Question on Class

[Remus Bleys]

Today, several people all ganged up on me during a debate, and said that class was socially base, that correlated to economics, but doesn't have to do with economics solely.

Also, the people who argue that class is income based.

How do you convince these people of the marxist definition of class?

[Devrim]

Today, several people all ganged up on me during a debate, and said that class was socially base, that correlated to economics, but doesn't have to do with economics solely.

Also, the people who argue that class is income based.

How do you convince these people of the marxist definition of class?

Why would you want to?

Surely communist activity is based around an intervention in working class struggle (i.e. amongst people who already recognise that there is something that unites them in their relationship to the point of production), and not in 'debating'

Devrim

[Remus Bleys]

Why would you want to?

Surely communist activity is based around an intervention in working class struggle (i.e. amongst people who already recognise that there is something that unites them in their relationship to the point of production), and not in 'debating'

Devrim

Because I'm in a school during a debate? And I need self assurance myself...

Also, how are you going to do communist activities when the majority of people aren't class conscious?

[Thirsty Crow]

Today, several people all ganged up on me during a debate, and said that class was socially base, that correlated to economics, but doesn't have to do with economics solely.Marxist and anarchist class analysis doesn't claim that class is solely an issue of the position within production.


Also, the people who argue that class is income based.

There are problems with this approach:

1) it neglects the position people occupy in production (this does not presuppose factory work!) and the significance arising from it; it's as if distribution and consumption were only areas of life where decisive impact can be traced; in other words, these people completely forget about the basis of the phenomena they're describing - production (not only taken in its technical sense, but as in "production of life"; simultaneous production of necessities of life and relations between people)

2) The necessary arbitrariness of the cut off point between income classes

These are off the top of my head. 1) is hugely important.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Marxist and anarchist class analysis doesn't claim that class is solely an issue of the position within production.

What other factors are there?

[Brotto Rühle]

If you have to sell you're labour for a wage to survive, you're a prole. You should delve into class interests as well, whether the "middle" and "poor" working class have the same interests. Whether the wealthiest owner has the same interests as an owner who doesn't make as much.

Relations to the means of production is the basic way to determine class, and it coincides that those divorced from them, which includes service workers, people who shovel snow, etc. do not own a means of production, whether they produce something like a shirt or not. They have the same class interests as a machinist who creates 2x4 from a tree, for both have to sell their labour power to survive.

[Thirsty Crow]

What other factors are there?This is the distinguishing factor. That's for sure. You can pretty much forget about any charge of reductionism since it is necessary to isolate the specific aspects of a process or a phenomenon and show how it is the most important.

Other aspects include working class culture, shared customs, attitudes and ideas, and so on.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Today, several people all ganged up on me during a debate, and said that class was socially base, that correlated to economics, but doesn't have to do with economics solely.

Also, the people who argue that class is income based.

How do you convince these people of the marxist definition of class?

Just clarify what you mean and explain that it's different from how they are viewing it. "In the Marxist view of classes..."

If you need to go further you can say, that an income-based or culture based description is incapable of describing how someone makes their living. Someone with a working class background who becomes a businessman, does not make his/her money they same way that a clerk in a shop or worker in a factory does... the businessman may have the same accent, but he manages, makes the rules while the prols take orders and get wages. For income, a shop-owner might actually take home less than a factory worker at the end of the day, but again, the shop-owner makes their own rules sets their own schedule, employs others potentially and so on; the worker might make more, but again, they can be fired, they take orders from above and must get a wage.

But really I wouldn't insist that non-marxists must hold a marxist view of class, debate practical things and you will probably be able to make your point better than getting into sematic debates over definitions. Just say, "that's not what I mean when I say class... the point is that people who have to survive on a wage from a boss have an interest in X or have potential power to do Y..."

[Lord Hargreaves]

Today, several people all ganged up on me during a debate, and said that class was socially base, that correlated to economics, but doesn't have to do with economics solely.

Also, the people who argue that class is income based.

How do you convince these people of the marxist definition of class?

Yes class is an economic category, but then "the economic" is everywhere....

In HM the economic base is the final determinant of other social, cultural phenomena. The point is surely not that class is "solely" economic, but that understanding class in terms of economic position is a way of illuminating all the other aspects.

If you have to sell your labour for a wage, then you are working class. This is a relation to the market ... your whole person has to assume the form of a commodity in order to survive... but you have to do this because you don't have any access to the means of production. So, class is a relation to the economic base, but it is a very complex dialectical relationship that is extremely difficult to define.

And then there is revolution. When a society is destroying one mode of production and replacing it with another, so then what defines class becomes less about how the economic system subjectifies or interpellates a social group, and more about how a social group constitutes itself as a political actor to change its economic system (and its position within it). Roles are reversed. Given this, it must be false that class is "solely" defined by whatever economic situation a group happens to find itself in.