From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: corner store capitalists
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 00:25:51 -0500


> Tahir: I think that the ruling class is made up of big industrial and
financial capitalists, not traders or professionals. Although historically
the former may have emerged from the ranks of the latter, capitalism proper
only came about when merchant capital translated into industrial capital.
The consciouness and aspirations of people who run multi-national
corporations are way removed from that of the petty trader who is just as
aware of his/her limited chances of joining their ranks as the proletarian
is. To sum up, the differences relate to: position within the mode of
production, world view and consciousness, aspirations and lifestyle,
political affiliation and behaviour. These are what I mean by interests. If
you mean something more 'objective' than this, well, I have to say that I
don't think that in the longer run the perpetuation of capitalism is
'objectively' in anyone's interests!

Chris: See, this strikes me as problematic.  Once again we find ourselves in
sociology, not Marxism, trying to come up with 'the definition'.  If we take
capital as a social relation, we certainly have to start from where Marx
started: the separation of the producer from the means of production.  That
is central to the capital-labor relation.  We all fall into that dynamic in
one way or another, even the middle class.  I admit I see the attraction,
from this perspective, of commie00's point.  You lump a whole series of
other issues in then, but they are not relevant (if we take seriously the
idea that the ruling ideas of every epoch are the ideas of the ruling
class).

The question is not 'who is where' or 'who does what', but how do these
different human beings relate to other human beings, in what relationship
are they?  The dominance of industrial capital signified the dominance of
the capital-labor relationship, but it did not do away with mercantile
capital, did it?  Or landed capital?  Capital takes many forms, has many
forms of existence.  The capital-labor relation can appear in all sorts of
ways and almost ever relationship of labor is embedded in relation to
capital.  As such, i think you are barking up the wrong tree.

However, without playing the definition game, we can ask a very simple set
of questions:
Are professionals accumulating capital?  Some, who really do become small
capitalists, but not many.  Are managers accumulating capital?  Some but not
many.  And yet their entire existence is to mediate the relation on all
social levels between the accumulation of capital and the insubordination to
that relation.  IMO, household labor falls into this exactly because this
labor too must be exploited to ensure the reproduction of labor power.
However, i don;t think university students largely fall into this category
because they are generally being prepped for that middle layer (I am not
here speaking of all university students nor community college students, who
are generally preparing to be more skilled labor.)  Small business people?
Some, but not many (and as we have all pointed out, that is an increasingly
small sector.)  State bureacrats?  Some, but not many.  (And this is a very
special instance, as the state already exists as a social relation which
reinforces the separation of the producer from the means of production,
hence states which have no capitalist class as such, no private property
owners in the juridical sensee, but who maintain private property in the
larger sense used by Marx: property in which this separation is maintained
and is a part of total social capital as such.)

Again, the middle class is fluid and in my opinion, a bi-polar approach
gives us a better handle on it than the multi-class approach (even though I
am arguing for multiple classes, but the third class merely as an outgrowth
of the dynamics between capital and labor.)

Cheers,
Chris



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