[Peace-discuss] Howard Zinn speaks

[C. G. Estabrook]

The multiple uses you cite serve to cover the fundamental social meaning of 
class -- roughly those who have the same role in the process of producing the 
necessities of life. In a (more or less) capitalist order, these tend to two: a 
very small group of 'owners' (not a natural relationship but a peculiar notion 
of dominion over what's needed to produce food and shelter) and the large 
majority, who have to sell what makes them human -- their work of head and hands 
-- in order to eat regularly (even when they're privileged, like us).  The 
interests of these two groups (classes, sensu stricto) are not just skew but 
contradictory -- in spite of all Mr. Obama can say.

Your description of the uses of class reminds of the famous passage from a J. L. 
Borges' story, in which Borges claims to know of "a certain Chinese encyclopedia 
entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is 
written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) 
embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) 
fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this 
classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable 
ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those 
that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a 
distance."  --CGE


Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> I couldn't get the full text, and I'm usually a big Zinn fan... but I 
> certainly disagree w/ the statement below, because we talk/hear/read 
> about class in the US all the time: middle class; vanishing middle 
> class; blue collar workers; working class; working class 
> background; underclass; permanent underclass; upper class; educated 
> clase; socio- economic status (SES); extreme poverty; climbers; social 
> climbers; RHIP; VIPs; head honchos; rank and file; Mr Charlie; the man; 
> movers and shakers; above your station; know your place, etc etc etc. 
> Polls give us class (and other) data ad infinitum -- which demographics 
> voted for Clinton, Obama, McCain, etc. Class humor is what moved Larry 
> the Cable Guy out of his trailer (so to speak) and into top 1% of 
> earners (I'm guessing), and class distinctions are used to sell products 
> from cars to cosmetics! Capitalism depends on a class system for its 
> existence, and nobody's trying to hide or deny it -- it's all right out 
> in the open for anyone to see.
>  --Jenifer  
> 
> */"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
> 
>     Maybe so, but he makes here an absolutely crucial point, the very
>     point that
>     most self-described liberals (and even more the purveyors of
>     identity politics)
>     can't accept. Covering that over is what Clinton, Obama et al. are
>     all about. --CGE
> 
> 
>     Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>      > From ZNet:
>     http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16498#Comments
>      >
>      > Zinn sounds a little less buoyant than usual.
>      >
>      > /…Our culture demands, in its very language, that we accept a
>      > commonality of interest binding all of us to one another. We mustn’t
>      > talk about classes. Only Marxists do that, although James Madison,
>      > “Father of the Constitution,” said, thirty years before Marx was
>     born
>      > that there was an inevitable conflict in society between those
>     who had
>      > property and those who did not./
>      >
>      > /Our present leaders are not so candid. They bombard us with phrases
>      > like “national interest,” “national security,” and “national
>     defense” as
>      > if all of these concepts applied equally to all of us, colored or
>     white,
>      > rich or poor, as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same
>      > interests as the rest of us, as if George Bush has the same
>     interest as
>      > the young man or woman he sends to war./
>      >
>      > /Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the
>      > biggest lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American
>      > people, this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with
>      > different interests in this country. To ignore that—not to know
>     that the
>      > history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave,
>      > landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against
>      > poor—is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to
>     us by
>      > people in power. …/
>      > /
>      > /
>      > /--mkb/
> 
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