Re: [Marxism] Petty Bourgeois--the consciousness yardstick

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lou Paulsen wrote:
>
> There is of course a lot of room for individual variation, and anyone who 
> uses the language of class analysis to make statements about individuals will 
> make a lot of mistakes.

This seems to me fundamental. The error of sociology is the assumption
that "class" is a way of describing individuals. But class tells us
_nothing_ about the individuals within the class but _only_ about the
dynamics of the social system (or mode of production) as a whole.
Sociologists assume that one can arrive at an understanding of class
empirically: that is, one can describe individuals and on the basis of
that description place them in pigeonholes with various labels: red
marbles in this box, green marbles in this other box, pink marbles in
the third box, and so on. That provides the almost infinite series of
little boxes.

Class consciousness arises  _not_ from mere position in a class but from
engagement in struggles that only make sense in terms of class. In the
United States from the beginning the capitalist class has been engaged
in conscious class struggle and has achieved a high degree of class
consciousness, while workers have been involve only intermittently and
confusedly involved in such struggle. (The principle that being
determines consciousness becomes mechanical and empty when it is put to
the sociological use of placing marbles in the correct boxes.) The
_being_ of u.s. workers is primarily the experience of isolated
individuals, apparently existing prior to and independent of social
relations, which have to be formed by an act of will rather than as
existing prior to and formative of the "individual."

Probably about 90% of the u.s. population are working class. A result of
that is that distinctions _within_ the working class are seen by the
sociological imagination as evidence of a difference of class. And one
of the reasons "petty bourgeois" is not very useful as a description of
consciousness of u.s. residents is that it describes _everyone_.

Carrol


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