File spoon-archives/marxism-feminism.archive/marxism-feminism_1997/marxism-feminism.9710, message 37


Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 12:38:09 -0400
From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol-AT-jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-FEM: Feminist mailing lists


At 12:32 PM 10/22/97 -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:

>I am almost always disturbed by the appearance of the term "middle class"
>in Marxist discourse; I don't think there is any group in the developed
>capitalist world that this label fits.

I fully agree.  I just used it as a stock phrase without thinking much of
it.  Apologies.

On a related, point, in your posting you seem to distinguish professionals
from working class.  I would argue that professionals are working class,
unless they hold property right to the intellectual commodity they produce.
Thus, a PhD toiling in a corporate research lab is as proletarian as a
person with a HS diploma on the shop floor or at the typewiter.  A professor
who hires grad students and RAs and then packages the product of their work
into a book that he publishes under his/her name (i.e. claiminng exclusive
property rights) is as capitalist as any other factory owner who hires
labor, and expropriates its product to sells it.

Regards,




wojtek sokolowski 
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
sokol-AT-jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax:   (410) 516-8233




   

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