From: Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com>
Subject: RE: existence claims
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 10:43:57 -0400


Andy wrote:

> Consider the child of a worker. What was the child's intentional action
> that put that child in her/his objective structural position vis-a-vis
> the productive means?

I think there are a couple different issues here.  It's not necessarily a 
person's own intentions that put her/him into a particular structural 
position in society.  That's one reason it's "objective" or intransitive: 
what other people are doing and thinking (or, very importantly, have 
thought or done) is by far the majority of what creates social structures 
and positions.  Few people "choose" to be unemployed, after all.  And a 
child's position vis-a-vis the means of production is like an unemployed 
person's, i.e. separated and dependent on others.  The child's primary 
social position, in any case, is a child--a category or "social class" (if 
you will) that has differed across history and cultures, so I"m not talking 
about a "natural social position."  (Relationships to the means of 
production are not the only type of social position, of course; I hope this 
is criterion is merely an example, not the bottom line!)

The question sounds a lot like "What makes a working-class kid part of the 
working class?", which is a terrifically complex problem, because outside 
of strict marxist terminology, for most people "class" is shaped by a huge 
number of forces, including upbringing, attitude, religion, education, 
style, etc.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce