future proletariat? Where will that leave the "working class".
3. The academic and popular/vernacular views of class do not correspond either. The class war, which in my opinion should be a war against class, i.e. a divisive and inegalitarian system often becomes a war between classes as such and thus re-enforces the system- philosophically speaking.

1. Aside from coming up with a more expanded and complex definition of the working-class which includes parts of the service sector (the growth of which was entirely contingent on the "old" productive sector of the economy, and which is exploited in exactly the same fashion), yes.
2. This has been discussed at length elsewhere. As long as there is uneven development, and the possibility of falling rates of profit, there will always be human beings in the work force. And even if things were taken to this level, you would still have a class system - the bourgeoisie and a whole bunch of lumpens.
3. This makes no sense. Workers organizing and asserting themselves politically actually makes them more oppressed? What? How many feel-good slogans about "one big family" and "all in the same gang" and "join hands" should workers inject into their political program to avoid this fell cycle of "reinforcement"? Do tell!


Isn't it time perhaps that less emphasis was placed on social-class all over the place and more on the common goals of creating an egalitarian and non-profit driven, non-capitalistic society in which class would be de facto meaningless and thus eventually benefit everyone?

Yeah, we all know how well moral persuasion like this has worked against the ruling class in the past. Oh, Mr. Pinochet, please don't overthrow us! Our vision is so very beautiful!

[ComradeMan]

To Black Tambourine:-

I don't deny most of your points, however I was looking at the traditional class paradigms that are given in many sources and stating why I felt they did not work, which you also negate to an extent in your response, however I feel that your critiicism is aimed as if they were my points exclusively. At some level it as if you were disagreeing with me through disagreeing with what I am also challenging... if you see what I mean:confused:

Education - Nobody on the left proposes this as a basis for the class system. It is simply acknowledged that the level and quality of education one has access to is usually in direct proportion to class position, at least to a certain upper-level cutoff point (e.g. the difference in education prospects between the upper tier of salaried "professionals" and the big bourgeoisie properly speaking is probably not all that different).

Right, we have an interesting point- you state the level of education one has access to whereas many sources seem to indicate the level of education attained, therefore we have one of those small but vital differences which change a view of things. I remind you that I did not say that people on the left stated this but was rather drawing on the paradigms given.

As for members of the bourgeoisie not subscribing to bourgeois ideas - surprise, human beings have intellectual free agency! It's just that in most cases, the bourgeoisie choose to espouse the ideas that are in their objective class interest.

What exactly are bourgeois ideas? No one has ever been able to define bourgeois to me without resorting to vernacular definitions of class which are inherently flawed. In fact bourgeois ideas have been identified as progressive values such as respect for non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy and gender equality and given the amount of leftwing thinking that has come out of the so-called hated bourgeois and petite-bourgeoisie classes it leaves me wondering to be honest. The list is not just a few people here and there, but many, many figures.

This is my problem, now we are talking about values and not necessarily socio-economic ideas. It seems the academic and vernacular definitions of class are being blurred! Damn you, you, you CLASS BLURRER!!!:D

Did you ever stop and think that the difference between a British and Italian tenant farmer may have been more due to, I don't know, uneven development between national economies? The feudal economy, along with the peasantry, had all but vanished in England by the 18th century. All of the abject poverty was thus concentrated among the urban working class. In Italy, not so much. There you go.

Yes I did, and the reasons are many but that does not change the outcome nor the problem in defining class by the paradigms and systems I was challenging.

you can't get that fucking much done in the way of personal development if you spend the better part of your day, week in, week out, doing degrading, mindless, physicially deleterious menial labor under the boot of someone who, if not for the value of your labor-power, would not care if you lived or died,

This varies from geographically and there is no norm we can apply from one country to another. However in Britain for example, there is free public education until the age of 18, libraries, museums and galleries are free to all. There are plenty of schemes to help people and those who are at the lower end of the income scale can receive assistance in gaining tertiary qualifications. In Italy the situation is much the same despite recent attempts by government to cut back further more.:( I don't know what the US situation is, can't comment. Obviously in the developing world the story changes again from place to place.

This makes no sense. Workers organizing and asserting themselves politically actually makes them more oppressed? What? How many feel-good slogans about "one big family" and "all in the same gang" and "join hands" should workers inject into their political program to avoid this fell cycle of "reinforcement"? Do tell!

What makes no sense? Academic and vernacular definitions of class are not the same? Traditional academic paradigms draw on levels of income and education whereas vernacular definitions draw on perceptions of social status according to all kinds of things, even one's accent or the use of the word "pardon"- again, this is the point I was trying to get at.

In terms of a 21st century future the idea of "worker" will change- what we are talking about is an uneven distribution of power and wealth yet I am sure the idea of the Marxian urban worker I think will lose relevance as we move into a more techonological society. You are indeed correct in saying that there will always be workers but then, who do you class as a worker, or do you look at things from the point of view that anyone who works for a salary (salariat) or wage (proletariat) is a worker? The definitions are not clear and vary.

Workers organising themselves politically and asserting themselves is indeed part of a social revolution, but it is not the only part- perhaps this is where we differ. This also depends of course on whether you support the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat or not- a divisive issue in itself. Futhermore, where does this leave the state bourgeoisie of a Marxist society and all those who are not viewed as proletariat or salariat? In addition I suppose this depends on whether you look at this from a purely Marxist point of view, or perhaps an anarchist or even functionalist point of view. They all differ in their terminology and not make them easy to apply in real life analysis of complex human society.

Okay, if we take the traditional idea of the class struggle (pasted from Wiki:)):-

Labour (the proletariat or workers) includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labour power and being paid a wage or salary for their labour time. They have little choice but to work for capital, since they typically have no independent way to survive.

Capital (the bourgeoisie or capitalists) includes anyone who gets their income not from laboir as much as from the surplus value they appropriate from the workers who create wealth. The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers (proletariat).

Right, into the two categories above are a myriad of different class definitions that are not easily defined in monolithic blocks. There has been a criticism in anarchist circles that Marxism focuses too much on the urban worker and ignores the other sections of society that may easily be exploited and fall into the non-capitalist class. Soviet mass-collectivisation of agriculture and its disastrous results did not correspond to the ideas of Lening and Trotsky and if we look at Mao the rural peasant was the true proletariat and not the urban worker.

If we look at the capitalist class too, are we merely dealing with one power group or a far more complex web woven into a socio-economic dynamic along with other dynamics too?

My fundamental points of debate (to which I admit there are no easy answers)
1. Class is not as universal as many people assert and in terms of ideologies developed in industrialised/industrialising Europe may even be open to the criticism of being Eurocentric and thus cloud the real struggle against capitalism which is a global issue.
2. We need perhaps to redefine or analyse what we mean because of the differences in definitions and viewpoints- especially but not exclusively between the various ideological and/or academic points of view and the varying vernacular definitions.
3. The idea of a war on class is not too different to the traditional idea of class struggle however my view is this- a truly classless society would no longer speak about class just as a truly non-racist society would no longer talk about race etc, the terms would become obsolete and meaningless. What I see in practice is often a clouding of the academic definitions and vernacular definitions that leads to hostility between various sections of society who otherwise might be united in the name of a common and good cause.

PS I didn't say I had all the answers, that's why I was asking the question.:)

[black_tambourine]

[Right, we have an interesting point- you state the level of education one has access to whereas many sources seem to indicate the level of education attained, therefore we have one of those small but vital differences which change a view of things. I remind you that I did not say that people on the left stated this but was rather drawing on the paradigms given.


If you try to differentiate between “have access to” and “attained”, you either end up with a tautology (the working class have “attained” less education because they...uh...have less access to it) or a bit of right-wing tripe worthy of a hack like Thomas Sowell or James Q. Wilson (the working class have “attained” less education even though it is equally available to all, because they are lazy and STOOOPID and do not have the proper impetus to achievement as one finds among those who rightfully rule).


See, in the States we have a system wherein public schools are funded primarily through local property taxes – in other words, the wealthier your school district, the more funding the schools will get, and the better they will be. This is why white schools out in the comfy suburbs are usually of relatively good quality, whereas black and Latino schools in the inner city are shit-holes (as are schools in rural poor-white areas). And this doesn't even take into account the obvious fact that members of the upper class can opt out of the public system entirely and enroll their children in exclusive, high-end private schools. (Note that some right-wing demagogues in the U.S. claim that schools in lower-class districts spend more money per student than schools in better-off districts, thanks to federal aid money; however, this conveniently neglects the fact that the vast majority of this “extra” funding goes into special education and dealing with a relatively small number of “problem” students – while by no means a waste of money, it does not go toward improving the overall quality of the school.)


As for university, we have the little question of tuition, which can be prohibitively high even for public universities. Even taking into account things like scholarships and student loans, college still represents a four-year-long forgoing of any substantial source of income (you will be working part-time at best), something which can have drastic implications for your average working person.


Now, the U.S. education system is probably the most naked instance in the “developed” world of educational access being determined by class; however, even in more “progressive” systems such as those in Europe, with free public universities and primary/secondary schools that are funded by national taxes, you still have the problem of a public/private disparity, as well as the fact funds for public education are always in an extremely precarious position vis-a-vis various budgetary austerity measures which are standard procedure for the modern bourgeoisie. (From the standpoint of capital, a work force less apt to possess critical thinking skills or deep knowledge of various subjects is hardly a liability in many cases, and is probably even an asset.) Further, one must take into account the effect of family background on a student's “extra-scholastic” education levels – growing up in an impoverished working-class home is likely a less conducive environment to independent learning, since your parents likely did not get an adequate education themselves, and much of your time is taken up by prematurely assuming adult responsibilities, whereas a privileged bourgeois upbringing with lots of leisure-time and college-degree-holding parents is much more likely to produce a person with a knowledge level above the norm entailed by basic schooling. This is important because, from what I understand, most free public universities in Europe compensate for the fact that they are free by implementing extremely stiff entrance requirements, requirements which those with more extra-scholastic knowledge are more likely to meet.


Really, the only capitalist countries in which you will find more-or-less guaranteed and uniform access to high quality public education, regardless of background, are corporatist and/or social-democratic states like Japan or Sweden, where the high-tech economy requires a highly skilled and knowledgeable work force across the board. Even then, social inequality is still enforced by measures other than access to education: in Japan, for instance, the economy is so rigidly structured that if you do not get accepted into one of a small handful of highly selective universities, you are condemned to be, at best, a wage-slave in one of the keiretsu for quite literally the rest of your life.


What exactly are bourgeois ideas? No one has ever been able to define bourgeois to me without resorting to vernacular definitions of class which are inherently flawed. In fact bourgeois ideas have been identified as progressive values such as respect for non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy and gender equality and given the amount of leftwing thinking that has come out of the so-called hated bourgeois and petite-bourgeoisie classes it leaves me wondering to be honest. The list is not just a few people here and there, but many, many figures.


The “bourgeoisie” is split into two sub-classes, the “big bourgeoisie”, often called the bourgeoisie full stop, who own the means of production, and the petty bourgeoisie, made up mostly of “professionals”, those possessed of a relatively monopolizable and useful skill (doctors, lawyers, professors, etc.) who can thus sell their services at rates higher than a generic worker can sell his labor-power. These “professionals” are the modern-day equivalent to the independent artisan of old.


A short list of bourgeois ideas today would include (I can't believe I have to actually explain this):



Capitalism is good.
If you don't prosper under capitalism it is either your own damn fault (right-liberals) or due to the fact that there are not enough social programs out there to give you a boost (left-liberals).
The profitability of capital under capitalism should be as high as is feasible. (This is the common aim of Friedmanites and Keynesians; they simply disagree on the means.)
Individualism is good.
Collective modes of social existence are either a pipe-dream, a necessary evil, something that should be confined to the “private” sphere, or an encroaching nightmare that must be resisted at all costs.
A certain degree of social inequality is beneficial. (Again, right- and left-liberals simply disagree as to what the correct amount is.)
Military action is justified against those who would make things moderately inconvenient for an imperialist power and the business interests that it represents.

Those are only a few, off the top of my head. As you will notice, they are principles shared by all major political parties in virtually any given capitalist nation. The "positive" ideas you cite are so vague as to make any class attribution a lost cause.


Yes I did, and the reasons are many but that does not change the outcome nor the problem in defining class by the paradigms and systems I was challenging.

Yes it does. The reason for the income disparity is the difference between the respective economic structures of the two countries, not any fuzziness in the definition of class. Besides, the fact that there can be great income differentials within the rural petty-bourgeoisie of even one nation was acknowledged by Marx himself and later expounded on in great detail by Lenin (The Development of Capitalism in Russia).


This varies from geographically and there is no norm we can apply from one country to another. However in Britain for example, there is free public education until the age of 18, libraries, museums and galleries are free to all. There are plenty of schemes to help people and those who are at the lower end of the income scale can receive assistance in gaining tertiary qualifications. In Italy the situation is much the same despite recent attempts by government to cut back further more. I don't know what the US situation is, can't comment. Obviously in the developing world the story changes again from place to place.


Here's a nice rule of thumb for applying this from “one country to another” - in a “developed” country, the situation is bad. In a “developing” country, the situation is exponentially worse, so bad that you can barely wrap your head around it. I have already addressed the question of education, and the fact that job training programs have a limited capacity for clients and are usually first on the budgetary chopping block ain't incidental to the system, pal. And you have got to be fucking kidding me about the “libraries, museums, and galleries” bit. First of all, that isn't even the case much of the time in the First World – I grew up in a rural town without so much as a bookstore, and I'm sure the ghetto in Detroit is just teeming with concert halls and swank coffeehouses. Second, I would guess the level of personal development one gets solely from hanging out at these places is not proportionally very high. Creativity requires sustained communal discourse and the better part of a day's dedication. Third, put yourself in the shoes of someone who has just come home from a shit job with negligible pay. Even assuming that you still have free time left after getting family concerns and the like squared away, which are you more likely to do with that free time:


A) Amble on down to the Mondrian exhibit at the local gallery (since your underfunded education has surely done a bang-up job in giving you the theoretical underpinnings to appreciate that guy), despite the fact that none of your friends are into Mondrian, there is no immediately evident way in which this will improve the state of things, and that any profound thoughts incurred in taking in the exhibit will probably just make you all the more acutely aware of your marginalized condition


or


B) Stay home, watch TV, and drink, which will at least help you forget that you have to go back to the same shit job tomorrow


...hmm?


What makes no sense? Academic and vernacular definitions of class are not the same? Traditional academic paradigms draw on levels of income and education whereas vernacular definitions draw on perceptions of social status according to all kinds of things, even one's accent or the use of the word "pardon"- again, this is the point I was trying to get at.


What made no sense was your non-point about how workers getting together and asserting themselves as a class will only “reinforce the class system” and thus make workers more oppressed, or something. I get the impression that you were ham-fistedly trying to re-adapt the old “violence in response to violence just begets more violence” epigram to this situation, and failed. The rest of what I think on political strategy is irrelevant, as that is not the issue of this debate.


In terms of a 21st century future the idea of "worker" will change- what we are talking about is an uneven distribution of power and wealth yet I am sure the idea of the Marxian urban worker I think will lose relevance as we move into a more techonological society. You are indeed correct in saying that there will always be workers but then, who do you class as a worker, or do you look at things from the point of view that anyone who works for a salary (salariat) or wage (proletariat) is a worker? The definitions are not clear and vary.

Workers organising themselves politically and asserting themselves is indeed part of a social revolution, but it is not the only part- perhaps this is where we differ. This also depends of course on whether you support the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat or not- a divisive issue in itself. Futhermore, where does this leave the state bourgeoisie of a Marxist society and all those who are not viewed as proletariat or salariat? In addition I suppose this depends on whether you look at this from a purely Marxist point of view, or perhaps an anarchist or even functionalist point of view. They all differ in their terminology and not make them easy to apply in real life analysis of complex human society.

Okay, if we take the traditional idea of the class struggle (pasted from Wiki):-

Labour (the proletariat or workers) includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labour power and being paid a wage or salary for their labour time. They have little choice but to work for capital, since they typically have no independent way to survive.

Capital (the bourgeoisie or capitalists) includes anyone who gets their income not from laboir as much as from the surplus value they appropriate from the workers who create wealth. The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers (proletariat).

Right, into the two categories above are a myriad of different class definitions that are not easily defined in monolithic blocks. There has been a criticism in anarchist circles that Marxism focuses too much on the urban worker and ignores the other sections of society that may easily be exploited and fall into the non-capitalist class. Soviet mass-collectivisation of agriculture and its disastrous results did not correspond to the ideas of Lening and Trotsky and if we look at Mao the rural peasant was the true proletariat and not the urban worker.



Others and myself have discussed the complexities of the modern First World class system in a thread on the Kasama boards (in the Third World the picture is much less complex, much closer to the most basic Marxian dichotomies). You can read it here: h t t p: / / z 1 1 . i n v i s i o n f r e e . c o m / K a s a m a _ T h r e a d s / i n d e x . p h p ? s h o w t o p i c = 8 8 6 (sorry 'bout the spaces, I can't post links thanks to my under-25 post count.) What matters is that a majority of the population in any given “developed” country still falls into the elementary category of “labor” as defined by the wiki entry. The intermediate categories between labor and capital can at least be roughly indexed according to which of the two poles they have a greater affinity toward. As for Marx's own shortcomings on specifics of the class issue, those have been more than adequately addressed by Mao, Fanon, et al, and none of their theoretical innovations alter the centrality of class itself in Marxian analysis.


FINALLY,


My fundamental points of debate (to which I admit there are no easy answers)
1. Class is not as universal as many people assert and in terms of ideologies developed in industrialised/industrialising Europe may even be open to the criticism of being Eurocentric and thus cloud the real struggle against capitalism which is a global issue.
2. We need perhaps to redefine or analyse what we mean because of the differences in definitions and viewpoints- especially but not exclusively between the various ideological and/or academic points of view and the varying vernacular definitions.
3. The idea of a war on class is not too different to the traditional idea of class struggle however my view is this- a truly classless society would no longer speak about class just as a truly non-racist society would no longer talk about race etc, the terms would become obsolete and meaningless. What I see in practice is often a clouding of the academic definitions and vernacular definitions that leads to hostility between various sections of society who otherwise might be united in the name of a common and good cause.




To assert that the idea of class may be “Eurocentric” is just laughable. Go to fucking Mexico City or Nairobi or Dhaka, look at the miles and miles of slums and shantytowns, and then look at the opulent and hermetically-sealed kingdoms in which the nations' business classes ensconce themselves. Look at the governments that are caricatures of corruption and unresponsiveness when dealing with ordinary people, but do capital's bidding without fail, even letting representatives of multinational corporations draft their goddamn constitutions. You have a lot to learn if you have ever seriously entertained such nonsense as class being “Eurocentric”.
Well, yeah. And by arguing, that's what we're doing.
Again, well, yeah. But the bourgeoisie ain't gonna just disappear when their parties get voted out of power, now are they?