OK, one more attempt to try and persuade Joel that my understandings of Class hold up.
Firstly, I think the whole 'classification' debate is something of a sideline, playing on teh homophnous quality of 'class'a nd 'classification'. I did think about making a post replacing the word 'class' with teh word 'fish' to referr to teh same refferent, but I opted against that.
However I do want to try and distinguish teh two. Classification is an attempt to create identifiable sets, by reference to common attributes.
Class, in society, is the process by people are assigned to teh productive system, and is more an experiential category, than a classification- one may attempt to classify classes, through rdferrence to some shared similarity or disimilairty (bob knows, tehre are many different ways of trying to calssify social class), but that doesn't detract from teh underlying fact taht classes may exist beyond classification.
Now, to illustrate (and to, I'll admit, bamboozle) let us look to Cricket.
From an 11 man side, roughly some 7 will be Batsmen, with about 4 being bowlders, or a specialist wicket keeper.
Now, all of the players are expected to Bat, however, only those, say, 7, are specialist Batsmen, what they do best is bat, some may be able to bowl a little, they can all field, but they Bat well.
The only way to Spot a Batsmean is to look to the General quality of his play, tehrefore, in that he must bat better than teh bowler tail enders. Some 'all-rounders' may exist to confuse the picture, blurr the point of distinction, but essentially, an object known as 'the batsman', a term guaranteed by his capacity to bat, much as in the same way as money was guaranteed by gold, or kilogrammes by le gradne K, actually exists.
Likewise, although some batsmen call bowl a little, a bowler is identified by his bowling.
Now, batsmen all have different styles, some are left handed, some are right, some like off-leg spinners, some prefer bouncers, some score to long off, some at fine point- some can face shane warne down (Graham Gooch springs to mind), otehrs crumble and quake with fear. Further, they are in competition with each otehr for glory, for teh best personalscore, to make the century.
However, faced with a bowler, they all have the same interests- defend the wicket, hit the ball and score runs. Likewise the bowler is seeking to get them out- their relationship may vary due to the state of the match, to personality, style, personal skill, but always underlying that remains the ultimate logic, the fact that their relationship is defined one against the other, and is ultimately antagonistic.
I hope this demonstrates how I concieve class- a capitalist is guaranteed in his existence by the ownership of capital, he may vary his relations to his workers, but the underlying logic remains..
