[Marxism] Britains Muslim communities and Respect

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Nov 2 18:21:50 MDT 2007



Joaquin Bustelo wrote:
> 
> 
> Contrary to Mike's supposition, I do not totally omit the category of
> "class" from the analysis the was behind my post. Quite the contrary.

At the level of concrete analysis of _particular_ situations, one often
_should_  omit the category of class, as was pointed out in a recent
post on lbo:

"At the level of analyzing the mode of production and secular trends of
capitalism, class contradiction takes analytical precedence over other
-- intra-class and trans-class -- contradictions.  The problem is that
too many leftists apply what makes sense at _that_ analytical level to
the empirical level of short-term struggles where intra-class and
trans-class struggles matter as much as, sometime more than, inter-class
struggles." (Yoshie)

The problem of focusing on class "at the empirical level" is that it
leads away from seeing class as a relation and a process to seeing class
as an "identity," a mere sorting category, and thus replacing class
politics with identity politics.

Carrol




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