[Marxism] RE: Class and Institutions

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

My own view is that class ought to be made to matter more in sociological
theory. I do not think it is entirely adequate to claim that distinct forms
of oppression  (gender, religion, ethnicity or whatever) simply 'interact'
with class-based forms of oppression. I agree with Juriaann's idea that all
forms of oppression ought to be studied with a view to their historical
specificities. In my own view, however, it is the class positions of
individuals or groups which renders them more or less likely to adopt
particular forms of identification (whether religious, gender, or ethnic)
according to the options apparently available to them. These identificatory
'options' depend largely on the socially conditioned status of that which
they signify (race, gender, religion) under a class-based social system, and
the psychological conditioning of the individual mind within that system.
So, having been raised by one's parents in a class society, the individual
mind is more or less likely to adopt particular ethical perspcetives or
associate herself with particular identity groups according to her objective
class-position in regard to that ethnic, gender or religious grouping and
according to whether her mind has been more or less ('behaviourally' or
libidinally?) conditioned to conform or dissent from the judgements of her
parents, her community, and her peers. In a real sense, then, conflict
around ethical, religious, or even gender *is* class conflict, in so far as
one's class position is the objective basis upon which social judgements are
made.

I do not think is it economistic reductionism to place class at the centre
of sociological analysis, but is rather a strawman characature of Marxism
that is being set up to show that since not all forms of oppression are
'directly' economic (true, I think, given the qualifier), it is a crude
'economistic' Marxism that does not engage with non-class based oppression.


JEFF RUBARD WROTE:



Although I am relatively ignorant of recent work on class, I would here
like to float a potential theory for "making class matter more" -- for
recovering some of the *Gestalt* flavor of early Marxist class analysis.
 Recently, the Wall Street Journal had a front-page article on
contemporary bourgeois economics of financial markets, comparing the
traditional view of market functioning (that such markets are impersonal
large-scale social systems subject to peculiar dynamics) with more
recent "behaviorist" theory (the cumulative effects of bad
decision-making on the part of individuals forms the lion's share of
influence changing dynamics in finance markets).

_________________________________________________________________
Stay in touch with absent friends - get MSN Messenger
http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism