: : '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.': My question: RD, does this do anything for you? If you define social class as pertaining to the "relationship to the means of production," isn't that a different paradigm than the one I've explained? After all, one can manage the means of production and be part of a "managerial class," or one can be excluded from the means of production and be part of the "unemployed class," or one can be a money-grub and belong to the "lumpenproletariat," but that's different from saying that there are two basic classes, capital and labor, and that they are related to the rituals of exchange, not the rituals of production. Isn't it? Or are the "relations of production" the same as the "relations of exchange"?
Argh- sometimes you can tell I'm not a scientist- I usually can when SDF explains exactly what I ahve been trying to say in one many long posts, in one short conscise paragraph. I really think I ought to kill and eat him to gain his powers.
As to your questions- I always understand 'relationship to the means of production' as referring to how one gets access to its goods, how one gets ones living- i.e. the workers relationship is to sell their labour power. Hence my otehr definition of 'place in the social relations of production'. As far as I am concerned that means management, lumpenp[roletariate, and Unemployed all share a relationship, of having to sell (or try to sell) their labour power, and it is only through this sale that they may consume.
Eachange is the mediation of our relation to the means of production and its goods. Your description was absolutely bang on SDF. I'm sooooo crap.
None.
