: I submit for your agreement or dismissal:
: 'Social Class is a function of ones relationship to the means of production'- or, the same thing a different way 'Ones social class is a function of one's position in the relations/system of production.'True, as long as you have not made a priori assumptions regarding the classes to begin with.
: Because I think this, and this alone is the core of our debate, non of this wanky language stuff, this. Do you agree or disagree?
We'll see. You seem to assent to this nominalist function and immediately rescind it when applying 'classifications' to the social sphere and one's relations within society.
: Classification: A system or means of arranging sets.
True.
: Social Class: Ones relations to teh means of production.
Only true providing one has not already made a priori and, thus, experience excluding assumptions regarding essential characteristics of 'social class'.
: Social class is a class in and as much as all terms in language are classes.
Agreed.
: bow,bow,baugh,bow,bow,bowl,bowl.- all the same word, or are they different?
As I said earlier: individual terms are completely irrelevant; what matters is the idea-content contained within our dialog. We could agree to replace 'class' with 'fish'. But then 'social fishes' would still be part of the mind's 'classification' operation and our dialog would be neither worse or better off.
: people are part of the system, no 'one' person is in harge, but each person within the system creates the system, humans make their own history.
If you're referring to a spontaneously evolved system then I agree.
: : But there are infinite number of other social classes that often have much more relevance to how we act in relation to our classifications. For instance, the US textile industry and everyone involved in it is a social class.
: no, I think you are making a serious category error here- Social CLass is a set of things- like peasant, aristocrat, bourgeoise,artisan, priest (They're roughly teh medieval classes).
There are no class sets outside our mind's trial and error method of experimentation and classification.
: You ask Any Brazillian peasant if they are a peasant, they will say yes- now some may grow different crops from others, some may work as a blacksmith, but as a class, they are still peasants. Social Class is not the sysyem of identifying people, or of placing them in sets.
Yes it is, as society grows and evolves classes grow, expand, and transcend former categorizations. And we continuously need to dynamically expand the description of classifications to adequately express the interests and relations that are different and more complex.
: : You are making essentialist assumption regarding the objectivity of the rich/worker view of classes. It possesses some validity; just not overarchingly. Other classifications of class are more valid in different situations.
: I agree, in some situations different prioritis overide, approaching each other as male/female, black/white, barber/barbee, whore/whoremaster. in different situations different identities are predominant, however, only relations to teh emans of production has any relation to how we live, how we make a living and continue to do so.
Well, as I showed earlier (and futher on this post too) the very analysis you give of the 'wage relation', which is really a sub-set of the social concept of 'consideration', can be applied to a much, much greater extent than simple capitalist/worker paradigm. You specifically make this dualistic classification of social class based upon the exact same relation taht occurs across other social relationships.
: The wage relation is teh most common relation, it occurs to millions of people every day, their livces depend upon it, everything they have depend upon it, without it, many of teh otehr classifications cease to operate (if I confront my pupils as teacher, then I am teacher at that time, but only so long as my employer allows me).
Totally true and I have never faulted this view. But you have a faulty conception of the nature of the 'wage relation'. This relation is a sub-function of the social concept of 'consideration'. If party A has set x and party B has set y, which often are well beyond material sets, and they exchange considerations among the sets then this is waht is socially called 'consideration'. Tribal units require this of their individual members in realtion to customs, uniformity, and solidarity. Nothing will ever cancel the concept of consideration of which your specific definition of 'wage relation' is but a mere particular sub-set. Consumers and producers engage in consideration every time sets are exchanged between the two. Additionally, we can see that the consumer obtains an item at a price below where they value the item in relation to all the other decisions they could make in relation to the particular decision (Marx himself worked with preference charts). As capitalists raise prices they sell fewer goods but many still buy at the higher prices; their preferences haven't changed they just have to give up a larger value of 'other' decisions. And, no, I don't think it's sane to accuse consumers of exploiting capitalists.
You continuously find ways of fitting every single party into the worker/capitalist paradigm when other classifications of social class produce superior analyses. This dualistic conformity tortuously distorts any potential analysis of social interests and relations.
: : C'mon. Who laid down the rules? Where was the pre-social man before these specific rules were formed? However, it's interesting that each person in a cricket match can have numerous other 'class' interests outside of the game.
: You're stretching the point and missing the illustration (not analogy, its not an allegory of life or nothing, just a way of showing how many different and varied relationships can rely upon one underlying and fundamental relationship).
But in the mean time you've missed the potentially infinite other relationships that contain similar natures but don't conform to your particular classification.
: : No one designed society. Specific people designed cricket.
: No, no-one knows who designed cricket.
My point was that an ancestor-game of cricket was developed by someone, even though we can't finger taht specific person. Just the same someone first said "money" even though we don't know whom. No one ever said let's design society (well not until long after society had come to realize that it was society).
: But again, you miss my point, it doesn't matter who created cricket, the fact remains, and you have failed to address this, that one relationship can underly and govern many others.
And it simply doesn't. Rather, a myriad of different and ever-expanding array of social interests underly and govern society at a multitude of levels. Political economy has a positively vast body of evidence regarding the properties of rent-seeking within and through relationships well beyond the simple capitalist/worker paradigm.
: : But 'underlying structures' are pretty much unimportant. What is important is 'how different things interact'. Funny that you use 'underlying structure' as it has strong essentialist overtones. Instead of saying 'what is a politician' a non-essentialist asks 'how do politicians maximize their personal utility'.
: Or a non essentialist could ask 'how do we know politicians?' 'how are politicians constructed?', 'what is the ideological function of politician?'
Or rather 'in an economic world how do individual politicians rationally maximize their utility.' What manners to different objects of which individuals may be included interact with one another.
: : While the physical reality exists, class is only an outcome of the mind's operation and experience. Class is continuously expanded, improved and corrected by futher experiences and experiments. Class is dynamic and ever-changing and not static and set.
: Right, but if this relationship I have analysed exists, right, then that means that it has quite wide social ramifications, much greater than those of a consumer/lawyer relationship, that need exploring...yeah? And if wage earners rely on this relationship for their home, their food, and eh well being of their familly, before their specific professional relationships, then doesn't that need exploring?
All your analysis does, given the vast amounts of data certifying class interests well beyond and even transcending the 'wage relation', is tell us that each human being relies upon other human beings for sustenance. Not many, except a few individualist anarchists, maybe, would argue with this, though. It's pretty non-controversaial and doesn't bear any weight for evidence of 'alienation' or 'exploitation'.
: I didn't say mirror, I said 'map' all maps are continuously updated attempts to represent the world.
Sorry. I don't agree with maps either as they consist of specific articles of atomistic items and sets. Language, at its highest function, is a discursive method of bringing together idea-content for public scrutiny and criticism. Words, by themselves, do not 'give' us any sort of map; social discourse is the revealing function and occurs between individuals and is destroyed by strict adherance to the idea of "interest". The true dialectic.
: : And I will keep on beating this point into the ground until you realize that social classes transcend the naive essentialist capitalist/worker disctinction.
: Tell that to someone sacked coz their boss didn't like their attitude.
Usually, people raised with disdain for other human beings (often by being told that the world was out to get them). I have sacked someone because they had a shitty attitude. They were constantly making their co-workers miserable and acting in petty, and unsocial manners. You're not for anti-social behavior are you, Red?
