erm..these days if you dont want to be defined by your relation to the local production you can hop a cheap flight or the greyhound to a city with a different economic/social dynamic. You can even leave the country pretty easily and find another that fits your desired identity better. Since people no longer are born live and die in the same 15 miles area the only people who have this problem are the people who choose to stay.

You speak of “group identity” as something that exists in the mind. It is worth remembering that human beings are, by nature, social animals; we lived together, created and exchanged together, and survived together long before we got around to theorizing about the effects of doing so.

Class society exists objectively; it is a product of economic development, and it is, in my opinion, the driving force behind racism, oppression, and the need to create theories that turn human misery into mere ideas. Whether one chooses to “identify” with an “ingroup” or not, one’s position and identity are defined, above all, by one’s relation to the means of production.

The cry for the full development of the individual, in this context, is self-defeating. By refusing to understand that we live in a society that, because of harsh economic realities, denies the possibility of individual development, one becomes unable to contribute to the creation of social conditions that would permit the full development of individuality.

Feel free to reject “isms” if that pleases you; but capitalISM exists, and dominates our lives. The more one tries to deny its existence and its all-pervading nature, the more control it has.

The dominant paradigm in the West has long been sociologically ascetic: identity is designated by the ingroup. And in this then we have the pitting of one group against another, with successful domination a sign of divine right to profit and control. In this domination the ends justify the means, the group seeks to bend the world to its own idea of natural law. Each individual gives up their own right to identity in order to participate in the identity of the group. Fear of loss of identity (thru loss of group purity) has long been the driving force behind the ills of society.

The recessive sociological paradigm is mystical — the existential individual. And it has rarely been represented in sufficient numbers to make an impact. But it functions through the individual testing oneself against the world, one’s own actions matter because the mystic holds his/her identity autonomously. There is less fear here and more the tendency in the negative towards despair. And the means are the only thing that is important – this would be process based society.

My view is that you are all using to one degree or another an ascetic paradigm to express mystical desires. Marx wrote under the ascetic paradigm; he may have switched the orientation of ends and means but he still held an “end” as desirable. That’s ultimately what defeats Marxist ideals; in a system dominated by groups vying for dominance vertical power hierarchies clearly have the advantage. “Workers” are still looking to become the dominant group — and in doing so would inevitably come to reflect all that they originally sought to throw off.

Is it possible to view Marxist ideas under a mystical paradigm? Maybe… for workers to do so would be more coalescence around efforts as empowered individuals whose actions would always be geared to “what is best for the other is best for me.” And that’s not out of line of the spirit of Marx. Existential Marxism?

But watch carefully — boomers are still working under cultural imprinting that prizes the ascetic paradigm of group identity. A lot of us have found ways to throw that off but it’s still running the thought processes in general. Millenials — they don’t do this. They will be the first of many mystic majority generations baring a collapse of society (widespread fear caused by survival issues always throws humanity back into pack mode).

But Millenials prize the existential nature of individuality and the equal and infinite ground of all individuals. In the ideal there are no “isms” possible and practically they are much reduced. We’ve already seen that they are the most pragmatic and accepting generation to come up. Weber and Troeltsch both felt that the sociological mystic paradigm was not worth exploring as it simply led to anarchy. But they worked out of a strongly ascetic mind set and too, could not have seen the nature of social networking that is available to drive the cohesiveness of Millenial cultural constructs and political activism.

Yes. Until everyone is equally a member of the working class, and then no one will be. It isn’t that hard to conceive of; it just means eliminating private property in means of production.

” I am also a little confused that in other contexts you don’t seem to want “the reduction of things to “just people.”

Until “just people” is the reality, trying to understand things as “just people” will necessarily produce inaccurate results.

“I don’t see a way to eliminate profit as a major motivating factor…”

by “profit” I refer to that portion of surplus value that goes to the private account of those who exploit labor (and please note that I’m using the scientific definition of exploit, not a moral one).

I agree that if we could remove the profit motive and destroy social classes forever it would be easy to pull up a lot of other problems by the roots. I just don’t see how even absolute political power can do those first two things.

It’s natural for a human who has to deal with a great number of other people to mentally organize them into groups and then have attitudes towards the entire group. What a person spends the majority of there time doing is going to tend to correlate with other characteristics so it’s natural to see people practicing types of professions as a groups. I think you right when you say ” What makes the working class the working class isn’t anyone’s ideas–it is the reality of their relationship to production.” As long as there is some social division of labor and some is actually working there will be a distinct working class. I am also a little confused that in other contexts you don’t seem to want “the reduction of things to “just people.””

As for profit motive the reason the majority of people do the majority of there acts is because we think it is going to benefit us in some way, allowing us to obtain some status or advantage or avoid something disagreeable. While there are other motives for the occasional action they wouldn’t be enough to get me out of bed and to work on time 5 days a week. I don’t see a way to eliminate profit as a major motivating factor without exterminating the human species, which I am very opposed to on but sentimental and religious grounds.

You can use public policy to make people parrot back a creed and say they believe it. But you can use it to reach into there hearts and make them less selfish or into their minds and make them less prone to relying on stereotypes. They will still tend towards what ever actions will get them more for less effort in the situation they find themselves in. They will still want to dislike and disregard the needs of what ever group in most vulnerable under the creed that has been imposed on them.

I would like to live in a classless, non profit driven society but I don’t see that political power offers and mechanism for changing human nature on that fundamental level.

Will,

@73 The article you linked to is saying that “participation in markets” correlates with fairness which sounds to me like they are saying that counter-intuitively capitalism promotes fairness. Thinking about that side by side with your statement that “Socialism emphasizes egalitarianism and sharing.” It occurred to me that if under a socialist of communist system maximum equality and sharing were imposed from without by the government or society at large than individual souls would have no chances to make such choices for themselves and thus it is possible that our capacity for sharing and fairness would atrophy.

Yes, but that’s not possible. In the absence of a self-aware and active working class (of which we have neither), no economic actor in the market system has the power to curb excesses EXCEPT the government. Which, in case you haven’t noticed, has been bought off by said market.

Perfect example–and here I’m revealing myself as a corporate tool. Consider the tanker. The USAF, through the last decade has been flying Eisenhower-era tankers through two wars.

One would think that the idea that 50-year-old planes are going to start dropping out of the sky would galvanize politicos to action. One would be wrong. From a sweetheart deal that ended in prison sentences to our current fiasco with a major US contractor dropping out of the bidding, our country’s blind obsession with the notion of competition has lead to the passage of a full ten years, and not a single plane has hit the design stage, so we can start wickedly overpaying for a piece of junk.

So the choices are: single-source a plane to a maker who has sworn to abandon their Washington State roots to build the plane in South Carolina where unions are illegal (thus disappointing congressional members from Alabama and elsewhere), or allow a foreign company to bid on the plane, and outsource ALL of the jobs thus created.

Who exactly was supposed to restrain this market excess? The government caused it!

Who was supposed to restrain the government? The very market forces that aided, abetted and bribed their way to this very end?

Pardon me if I fail to see a “middle solution,” let alone a middle solution that doesn’t leave me as broke and poor as if I’d been left bleeding in an alley.

And don’t get me started on health insurance, please.

Ideally, something in between, where private enterprise and accumulation of wealth is still possible, but the market and government are restrained from behavior which works directly against the general welfare (e.g. insurance companies, monopolies).

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/evolution-of-fairness/

Socialism emphasizes egalitarianism and sharing. Capitalism emphasizes hierarchy and hoarding. Which do you want to be the norm?