class as a useful concept, loose notes

to consider the meaning of class as a really potent political concept we must decide first what we really mean. are we speaking of class in a simple sense, as is generally done in most sociology and definitely in class based political movements, as least as determines their empirical content. is class a concept based entirely upon wages and living conditions, and the results thereof? in this sense class is primarily a mark of relative power in the general of society. there is no real particularity here, only a sort of table, a continuum of differentials. there is a single quality and relative positioning within that continuum.

that is important, crucial in fact. it is definitely true. power as it is manifested in those institutions and practices that are given power to affect the greatest number of people, the right to create major shifts n the society, is equated to money, to ownership. this definitely establishes the constraints of living. but is class relevant to establishing not only the constraints of living, but also the positive content of life itself?

if we are to identify or rework truly viable revolutionary concepts, we have to focus on those concepts that actually hone in on shared aspects of positive identity, identity given definition autonomously rather than simply as a point-expression in an economic field.

To explain by way of example. An oil rig worker has a clear economic position, which can be reduced to what are ultimately relative terms. Income, benefits, even the organization of authority within a firm. All these boil down to an expression of the worker’s relative power in society as a whole, his relative ownership.

But we can also see another aspect to things when we consider the oil rig worker and her job. It forms a locus of positive identity, identity filled with a genuine content independent and autonomous from the entire continuum of money ownership. We see identity bound up in work practices, and the intimate experience of those processes. The long hours and harsh conditions of the job, the danger of physical injury, the necessary camaraderie, etc. We also see identity bound up in the way the worker’s community-family, friends, voluntary organizations, casual associates- respond to their job and their image of it.

So that is the question then. Does “class” have potential as a political concept for elaborating the following two aspects of society:

*the autonomous experience of collective identity as a shared event? a necessarily “local” experience bound by participation in regular actions and rituals tied to productive work? this creates a very diffuse idea of class, a thousand tiny classes so to speak, or at best assemblages of classes each bound to a repeated sort of event. this maps pretty well onto d&g’s concepts tying virtual communities to events.

*an analytic for deciding what sorts of microclasses can lead to what sorts of changes? what can a particular microclass or set of microclasses do, and what effects could they have on society? is a macromolecular connection across large swaths of microclasses possible?

these are the questions we must begin to answer, or at least investigate.