File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0103, message 49


From: "Chris Wright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Fw: whoo-hoo!! middle class again... Re: AUT: Re: empire & globalization, was... 
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 23:01:03 -0600


> Well, I also get a stronger resolution... but just the opposite :)
>
> > i find it really funny that i'm more-or-less
> > predictable on this issue, tho i have to say that
> > evertime this conversation comes up i get something
> > out of it. of course, that something tends to be a
> > stronger resolution that the middle class does not
> > exist (thus my move, if noitced, that i know longer
> > even argue for a mediating layer... more on this
> > below). hee hee... oh well... onward!
> >
> >
> > > After all, why should big capital take risks
> > > in these areas when it
> > > can let petty bourgeois take the risks
> >
> > the distinction between "bourgeois" and "petty
> > bourgeois" is something i've never quite grasped.
> > after all "pettry bourgeois" just means little
> > bourgeois... that is: little capitalist. so, i've
> > never figured out why little capitalists are seperated
> > from big capitalists class-wise. it seems to me that
> > little capitalists would be those on the low end of
> > the bourgoisie proper, and not some class in and of
> > itself.
>
> Well, I separate them for relatively simple reasons:
> First, petty bourgeois refers to the fact that the exploiter cannot
survive
> without also working, whereas a capitalist gets by without having to work
> (they may work, but as someone put it, they don't have to).  The petty
> bourgeois has to labor alongside the workers they employ (or they may not
> even employ other workers, just working themselves to death on their own
> property.)
>
> Second, while wealth is not totally the issue, it does play a part.  The
> living standards of most petty bourgeois are similar to most working class
> people.  As such, that impacts the extent of their privileges.  To claim a
> position for such people in the "ruling class" means the taqueria owner in
> my neighborhood has been lumped with Bill Gates (as someone else pointed
out
> quite percpetively).  Rather, such people clearly have access to some
> privileges and a mode of functioning in relation to labor that is
> exploitative, but at the same time, they can be just as squeezed,
> overworked, impoverished, as almost any worker.  Hence, middle class.
> Hence, the contradictory attitudes of the middle class.
>
> > especially when you begin to consider class interests.
> > that is: the interests of the little capitalist does
> > not differ drastically from the big capitalists...
> > only in the fact that the little capitalist wants to
> > be a big capitalist, and the big capitalist wants to
> > stay a big capitalist. but ultimately this means that
> > they both want to be a big capitalist.
>
> Actually, many middle class people I know do NOT want to be big
capitalists.
> At least no more so than most working class people.  Often, they just want
> to be left alone to do their own thing, but it is very hard for them to
> remain independent.  Big capital squeezes them competitively in many ways,
> such as the big grocery chains against small supermarkets or cafes vs.
> Starbucks.  And direct changes that hurt working class people can demolish
> middle class elements.  Layoffs in auto in the 1980's effected 3-4 people
> for every layed off autoworker (that is the low end estimate.)  So the
small
> business people have a definite interest in seeing more wealth come to
> working class people in certain situations (as long as it is not their
> employees, eh?)  That alone shows their contradictory interests.
>
> > also: the little capitalist does not want to overthrow
> > capitalism, but instead wants to competitavely get to
> > the top, and so does not occupy the position of former
> > middle classes. which means that they are certainly
> > not a class by themsevles in terms of class struggle.
>
> Well, no one ever claimed that the middle class wants to overthrow
> capitalism.  The whole point is that they find themselves trapped in the
> middle and will be pulled along by either one class or the other, with no
> independent political course.  However, the lower sections of the middle
> class have more reasons to be attatched to the health and welfare of the
> working class.  In fact, in certain situations, the middle class can be
more
> hostile to big capital or at least more adversely effected as a social
> layer, by crises.  This had a lot to do with fascism's mass base in the
> petty bourgeoisie.
>
> > > In fact
> > > capital can fail to penetrate certain areas because
> > > it cannot make what
> > > people want, because working class people reject it
> > > in favor of a local
> > > shop.
> >
> > i'm not entirely sure how this would mean that
> > "capital [has] fail[ed] to penetrate certain areas"...
> > to me it seems pretty clear that capital is there in
> > force: as (a) small capitalist(s).
> I should have said "big capital", since clearly the capital-labor relation
> applies here.  However, I think my point stands: big capital does not find
a
> sufficient profit everywhere where profit can be made, and that provides
> space for the middle class (so agribusiness has taken over some kinds of
> farming, but many independent farmers, including those who hire laborers,
> continue to exist, while corporations prefer to sell seed, manure,
> equipment, etc. without being directly involved in the risks associated
with
> a bad harvest.)
>
> > > 2.  We have management and politicians and
> > > professionals of all sorts. Why
> > > do I call these people middle class or petty
> > > bourgeois?  They are rarely
> > > independent business owners.  They are usually
> > > salaried, can have horrible
> > > working conditions, lousy lives, make less than many
> > > workers (though I have
> > > never seen a manager who makes less than the workers
> > > they manage, and if it
> > > happens, it is very rare), etc.  But they do
> > > something important, they have
> > > an important place because the capitalist class, all
> > > 1% of the population of
> > > it, cannot rule directly.  They do it through
> > > intermediaries, through a
> > > middle class.
> >
> > again, i'm not clear on how this would create an
> > intermediary class. why aren't these rulers-by-proxy
> > ruling class? that is: i can't see how they are
> > "rulers-by-proxy", and think they represent the
> > section of the bourgeoisie that does the actual
> > ruling.
>
> Again, this term 'ruling class'.  I have a real problem with that term
> because I am talking about the capitalist class, not some generic 'ruling
> class'.  As I said before, Marx uses the term to refer in a broad sense to
a
> situation with multiple propertied classes sharing power.  However, here
we
> are talking about the capitalist class.  To call cops capitalists could
not
> be more off base.  As I take your usage, ruling class becomes a hangover
> from Althusser and Poulantzas, since Poulantzas, using the same logic,
> identified a 'political class' separate from the capitalist class, whose
> existence was predicated on 'ruling', on control of the state apparatus.
> But this is a rather radical departure from Marx and reflects Poulantzas'
> structuralism.
>
> > and before we can go on, we have to understand what is
> > meant by "professional"... i assume you mean: doctors,
> > lawyers and other such folks. and again: i don't see
> > how these folks are not working class. the only
> > argument could be one of their priviledge (if they
> > have any) in the system, and we've already basically
> > ruled this out as a means, by itself, to understand
> > class.
>
> Well, as I said a while back, doctors more and more fall into the working
> class, especially with the HMO-ification of healthcare.  But no one
> "profession" is often entirely middle class.  "Profession" is a fairly
> subjective term that generally refers to jobs dominated by intellectual,
> rather than manual, labor with a relatively high level of education and
the
> appearance of (or actually) greater autonomy.  Professional, in the sense
I
> use, includes that set of conepts, but also aims at those layers who
provide
> services which mediate the capital-labor relationship, such as lawyers.
But
> it is slang at best, and I admit that readily.  Some "professionals" are
> working class people.
>
> > now: doctors and lawyers and such who own their own
> > practice, or are partners in a practice, i would say
> > are capitalists (sometimes small, and, as in the case
> > of lawyers who are partners in a large firm, sometimes
> > big). but i can not see how merely being a doctor or a
> > lawyer makes one not working class.
>
> Agreed, see above.
>
> > > The middle class is the social class
> > > whose role, whose
> > > existence gets determined by their relation to the
> > > capital-labor relation:
> > > they mediate that relation, making it indirect,
> > > bureaucratic, etc.  Whether
> > > or not they always do that successfully or are aware
> > > of doing it is
> > > irrelevant.  They do it.
> >
> > and this is what i don't see. i don't see how they are
> > in a mediating position. it seems to me that they
> > comprise the largest section of the ruling class, and
> > their job is to do the ruling. to filter our view of
> > the capital-labor relation thru the spectacle of
> > bureaucracy, etc.
>
> Well, you just said the same thing, except that since you don't see them
as
> a middle class, you don't see them as mediating.  Of course, I disagree
with
> your use of the term 'ruling class', and that is important to this
> discussion.  Also, their job is not just to rule: lawyers do not rule,
they
> mediate the relations between workers and bosses (contracts, for example),
> workers and the state (criminal, civil, and marital law, for example), but
> also between ALL people and the state or between capitalists.  In that
> sense, they really mediate.  Union officials, priests, cops, judges,
> managers and so on, all do the same thing.  In a certan sense, they are
all
> bureaucrats in so far as they mediate between people and "institutions"
> (representing crystallized forms of the capital-labor relation.)
>
> > > Now commie00 suggests that these people are part of
> > > the ruling class.  Aside
> > > from the imprecision of this term, commie00 does not
> > > reckon with Marx's
> > > usage.  Back in his day, Marx had to recognize that
> > > the capitalist class had
> > > to share power with slavholders and feudal
> > > aristocracies.  The term ruling
> > > class or ruling classes allowed Marx to encompass a
> > > group of class all
> > > hostile to the oppressed, to peasants and workers.
> > > Today, capitalists are
> > > certainly the dominant section of the propertied
> > > classes.  So is ruling
> > > class even a useful term?
> >
> > its useful precisely to point out that the job of a
> > large section (i'd say the largest section) of the
> > ruling class is to do the ruling.
> >
> > what we have to recognize here is that the internal
> > relations of the ruling class are also hierarchical.
> > just as the internal relations of different parts of
> > the working class are hierarchical.
> >
> > there are those sections of the ruling class who give
> > orders to those who give us orders, just as there are
> > sections of the working class (such as teachers) whose
> > job it is to discipline sections of the working class
> > (students).
> >
> > on this kind of mediation, i give you harry cleaver's
> > bit on it from reading capital poltically:
> >
> > "But what does it mean to say that capital intervenes
> > as a mediating force everywhere? In the examples just
> > given, we find that the mediating entity which I am
> > calling capital ranges from money to the state to
> > groups of workers. This raises an issue discussed in
> > the Introduction which must be re-emphasized here for
> > such assertions to make sense, namely, that these
> > mediating entities are all moments of capital itself.
> > While seeing money as capital is perhaps not difficult
> > (we will deal with that in the next section), seeing
> > the state, or particular segments of the working
> > class, as capital is more problematic. Earlier, I
> > emphasized the point that the working class is part of
> > capital, is capital, just as capital is not just one
> > pole but includes, is, the working class -- at least
> > as long as the working class is functioning as
> > labor-power, as
> > long as it is working. Thus, one part of the working
> > class can mediate as capital since in that role it is
> > capital. For example, men mediate the relation between
> > capital (industry or the state which pays the wage)
> > and women in their role as housewives. Capital (K ) -
> > waged men (M ) - unwaged women (W ) -- each of these
> > three
> > elements is a part of capital, but each plays a
> > different role: capital imposes work (in exchange for
> > income), men are waged workers in factory or office,
> > women are unwaged workers in the home. Each of the
> > elements mediates the other two in different ways.
> > There is K-M-W, but there are also K-W-M and M-K-W.
> > The three elements make up a totality -- a subtotality
> > of capitalist society but a totality nevertheless. In
> > the first case, K-M-W, men mediate capital's relation
> > to their housewives by making them work to reproduce
> > the men's labor-power (by cooking, washing, making
> > love, etc.) and by absorbing the brunt of women's
> > revolt
> > against their condition. In the second case, K-W-M,
> > women mediate men's relation to capital. One way is
> > through shopping, in which the real equivalence of the
> > money wage to the means of subsistence is made clear
> > -- women have to stretch the buck, and if they do it
> > poorly (given prices, etc.) they are blamed instead of
> > capital. In the third case, M-K-W, capital mediates
> > the relation between men and wives through marriage
> > laws, birth control, and so on. Here capital appears
> > as the
> > state with its laws and police force.
> >
> > This same kind of mediation is widely used by capital
> > in its division of other segments of the working
> > class. Let us briefly examine two other well-known
> > cases: the
> > school and the use of immigrant labor. In the case of
> > the school, capital may be represented by the
> > administration (A ), whose problem is to organize its
> > relations with two groups of workers: students (S )
> > and professors (P ). The usual hierarchical
> > organization of the school places professors in the
> > middle, mediating between the students and the school
> > administration A-P-S. This role is at least twofold.
> > The professor must receive the administration
> > guidelines, rules, grading system, and such, and
> > impose them on the student. On the other hand,
> > teachers must absorb any student discontent with their
> > "education." Sometimes, in the case of teacher strikes
> > or periods of layoffs and job shortage, capital tries
> > to use the students to discipline the professors:
> > A-S-P. Or this may occur occasionally when students
> > intervene to protect a popular teacher from dismissal.
> > In general, the administration mediates the relations
> > between students and professors (P-A-S ) through its
> > various institutional structures, from class structure
> > to the use of police. In the case of immigrant labor,
> > there is the well-known attempt by capital to pit
> > immigrant
> > workers (I ) against local workers (L ). Employers (E
> > ) try to use immigrant demands for jobs and income to
> > weaken trade unions dominated by local workers
> > (E-I-L ). At the same time the local wage workers are
> > placed between the income demands of the immigrants
> > and capital (E-L-I ). Of course, in all of this
> > capital
> > plays its own role -- for example, by structuring the
> > relations between immigrants and local workers in both
> > factory and community -- so we have L-E-I."
> >
> > note the use of the state-as-capital in the mediation
> > between men and wimmin. same with "employers" (who
> > could also easily be managers) in the last bit on
> > immigrant labor. note that at no time does a middle
> > class enter to do this mediation. either members of
> > the working class are pressed into it (i.e. A-P-S), or
> > sections of the ruling class do it directly (i.e.
> > M-K-W, where K = the state).
> >
> > ((since cleaver makes it clear that "capital" contains
> > both classes, this could all be turned around, i
> > suppose... but when capital "appears" as the state. it
> > seems to me the implication is that the state is a
> > manifestation of the ruling-class-as-capital. but
> > maybe i'm reading it wrong.))
> >
> > > First, how did Marx understand who a capitalist was?
> > >  A capitalist seemed to
> > > be an owner of capital.  Of course, a capitalist
> > > also existed as the human
> > > embodiment of one end of an antagonistic social
> > > relationship: the
> > > capital-labor relation.  Capital appears as
> > > alienated labor power, the
> > > separation of the producer from the means of
> > > production, and a capitalist as
> > > the person who 'alienates' that labor power from the
> > > laborer, who extracts
> > > surplus value in the form of commodities and
> > > services (since Marx never
> > > denied the ability of mental labor to produce
> > > surplus value, I find Negri's
> > > 'immaterial labor' immaterial.)
> >
> > but a lot of work was done since marx on the
> > composition of the ruling class as it has changed.
> > castoriadis, if i understand him correctly, even went
> > so far as to argue that ownership means nothing now,
> > and that the class distinction is between "order
> > givers" and "order takers".
>
> Catoriadas, IMO, both hits an interesting point, but also partially
> misunderstands Marx's notion of capitalist property or private property.
> Marx uses the term in two senses: juridical private property, which
> bourgeois law recognizes, and class property, that is, the property
> belonging to capital as a whole, the state of property as separated from
the
> producers, which bourgeois law has no concept of.  In that sense,
capitalist
> property (productive property) is always property of the entire class
> internationally because it does not matter which capitalist owns it (or if
a
> particular, individual, juridical capitalist owns it at all), but merely
> that that property exists in separation, as totally alienated from, the
> producers.  How else can one imagine capitalism where no capitalist class,
> where no juridically-defined, individual owners of property, exists?  But
> what else is 'state capitalism', as some people would call it?  So
> Castoriadas is correct that private property in the juridically recognized
> sense does not matter, but he does not go deep enough into Marx to see
that
> another kind of private property exists, capital as the private property
of
> the entire capitalist class, indifferent to any owner, but totally fixated
> on the separation of the producer from the means of production.
>
> > this extremism seems like a mistake, since there are
> > obviously still owners.* and they still have ultimate
> > say. but the truth in this, i think, is we have to
> > include within the ruling class those who control.
> > that would be: politicians, managers, etc.
>
> Again, I would say I disagree with the term 'ruling class' being used in
> this way.  It sidesteps the problem of the capital-labor relation in favor
> of an empirical approach to who 'rules', or rather, who governs.  G.
William
> Domhoff has the same approach.  Rather, the key here lies in the
separation
> of exploitation and domination, of the economic and the political, in
> capitalist society.  That fragmentation flows from the separation of
> exchange from the point of production.  Now, I do not think 'state
> capitalism' is a very stable formation exactly because it depends on the
> relative weakness or even abscence of a coherent capitalist class, a class
> of owners of capital, in any given locale.  However, even if several
states
> have no coherent capitalist class, they no less have coherent capitalist
> social relations because capital operates at the world level, not upon who
> owns and who does not, but on the separation of producers from the means
of
> producing, which forces the issue of the commodification of labor, labor
> markets, exchange, etc.
>
> > *(the situationists sometimes reproduced this mistake,
> > but, it seems to me, only skeptically... however, i
> > think this mistake might be the root of the retreat
> > from class some post-situs have engaged in... esp as
> > they have incorporated the post-modernist mistake of
> > capital-centric thinking by incorporating folks such
> > as baudrillard, foucault, etc. [this is a mistake i
> > think negri runs the risk of in his distinction
> > between empire and multitude, which stinks of
> > camatte's notion that all of humanity is proletarian
> > and capital is running amuck according to its own laws
> > without human agency... of course camatte is based in
> > bordiga who, while useful in some ways, carries with
> > him the capital-centered mistake of the leninists and
> > second international "marxists"... so the mistakes
> > have the same root.])  ((nice aside, eh? =P))
>
> Actually, this aside is relevant, because in many ways, your approach
shares
> with Negri the idea that we have only two great social forces.  Of course,
> Negri has abandoned any notion of working class, IMO, with his term
> 'multitude', and flees from the capital-labor relationship with terms like
> 'mulititude' and 'empire', which really could best be grasped as populist,
> republican (classical bourgeois radical circa the 16th-19th centuries)
> terms.  Of course, that was Spinoza's politics, so this is no mistake that
> he picks up those terms.  But you come perilously close to the same
> approach, I think.
>
> > > To call cops capitalists ruling class, btw, allows
> > > for the misuse of a weak
> > > terminology to escape facing up to the problem of
> > > the middle class.  Cops do
> > > not extract surplus labor from workers, meaning they
> > > can't be capitalists.
> > > Neither do stock traders, slumlords, politicans
> > > (generally), lawyers, or
> > > doctors.  I would even argue that while managers
> > > exist to guarantee the
> > > extraction of surplus value, they don't actually
> > > alienate it.  We alienate
> > > our own labor as a result of having to confront a
> > > separate owner of the
> > > means of production (not a manager.)
> >
> > this seems weak to me. i'm not sure it matters who
> > actually does the alienating. in fact, i doubt that
> > any section of the ruling or working class consciously
> > alienates. alienation is just an effect of class
> > relations.
>
> Conscious alienation is irrelevant.  Relevance comes from understanding
> private, capitalist property in its dual sense, which I did not make
clear,
> so that is my fault.  That owner may or may not be an individual
capitalist,
> it may be the state or a modern corporate group of shareholders.
>
> > hrm... we ARE alienated from the means of production
> > by the fact that we do not own and control them. the
> > owners enact this initial alienation via being owners,
> > and managers reinforce this alienation by being
> > managers.
>
> Yes.
>
> > but this is not the only form of alienation: there is
> > also alienation from control over our lives, which is
> > enacted by politicians and managers and reinforced by
> > owners. meaning: as some experiments have shown, it is
> > perfectly resonable to have worker-control of
> > capitalist institutions which are not owned by the
> > workers.
>
> But alienation from our lives flows from the initial separation of
producers
> from the means of production.  Politicians and managers do not alienate us
> from our lives.  The fact that in order to eat, have shelter, clothing,
etc.
> we have to sell our labor to someone who owns the means of producing, in
> return for a sum of money which may or may not allow us to buy the
products
> produced by our own activity, that relationship alienates us.  All the
other
> losses of control flow from that.  Certainly, we could say that the other
> forms of alienation arise in concert and form a necessary part of
> maintaining that primary separation, but that only tells us that the modus
> operendi of capital is 'separation', fragmentation, fetishization,
> alienation.
>
> The totality, the completeness of our separation, of our alienation, is
what
> makes the working class capable of communism.  Our total negation, our
total
> alienation, is also the source of our possibility for total revolution (a
> dialectic I am sure Negri woud grouse about.)
>
> > as to cops, the question turns into one of
> > composition. cops exist to enforce the rule of
> > capitalism on us. like politicians, their job is one
> > of permenent ruling (tho, they are of course much
> > further down the hierarchical ladder). cops differ
> > from other functionaries of the state, such as welfare
> > shite-workers, because of the permanance of their
> > position, and what that position is: enforcing laws.
> > whereas welfare shite-workers are forced to obey laws
> > in how they give out assistance, which often means
> > being the bearers of bad news, they do not enforce
> > laws. they merely pass on what is handed down by
> > politicians and enforced by cops.
> >
> > so here we have another example of ruling class (in
> > the form of cops) as mediator, versus working class
> > (in the form of the shite-workers) as mediator.
>
> And I would call them both middle class.  Cops mediate with the law, but
> they also directly oppress.  Welfare-shite workers, as you call them,
> mediate the lowers ends of the labor market, especially the reserve army
of
> the unemployed.  How much more mediatory can you get in the interests of
> capital?
>
> > > So i suggest we rethink the idea in terms of the
> > > relation to the separation
> > > of the producer form the means of production, as a
> > > middle class in the sense
> > > of a mediating class standing between.
> >
> > from what i can gather, there is no mediating layer.
> > either sections of the ruling class (such as
> > politicians and union bureaucrats -- and hell, they
> > usually send lackies to actually do the mediating)
> > mediate, or we are pushed into mediating for
> > ourselves.
>
> You can't have it both ways, comrade.  In the paragraph above, you say
they
> mediate.  Now you see no mediation.  In fact, because you are dealing with
a
> nebulous concept of class in your use of the term 'ruling class', it makes
> sense.  But I think that is really the critical issue here.  I see a
> capitalist class that has a certain relation to the alienation of labor
(in
> a sense, they own dead alienated labor) that differs from the middle class
> that mediates that process of accumulation and alienation.
>
> > what i think has happened is that whatever could have
> > been called a "middle class" prior to, say, 1945 has
> > been absorbed into either the ruling class (in the
> > case of small capitalists) or the working class (in
> > the case of doctors, lawyers, acedemics, etc. in
> > general). now, these sections are still maybe the
> > first choice for mediation, since together they can
> > create a gray, blury, overlapping area between the two
> > remaining classes (i know small business owners who
> > have refused to fire anyone, have revolutionary
> > interests, etc. and some doctors, lawyers, and what
> > not become small business owners), but they are not a
> > class, and are merely either the bottom of the ruling
> > class or the top of the working class, depending.
>
> Your dating seems highly arbitrary.  Why post-WWII?  Because it makes the
> student radicals of the 1960's working class?  Maybe you want to point to
> Negri's notion of the social worker (not Tronti or Bologne's, since they
> both defend the notion of a middle class)?  But even Negri argues for that
> as a post-1968 process, locating it in capitalist crisis, understood as a
> social and economic crisis inseparably linked.  Unfortunately, Negri, in
> posing a new class composition already in process, also assumes that
capital
> has already found its way out into Empire, that the crisis is resolved
even
> as it has begun.  Otherwise, I am curious where you get this?  If
anything,
> the middle class gets a massive injection of bodies in the post-WWII
period
> (in the US, England, etc., but earlier elsewhere), as the union
bureaucracy
> solidifies and grows, as the corporate bureaucracies swell to make room
for
> workers who have to be bought off, as Keynsian solutions massively expand
> the state, etc.  I have no doubt that the middle class is reconfigured, as
> part of the response to the power of labor in the 1920's and 1930's.  I
see
> no reason to believe that it ceases to exist.  In that, the burden of
proof
> is on your argument.
>
> Also, I do not understand the stubborn refusal that many people have,
> including people I largely agree with, that being middle class or working
> class or even bourgeois, does not preclude being a communist, feminist,
etc.
> Political beliefs and social class have no one-to-one ratio.  Everyone in
> this society is alienated, fetishized, messed up.  There is no sanctum
> sanctorum.  At best, we can say that certain social classes have
> possibilities or not possibilities.  The capitalist class as a class can
> never escape its dependence on alienated labor, and the working class
cannot
> help but struggle for the end of that relationship.  The middle class
cannot
> help but be torn between them.
>
> But Marxism is not a theory of individual human behaviour, it is a theory
> against society.  To try to sociologically or psychologically determine
why
> any one person in any one class choses these or those politics that seem
> contradictory is like trying to map all the hay in a haystack to show its
> necessary structure.  Chaos theory has a point on this, in so far as
> predicting the patterns of individual atoms makes no sense.  But as Ilya
> Prigogene points out in his book on Chaos theory in science, disorder
gives
> rise to order and back again.  We cannot pinpoint the individual atoms
> (Heisenberg is right about this, even if he is philosophically wrong),
> however, those individual atoms tend to move in more predictable manners
in
> aggregates.  We are, after all, social creatures (this is the sense in
which
> Marx uses the term materialism, btw, not to talk about an objective
material
> world existing outside us, i.e. a crude matterism like Lenin, Plekhanov,
> Engels, etc., but humans as practical-critical, where practical always
> includes social.)  All that to say that one person's political ideas
cannot
> simply be reduced to their belonging to a class and that one's
'occupation'
> should not be thought of as precluding a political position, even one at
> odds with that occupation (though I think you said, some time back, that
> certain occupations tend to make certain politics less likely, and that is
> of course true.)
>
> > and i think it is important to understand how the
> > concept of "middle class" is used as a means to
> > decompose the working class. well-paid white and blue
> > collar workers are told they are middle class in an
> > attempt to seperate them from the rest of the class.
> > they are even seperated out into suburbs and posh
> > (sterile) apartment complexes. people with jobs at all
> > are told they are middle class (abeit "lower middle
> > class", perhaps) to seperate them from "those damn
> > welfare recipiants who are stealing all of our tax
> > money", etc.
>
> Ok, but this is not a sufficient argument.  I know people who call
> themselves capitalists just because they believe in capitalism.  Our
> understanding of class has to be fought for.  We cannot sidestep a thorny
> issue by saying we will just drop the concept or because the concept is
> abused.
>
> > and from the standpoint of working class stratagy, it
> > seems dangerous to me to maintain this notion since it
> > can only reinforce the capitalist argument. this is
> > esp true since most arguments for middle class are
> > going to come down to priviledge and money. that is:
> > what would make them a mediating layer? in what ways
> > are they put into the middle? why do they / would they
> > fight to stay there? etc.
>
> Again, this ignores the degree of damage the middle class can suffer.  It
> also ignores that some people who may not be capitalists are privileged.
I
> think the bigger danger comes from believing that we will have fewer
enemies
> than we do.  This is where the idea that once we get rid of capitalism, we
> won't have any opposition to really worry about.  It underestimates the
> problem and takes on a utopian character.  It ignores the problem of civil
> war, effectively, and the material human basis for attempts at capitalist
> restoration (aside from the 10,000 years of shit we are trying to slough
> off.)
>
> > and i guess i ultimately have a problem with is class
> > being understood on solely economic grounds. power
> > relations are also important, which marx would agree
> > with i think (see his attacks on hierarchy in
> > _grundrisse_). its unfortunate that marx never got to
> > complete _capital_, since what he thinks might be more
> > clear in his discussions on the state, etc. things
> > which are only hinted at in grundrisse and a few other
> > books.
>
> Ah, here's the rub.  It isn't that I am not concerned with power
relations,
> hierarchy, etc.  I think those are critical issues and any political
> practice which is not anti-hierarchical will only reproduce the same old
> shit internally and in political practice.  However, the relation of the
> separation of the producers from the means of producing has a complex
> relationship to the fetishization of social relations that leads to these
> things.  The separation of doing from means of doing transforms "power to"
> into "power over", as John Holloway recently expressed it.  This is not an
> 'economic' approach.  We are not starting from surplus value or even
class.
> We are starting from alienated labor, the specific form (mode of
existence)
> of alienated labor, which gives rise to fetishized human relations, which
> under capital become 'economic', 'political', 'legal', 'religious',
> 'philsophical', 'artistic', 'the state', etc.  Fetishization is the
constant
> recreation of those moments (statification, classification,
commodification.
> monetization, racialization, sexualization, legalization, etc..., which
gets
> uglier and uglier ;) in conflict with our defetishization of those
relations
> in practice and theory.
>
> Note, I use the term alienated labor, but given the way Marx uses the term
> labor, we could comfortably use the term creativity.  So if you put it as
> alienated creativity, and you start from human beings as creative, as
> constantly creating our social world dynamically, to be alienated from our
> creativity is to be alienated from our very species being.  In my opinion,
> denying the existence of the middle class denies the depth of Marx
critique
> of fetishization and mediation (read the Grundrisse again, mediation is
all
> over it.)
>
> > wheeeee....
>
> What he said!
>
> > ====> > commie00
>
> Chris



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