Read on Twitter
said i was gonna elaborate what i mean here but forgot, lemme take a crack:
1. definitions are never definitive, they're gonna (at best) illuminate one aspect of whatever they refer to, especially with something like "class." https://twitter.com/lakeeater/status/1279185312019820546
1. definitions are never definitive, they're gonna (at best) illuminate one aspect of whatever they refer to, especially with something like "class." https://twitter.com/lakeeater/status/1279185312019820546
2. with above in mind, class is technically about relationship to MoP, that's an important part of it, but it's not necessarily the most important part to emphasize or the essential part always and everywhere
3. the (blurry) distinction between "class" as abstract theoretical category vs historically observable phenomenon makes this even messier
4.this is true WITHIN the marxist tradition too, including Marx, Engels, Lenin: they used the concept of "class," "working class(es)," "proletariat," etc different ways in different contexts. Like Pareto said, "Marx's words are like bats: one can see in them both birds and mice."
5. This is particularly true of Marx's political writings (on the 1848 revolts, 18th Brumaire, etc) where he coins new concepts on the fly without pausing to elaborate their definition, "class fraction/fragment," etc
6. So the question is not "what definition of class is good always and everywhere" but "what does a given definition of class illuminate and what does it leave out? when to use it and why?"
7. this is a good example of one of the limitations of the "relationship to MoP" definition https://twitter.com/paulderokha/status/1279188464743956486?s=20
8. and actually, it already suggests a definition I'd prefer in most situations, which is that "class is defined by relation to capital," particularly because in the historical capitalist world-system there's a lot of different types of capital
9. but even that has the issue of tending towards talking about class as an attribute possessed by individuals, which i think is also misguided (and ultimately liberal) https://twitter.com/nichtdaslicht/status/1279194384026570753?s=20
10. there's no such thing as an individual "proletarian," or at least I'm pretty opposed to talking about it that way. most wage-laborers in the world are not EXCLUSIVELY reliant on wage labor, even now, and they almost all live in households with varied sources of income
11. I like this reply from a locked account as well, and it's making a related point to the above imo: class (at the more concrete, historical level at which political analysis tends to take place) can't be frozen in time or reduced to a single determination (like Rel. to MoP)
12. I'm from a bourgeois family (big landlord, "property management" if you wanna get technical/euphemistic). When I work a shitty summer job at my fancy private school for minimum wage in between quarters, that doesn't make me "proletarian," I'm not "part of the proletariat"
