# Yes, Virginia, there is class struggle **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 1, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017 "2011-01-01T03:35:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/1 "2011-01-01T03:35:19Z")
I do not mean to say that there is **a** class struggle; certainly not **the** class struggle, with all the Marxist baggage attached to that phrase; but only that class struggle exists. A spinoff of [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=590745) on Marxism. Starting at [this post,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13295229&postcount=50) **FinnAgain** rather incomprehensibly denies the rather commonplace observation that democracy in ancient Athens resulted from a class struggle. To the extent that he appears to be willing to be understood, he then goes on to deny that such a thing as class struggle even exists, ever or anywhere . . . though he does not actually, exactly say that . . . and perhaps even denies that social classes as such exist . . . though he does not quite say that either. Well, whatever **FinnAgain** might be trying to say, certainly he is saying it with a passionate conviction which, I suspect, some more articulate minds on the Dope might share; hence this thread. I hold these truths to be as self-evident as anything can be in sociology or politics: 1. **Class is real.** No sociologist in the world would dispute this. Hierarchical social class differentiation has existed in every known human society above a mesolithic level, from ancient times to the present day – including those where a conscious attempt has been made to eradicate it. Some societies are more egalitarian than others, some have harder and faster class boundaries than others, and in some cases it might be difficult to determine just how many classes the society contains and just where one ends and the next begins; but no known society is free of hierarchical class differentiation. There are some things we can confidently say about class that apply in every post-mesolithic society, regardless of cultural traditions or technological development: - People of different classes live very different lives. - There might be some class mobility, but for most people their class identity is determined from birth and they will live their whole lives in the same class. - Class is not simply a matter of net worth or income. Different classes have, or develop, different social and cultural characteristics; and these tend to stay with an individual for life, even if his income is significantly increased or reduced. Liza Doolittle, however she might learn to pronounce her vowels and drink her tea, would never quite entirely be free of her cockney background. - Classes are, to greater or lesser degree, endogamous – that is, biologically endogamous; most people marry within their own native class. (“Marrying up” may be possible, but of marginal social significance.) They are also what might be called socially endogamous (unless there’s a different word for that) – people are more likely to associate and socialize with persons of their own class than of other classes. - Class relations are always hierarchical, **by definition.** Two social classes are not simply two groups with different functional specialties but equal status, like electricians and plumbers; one has a superior position to the other in terms of prestige, wealth, privileges, opportunities, education, and/or power/influence. (The members of an upper class might even be **physically** superior to those of a lower, if they are better-fed and train for war or sports.) Two clearly distinguishable endogamous social groups of clearly equal status would not be classes – perhaps “subcultures”. This is not circular argument or special pleading; that in every known culture social groupings exist which (1) are endogamous, and (2) are in a hierarchical relationship to each other, is simply an observed fact, and it is obviously an important enough fact to need a name, and “class” is simply the name for such a grouping. - Different classes in a society perform different economic functions. Whether classes are strictly defined by or identical with their economic functions is a point of controversy, but functional differentiation by class is real and universal, and most (not necessarily all) occupational categories will be definitely associated with one class or another. The functions of the upper classes usually involve far less manual or menial labor than the lowers’, and are generally regarded as more elegant and admirable – regardless of whether they are governmental functions, or religious, or military, or academic, or professional, or commercial, or cultural, or artistic, or social in the narrow hosting-parties sense, or even purely ornamental. - Classes are long-lived but not necessarily static or eternal. Over time in a given society, its class structure can change. A new class might emerge. A class can disappear, or effectively merge with another by intermarriage, or change its characteristics, as a result of social, economic, political, or cultural forces. As George Orwell [wrote in 1941,](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) “Like the knife which has had two new blades and three new handles, the upper fringe of English society is still almost what it was in the mid nineteenth century. After 1832 the old land-owning aristocracy steadily lost power, but instead of disappearing or becoming a fossil they simply intermarried with the merchants, manufacturers and financiers who had replaced them, and soon turned them into accurate copies of themselves. The wealthy ship owner or cotton-miller set up for himself an alibi as a country gentleman, while his sons learned the right mannerisms at public schools which had been designed for just that purpose. England was ruled by an aristocracy constantly recruited from parvenus.” - Classes usually (not always) end at the border. National identities and cultures are powerful uniters and powerful dividers. Marx took it as an axiom that all the proletarians of Europe made up a single international working class, and had more in common with each other than with the ruling classes of their respective countries. But the proletarians, then and after, rarely acted as if they believed that or felt it. The endogamous behavior of a working class is almost always national – that is, English proles marry/socialize with English proles, rarely French proles – and any class consciousness they develop almost certainly will be intranational as a result. It is, generally, only a society’s **upper** classes that have some chance of marrying significant numbers of foreigners of their own rank, and of developing an international class identity and class consciousness, like the transcontinental aristocracy of medieval Europe. In the European Union today, with its open borders and easy transportation and universal language of wider communication (English), this process of social internationalization is being extended downward to the middle classes, but it’s a gradual process. 1a. **Class isn’t everything.** In a given society there are, **also,** other kinds of social groupings and divisions. People in a society can be divided/grouped by sex, socially-defined “race,” generational culture (Generation A vs. Generation B, as distinct from the young vs. the old, is a new thing in human history; but we definitely saw such generational-cultural conflict play out in the 1960s, and we saw the Baby Boomers retain some of their distinctive generational characteristics as they aged), religion, regional background, region of current residence, ethnocultural background, occupational category, political world-views, sports-fan rivalries, etc., etc. Most of these groups are much smaller and narrower than the society’s classes (with the notable exception of the sexes, which make up half of every class). The divisions between these groups are not essentially class divisions, they are not necessarily hierarchical divisions, and the groupings can cut across class boundaries. (However, a non-class grouping can become identical with a social class in some circumstances – e.g., “race” might define class status and economic function, as with the four _varna_ or “colors” of India, or the Norman elite of medieval England, or the imposition of permanent lumpenprole status on nearly all African-Americans from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights movement.) Non-class social groupings, like social classes, can have their own group interests or concerns, and can come into conflict. And, of course, looked at from an extremely reductionist perspective, a society can also be characterized as an undifferentiated mass of individuals – which it really is, **among other things** – and each individual has his or her own unique combination of personality, values, world-view, etc. – and, of course, individuals have their own interests, which can come into conflict. (The principal purpose of any legal system is the management of human wills in conflict.) 1. **Class interest is real.** Different things can be good or bad for the people of a given social class. In some respects, different classes have identical interests – plagues are bad, cures are good, for all classes of a society more or less equally. (I say “more or less” because even a plague can have class-differential effects – the Black Death of the 14th Century decimated the numbers of Europe’s workers and peasants, which increased the demand for the labor of individual survivors, with the effect of raising their wages and independence somewhat, and, some historians would say, beginning the very gradual process of the elimination of feudalism. And plagues, like all kinds of disasters, usually hit the poor harder than the rich, who can hole up in their mansions. [That doesn’t always work out.](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1064/1064-h/1064-h.htm)) In some respects, however, different classes can have different and conflicting interests. It was in the interest of American slaveowners to preserve slavery and in the interest of American slaves to abolish it. A class’s “interests,” for this purpose, include not only its material or economic interests, but any thing with which it is particularly concerned, for cultural or moral reasons or whatever. We often see social issues, such as abortion or gay marriage, on which public opinion seems to break down at least partially along class lines, even though these issues would not appear to affect the material interests of any class differently than another’s. Of course it is possible for people to be grossly, even tragically, mistaken about what their class interests really are. Of course it is true that what really is in the best interest of a given class might be a highly debatable question, even one impossible of definition resolution or consensus. All of that, however, is only tangentially relevant to this discussion. After all, it is exactly the same for individuals. Reasonable minds can differ as to what is in a given individual’s best interest; reasonable minds cannot differ as to the fact that individual interests **exist.** It is also possible that what is good for a class will not necessarily be good for every member of it. Again, that is of tangential relevance. Some things are good for America that are not good for every American. When John Gotti got locked up, that was (almost certainly) good for America and (most people including Gotti would agree) bad for the American known as John Gotti. I think we can all understand and accept this in general principle without embarking on any specific greatest-good-for-the-greatest number calculus. (The maxim “greatest good for the greatest number” is, of course, based on an unstated **ethical** assumption, to wit, that all human beings are equally ends-in-themselves – the sort of thing that Jefferson would confidently and groundlessly call “self-evident,” and at which Nietzsche would scream defiance disguised as denial. But, for purposes of this discussion, we need not resolve that ethical question, nor any other.) 1. **Class action is real.** When members of a social class – not necessarily all or even most of them, just enough to make a difference – try to further or protect their class interest real or perceived, that is class action. This does not necessarily require “class consciousness,” in fact it does not even require concerted action (though both help immensely). As Michael Lind noted in [_The Next American Nation,_](http://www.amazon.com/NEXT-AMERICAN-NATION-Nationalism-Revolution/dp/0684825031/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293845697&sr=1-1) “In personifying the overclass and describing its strategy, I do not mean to imply the existence of a literal conspiracy. When members of a disproportionately powerful class pursue similar class-based interests, the result will be similar to that of a conscious program even if there has been no concerted action.” By the same token, and further down the ladder, a striking labor union local can meaningfully be said to be taking “class action,” even if it has no stated or hidden goals beyond a dollar-an-hour raise and makes no effort to get other unions involved. 2. **Class conflict is real.** Whenever the class interest or class action of Class A collides with that of Class B, there is class conflict. 3. **Class struggle is real.** Class struggle is simply any class conflict that is not immediately resolved by victory or compromise or surrender. If the parties in conflict keep on fighting to get what they respectively want, there is class struggle. **And it happens all the time.** It might be fought out in the media, in the courts, in the marketplace, in the classrooms, in the blogosphere, in the boardroom, on the shop floor, on the picket lines, and/or on the battlefield; it might be about a vision of revolutionary social transformation or it might be about a 40-hour week with time and a half for overtime; but it’s all equally class struggle. The lower classes have no monopoly on it, of course – the upper classes can initiate and prosecute struggles of their own, for their own perceived interests (which generally include, at minimum, indefinitely holding on to whatever wealth, status and privileges they already have). 5a. **Non-class groupings also have conflicts and struggles.** Again, happens all the time. Any two groups with different interests or concerns as the members perceive them can come into conflict and struggle – see the women’s suffrage movement or the 1960s “generation gap”. I make no assessment here as to the relative importance of class struggles vs. non-class social-group struggles, I merely note the existence of both and the difference between them. Usually it is fairly simple to tell whether a given social-group conflict is a class conflict or not. Sometimes the question is more difficult, as with the Civil Rights movement: It certainly was about hierarchical social-status issues; practically all working-class black Americans were for it (as were the relatively few AAs of higher socioeconomic status), most working-class white Americans were indifferent or hostile; both of these race-class groupings were (and largely remain) highly endogamous; the working-class whites enjoyed a definite if slight social superiority to the blacks, and valued it highly; and it is debatable whether they were/are two social classes occupying adjacent segments of the same tier of the socioeconomic pyramid, or subcultures within the same national working class. Again, a question that need not be resolved here. 1. **Class struggle matters.** It might or might not be the all-explanatory engine of history Marx believed it to be, but at any rate it does very often make real differences in the political, social, and/or economic circumstances of a society. (For better or for worse.) 6a. **Class struggle isn’t everything.** Historical changes and events can be driven by technological progress, economic forces, political leadership, political movements, religious beliefs, cultural currents, environmental factors, demographic changes, the fortunes of war, etc., etc. Again, I make no assessment as to the relative importance of class struggle compared to any of these; I merely assert it is important enough to rank in their company. You don’t need to be any kind of Marxist to understand and accept the above. These are simply sociological facts, as plainly evident as sociological facts can be. Note that in the above paragraphs I am not saying, “Four legs good, two legs bad”. I am not asserting that a hierarchical class relationship necessarily involves the “exploitation” of one class by another. I am not here expressing nor implying any any opinions or value judgments as to the justice or injustice of any class system or of class systems in general; nor as to the value of class struggle, as distinct from its existence; nor as to the possibility or impossibility, or desirability or undesirability, of a classless society; nor as to class conflict as embodying any kind of Marxist dialectical process, nor any teleological process of any kind. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/2 "2011-01-01T03:52:06Z")
he sum total of your claims are so generic that you really aren’t saying anything. You are saying, in essence, “Some people are in different classes, and sometimes that causes conflict, but not always, and there’s other kinds of differences and conflicts too.” So what? You call these “Sociological facts” but your “facts” are so nonspecific that they serve no purpose; it’s akin to me claiming to have made a profound insight into economics by saying “People trade stuff for other stuff.” You can’t deny that that is true, but so what? No can you deny the validity of the psychological observation that “people think things” or the fact in political science that “different places have different political systems.” What FinnAgain was trying to pin down in the other thread before it became a train wreck was some sort of definition of what the hell “class” and “class struggle” was. His initial disagreement was with Olentzero, not you, and was caused by OZ’s sincere but very, very Marxist approach of defining and perceiving absolutely everything as class struggle to the point that the term simply has no meaningfiul definition; in the eyes of a dedicated MArxist, all conflict is class struggle because all conflict is class struggle. Tautological, but hey, Marx said so. If there’s any scientific basis to the notion that class struggle is what causes conflict, there needs to be an agreed-to definition of what those things are so that it can be tested against examples and against the course of events. Not that I’m suggesting those things are easy to do, but just saying “Class exists” means absolutely squat. It’s like a few years ago when we had an Ayn Rand disciple claiming he’d figured out all human behaviour from observing “People act.” ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/3 "2011-01-01T03:54:35Z")
How do I put this? (And obviously, I’m not whom you targeted) … This is so vague as to be meaningless. It says nothing. Anything could be called “class struggle” under this non-definition. Anything could be denied as class struggle. Thus, if it’s impossible to factually identify something based on your definition, then you have failed to identify anything. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/4 "2011-01-01T04:12:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > **FinnAgain** rather incomprehensibly denies the rather commonplace observation that democracy in ancient Athens resulted from a class struggle. Yes, as I’ve been pointing out, you do no comprehend. Much like you repeatedly and amusing demanded that I define your terms, and put your terms into context, rather than you having to provide a definition with specificity and consistency. Funnier still was your claim that if I showed how a particular gloss of “class struggle” was mere rhetoric and not solid analytics, then I’d have no credibility unless I then defined your terms for you. For example, the issue of Athens was there was a power struggle between some men (only) who had no political power and some men (only) who did. When the dust had settled, all women, all slaves, and still some men did not hold political power. As I pointed out to you, there are numerous filters and lenses through which one can analyze events, and “class struggle” is no more objective or factual than any other. And in the context in which I was discussing the issue with Olent, I pointed out that both his definition, the context in which he was using it and the internal delineations that he used had to be changed for each example in order to get the ‘same’ results. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > he then goes on to deny that such a thing as class struggle even exists, ever or anywhere No, you have dramatically misremembered, or wildly misunderstood what I actually said. I’ve already asked you posts things I’ve never said and attribute them to me in a thread that I’m not already posting in at least. I’ll ask again that you at least wait to mangle my actual comments until I’m in a thread so I can see it and put the record straight. What actually happened was that I pointed out that depending on how one defines class(es) and how one crafts a narrative, “class struggle” may have absolutely no meaning at all as it essentially applies in any situation in which two individuals are not in complete accord, and I challenged you to come up with a valid, consistent definition. You could not. Nor does it seem that it’s all that ‘incomprehensible’; the very first two Dopers to respond to you here sure seem to have gotten my point. But you did not. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/5 "2011-01-01T04:35:29Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Anything could be called “class struggle” under this non-definition. Anything could be denied as class struggle. Dead flat wrong. Read it again. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/6 "2011-01-01T05:14:56Z")
> [@](#): > > I’ve already asked you posts things I’ve never said and attribute them to me in a thread that I’m not already posting in at least. Obviously, that should have read: I’ve already asked you not to post things I’ve never said and attribute them to me in a thread that I’m not already posting in at least. For example, just a few days ago, you recast how I’d repeatedly corrected you a repeated error that whereby you often call an armistice line a border, even when it had been explicitly established by treaty as something that was not a border, and would not prejudice negotiations to set a border in the future. Instead, you claimed, that the very act of correcting you on the facts (repeatedly) meant that that I’d stated, anywhere at all, that all the land to the east of the armistice line and to the west of a neighboring state’s border was, is the property of the state to the west of the armistice line. Be that as it may, as you seem to have such a shall we say, divergent reading of what I actually do post, I’d suggest that when you claim that I’ve said something, other people to check to see if I actually have. For example, here you claim that I “[denied] that such a thing as class struggle even exists, ever or anywhere”. What did I actually say? > [@Was Marx right?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/71): > > The base answer I’d give is that if we’re using “Class Horseplay” to mean whatever we want it to mean, then of course the French Revolution is an example of it, because we can definite it as “exactly what happened during the French Revolution.” internal-delineations consistent? Are there three (or two now, I suppose) classes in a society if that is what is required for an analysis, but seventeen classes if we need to divide things that way so that we can claim a conflict is class-based? The real test is whether or not it’s got a set of objective definitions that can then be applied to other, varied conflicts. And how often the definitions and goalposts need to be changed to make it work while we try to shoehorn other situations into a pre-determined framework. > > Because virtually every conflict in the history of humanity, and most likely every conflict to come, is and will be between groups that can be broken down on rough lines and/or grouped into many various categories. Group vs Group conflict is indeed a part of many upheavals, but which groups, how do you define them, how do you analyze the conflict? If, for instance, we have the nation of Hypothetica in which people of a low socioeconomic status are generally religious and people from higher socioeconomic classes are generally non-religious, and many people in society are demanding that religious law be the law of the land is that a religious conflict or a “Class Brawling”? > > And so on. As is very clear, I went to great pains to outline the fact that depending on how we defined it, “class struggle” might apply and/or be useful, or might not. It might be a valid thing to claim, or it might not. And that it was up to the person using it to define it in such a manner that it has a consistent, objective definition that had explanatory powers due to specificity and internal logical consistency. I can certainly understand your position. In response to “It’s the job of people trying to argue that ‘class struggle’ is a real phenomena and valid analytical tool, to define it with an operational definition and internally consistent delineations,” you actually (at first) tried to handwave it away entirely, saying that it was simply a [“fact”.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13298407&postcount=108) Just like you tried to actually claim that getting you to define your own terms was [“intellectually dishonest” and trying to “define [them] out of existence”.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300427&postcount=128) Much of this makes sense, of course, as you “hold these truths to be as self-evident”. Hard to analyze “truths” that are “self evident”. For your argument, actually having to define your terms _into_ existence is an obvious burden. Being asked to provide an objective, logically consistent framework is a drag if your argument doesn’t contain it. And if the result of not being able to provide such a context is that your terms are discarded as imprecise and useless for analysis, then it must seem as if they’re fading from existence due to not having a definition. Of course, you should realize that if they don’t have that objective, logically consistent definition, then they didn’t necessarily exist as valid terms any more than “the greater good” or “proper Christian behavior” do. Instead, by trying to get you to define your own terms, you think I’m attacking them, with intellectual dishonesty to boot, since you’ve _already_ taken them a “self evident” “truths”. Just like you actually went on to claim[that sociology would one day become a science just like physics.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300427&postcount=127) Seriously. Then of course[when I pointed out the numerous problems with your claim, and with the schema you put forward,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300774&postcount=130), your only response was an ad hominem fallacy (amusing considered your basic error in comparing sociology to physics).[Despite having it pointed out to you that ‘nuh unh, u r dum!’ is not a particularly robust factual counter](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300859&postcount=133) you maintained that[yah, you thought it was.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13303196&postcount=142) Just like I pointed out the essential differences between an objective analysis and your fiction of defining-junk-and-stuff-out-of-existence. > [@Was Marx right?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/130): > > Trying to get you to define your own terms in an objective, consistent manner, cogent, cohesive manner? I’m sure it seems awful, just awful to you. It’s no fair, you want to posit your gloss as something that’s just “fact” and doesn’t have to be supported, defined in objective terms, etc… But, nope. Trying to get you to actually provide a rational argument based on objective definitions is hardly defining anything out of existence. What’s actually happened is that you’re inventing things and, then when they evaporate under scrutiny, you’re complaining that it’s the fault of the person who pointed out that the emperor is nekkid, because they defined his damn fine raiment right out of existence. > > Funny, asking for cohesive, objective definitions doesn’t define alpha radiation out of existence. It doesn’t define a phospholipid bilayer out of existence. It doesn’t define oxidation or reduction out of existence. It doesn’t define meitosis out of existence. It doesn’t define a parabolic ballistic trajectory out of existence. It doesn’t define shifts in allelic frequency out of existence. it doesn’t… > > Does it not strike you as odd that for some phenomena, defining them gives an objective, consistent definition and framework and for others, it makes them evaporate? And you claim that the problem is that I ask you to try to define your terms, not that your terms evaporate like summer dew under the least little bit of sun. > That doesn’t suggest anything to you? And then, of course, you posted this thread to continue the same argument (while flaming my ever-so-non-eloquent-mind) and talked about how incomprehensible my words are to you. Miraculously, two people immediately respond to you and fully understand exactly what I was saying. Will wonders never cease? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/7 "2011-01-01T05:38:16Z")
Could it be that there’s a ‘class struggle’ where certain activists constantly agitate to _create_ a class struggle for political reasons? In the midwest you can find a pretty big disparity in incomes, but you don’t find the kind of institutionalized poverty, unhappiness, and anger that you find in places where there are community organizers, union leaders constantly claiming that the rich are keeping the working class down, and heavy reliance on social programs. Some activists make a living going around telling people that they can’t make it in America without the government’s help because the rich constantly beat down the poor. They wail and caterwaul about the destruction of the middle class, they go through neighborhoods soliciting support by telling people how terrible their lives are, write op-eds bemoaning the class struggle in America, etc. Then they gather together however many followers they can find and point to them as evidence of a class struggle. I’ve been poor, and I’ve been reasonably well off. At no point did I feel like I was on one side or the other of a class struggle. I felt like I lived in a country of opportunity, and it was up to me to make the most of myself and climb as high as my ability and desires would take me. And that’s pretty much been the case - where I’ve failed, I can see the seeds of failure in my own behavior or weaknesses. Where I’ve succeeded, it’s been because of action I took. I think the same is true for most people in most western democracies - unless they are turned into a dependent underclass through government action. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/8 "2011-01-01T05:42:44Z")
Fuck, links all screwed up there. Hand coding is not ideal. > [@FinnAgain](#): > > I can certainly understand your position. In response to “It’s the job of people trying to argue that ‘class struggle’ is a real phenomena and valid analytical tool, to define it with an operational definition and internally consistent delineations,” you actually (at first) tried to handwave it away entirely, saying that it was simply a [“fact”.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13298407&postcount=108) > Just like you tried to actually claim that getting you to define your own terms was [“intellectually dishonest” and trying to “define [them] out of existence”.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300427&postcount=128) Links should be: [“fact”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13298375&postcount=108)[“define [them] out of existence.”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300389&postcount=128) > [@FinnAgain](#): > > Instead, by trying to get you to define your own terms, you think I’m attacking them, with intellectual dishonesty to boot, since you’ve _already_ taken them a “self evident” “truths”. > Just like you actually went on to claim[that sociology would one day become a science just like physics.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300427&postcount=127) Seriously. Then of course[when I pointed out the numerous problems with your claim, and with the schema you put forward,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300774&postcount=130), your only response was an ad hominem fallacy (amusing considered your basic error in comparing sociology to physics).[Despite having it pointed out to you that ‘nuh unh, u r dum!’ is not a particularly robust factual counter](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300859&postcount=133) you maintained that[yah, you thought it was.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13303196&postcount=142) Links should be: [Sociology will be a hard science like Physics at some point](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13300163&postcount=127). [Response to it being pointed out that ad hominem is not a factual refutation.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13303172&postcount=142) I think that’s everything I miscoded. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/9 "2011-01-01T05:46:20Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Could it be that there’s a ‘class struggle’ where certain activists constantly agitate to _create_ a class struggle for political reasons? It actually makes more sense to use history and conclude that when you arrived the worst kind of class struggle had already been “defused” thanks to more democratic openness and safety nets. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/10 "2011-01-01T06:05:45Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > he sum total of your claims are so generic that you really aren’t saying anything. You are saying, in essence, “Some people are in different classes, and sometimes that causes conflict, but not always, and there’s other kinds of differences and conflicts too.” So what? I am saying that class struggle really exists, that it is distinguishable from superficially similar phenomena, and that it is **important** enough as an engine of historical change that it deserves to be ranked with other clearly recognized engines such as technological progress, etc. That is **not** a trivial or vague assertion. Perhaps a truistic one, and you might say it is too obvious to bear mentioning. I say it needs mentioning, periodically, if only because there seems to be such a dishonest conspiracy of silence/denial/STFU about it in Western political discourse these days. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/11 "2011-01-01T06:24:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > there seems to be such a dishonest conspiracy of silence/denial/STFU about it in Western political discourse these days. The “dishonest conspiracy of silence” that you see is probably much similar to my “incomprehensible” text that others have no trouble comprehending. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I am saying that class struggle really exists Except you can’t define it so that it’s different from any other type of disparity/divergence between any two groups. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > that it is distinguishable from superficially similar phenomena Except you can’t actually distinguish it from superficially similar phenomena. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > other clearly recognized engines such as technological progress Except we can always determine whether or not we’ve created a distributed information network accessible from personal computing devices resident in individuals’ homes. We can discover if we’ve invented a vaccine that will protect people from disease or not. We can discover whether we have created a machine that allows dozens of humans to get in, and then flies through the air to deliver them at a new destination. It’s quite another matter, entirely, to define “class struggle” as an engine of progress/change/whatever if you can’t even define what class struggle _is_ in the first place as opposed to disparity/disagreement between groups. No shit, disagreements between groups often cause something to change (unless of course things just stay the same but tense for a while. Later, when they change, it’s an engintastic changeogrifier). > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That is **not** a trivial or vague assertion. Do you really, really not understand that it’s not necessarily the assertion that’s vague, it’s the substance behind that is sloppy and non-specific? This isn’t a bait and switch on your part, you’re honestly saying that because your assertion isn’t particularly vague (and, for the record, it still is) that we know a damned thing about the definitions or logic used to support it? “The greater good is the only consideration, at all, that’s required for optimizing society and giving us the best possible world or for judging if previous changes were proper or not.” is a somewhat specific assertion. But it’s also crappy since _it’s just an assertion_. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/12 "2011-01-01T06:26:40Z")
Well, the things is \*\*BrainGlutton \*\*that while I have read papers from current sociologists and philosophers that are not Marxist defining and talking about classes, what I do think is needed is more citations from most recent sociologists describing what is “class struggle” nowadays. OTOH **FinnAgain** I would say that it does not help if you continue to avoid telling us what do \*\*you \*\*consider class struggle. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/13 "2011-01-01T06:29:11Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > It actually makes more sense to use history and conclude that when you arrived the worst kind of class struggle had already been “defused” thanks to more democratic openness and safety nets. This. Say they took away Pel Grants and federal backed student loans. I don’t know what I would do, but the compounding frustration of being “stuck” would eventually result in some nasty retaliation. Instead it’s giving me the tools to be productive and happy, and escape the class I was born into. If my economic situation denied me education, why should I respect society’s laws when it traps me in a place I hate? I live in rural state where 1 out 6 people receive food assistance. Without that life line, and the present economy, what recourse would they have? Better to rob than to starve. Lots of rural and urban Americans receive disability assistance from the government in the form of health care, food, cash, and shelter assistance. Rural and urban children qualify for SCHIP if they need help getting insurance, If society would let your child suffer untreated why should you respect its laws when it cares so little for you and yours? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/14 "2011-01-01T06:39:26Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Much like you repeatedly and amusing demanded that I define your terms . . . :dubious: **I** defined my terms. Plainly and clearly and unambiguously and, by any reasonable standard in a non-academic discussion of this kind, **rigorously.** “Class struggle,” in particular, I would have thought a phrase too plain of meaning on its face, and too well-known even in America, to require definition at all; nevertheless, I took care to provide one, and to define all related concepts, too. > [@FinnAgain](#): > > As I pointed out to you, there are numerous filters and lenses through which one can analyze events, and “class struggle” is no more objective or factual than any other. Nonsense. We might say that the Russian October Revolution and the Russian Civil War was a class struggle. Or, we might say – and I have no doubt that many at the time did say something of the kind; some are saying it still – that whatever the Red and White armies might have thought they were doing, they were really only proxies fighting a battle in the endless war between God and Satan. These two statements are both equally “lenses” for interpreting the events, but in no other respect are they equal. The second statement is, to put it kindly, either indeterminable or meaningless. The first statement is objectively true. It is not the **whole** truth of the matter by any means, and not true at all in the specific ideological sense by which the Bolsheviks would have meant it. Certainly the Russian Revolution was something far less than a united massed uprising of a class-conscious proletariat against the bourgeoisie and for a socialist future; but, just as certainly, it was something far more than mere coup d’etat carried out by a handful of ideological zealots and imposed on a weary and bewildered populace. There was a very definite and intentional and widespread sense of class struggle among the Russian people at the time, by no means limited to political activists or organized parties, and **the Revolution could not have happened without it,** nor could the Bolsheviks have won the Civil War afterwards. No more than a small minority of the Russians might have wanted Bolshevism, but a clear majority wanted revolution and socialism **in some form,** and that made all the difference. All these are well-documented historical facts. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/15 "2011-01-01T06:40:23Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > OTOH **FinnAgain** I would say that it does not help if you continue to avoid telling us what do \*\*you \*\*consider class struggle. I’m not the one using it as a term, I don’t have to define it. It’s not my claim, I’m not the one using it to try to make a solid and logically consistent analytical system. As I stated to XT when he asked the question, whether or not we see and/or analyze a “class struggle” depends on how we define it. And on how we define classes. And on which features and facets of a conflict we focus on. You’re essentially asking me to define “group conflict” in the sort of terms that would be useful for this debate. Let’s put it this way, if someone told you that all climate change was caused by “climate struggle”, but could not define it in a consistent or objective manner, and could not use it in a consistent, logically coherent explanatory/analytic structure… would you then state that they weren’t using terms validly or that you’d now define their terms for them? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/16 "2011-01-01T06:44:31Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > I’m not the one using it as a term, I don’t have to define it. It’s not my claim, I’m not the one using it to try to make a solid and logically consistent analytical system. > > As I stated to XT when he asked the question, whether or not we see and/or analyze a “class struggle” depends on how we define it. And on how we define classes. And on which features and facets of a conflict we focus on. You’re essentially asking me to define “group conflict” in the sort of terms that would be useful for this debate. > > Let’s put it this way, if someone told you that all climate change was caused by “climate struggle”, but could not define it in a consistent or objective manner, and could not use it in a consistent, logically coherent explanatory/analytic structure… would you then state that they weren’t using terms validly or that you’d now define their terms for them? No, I would say that they have no clue **and then I would proceed to post the definition that I see as appropriate**. Really, I’m tired of playing the game of “He should go first” if it is clear that you have a definition just say it. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/17 "2011-01-01T06:52:25Z")
**BrainGlutton** , sure you defined your terms, but please, can you point at the current sociologists and philosophers that define the term and what are the examples many do agree with? While I can find plenty of evidence of sociologists and philosophers agreeing that classes do exist, I do have trouble finding what do most sociologists and philosophers agree on what is class struggle **nowadays**. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/18 "2011-01-01T07:07:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Could it be that there’s a ‘class struggle’ where certain activists constantly agitate to _create_ a class struggle for political reasons? On the other hand, could it be that some activists constantly deny the existence of class and class struggle because awareness of class and class conflict is a very good tool for making oneself aware of what is going on around one? Frex, all those nice poor people in the Midwest are very concerned about abortions and gay marriage and so forth while they sit idly by and allow the greatest wealth disparity in American history to occur, with the extreme upper class owning 90 percent of American wealth. These people don’t think of themselves as a class, and they don’t think of rich people as a class, and they clearly dont understand the nature of their problem even as some of them are already dying from the social safety net being torn to shreds by our rapacious upper class (such as uninsured people dying because they are denied coverage of insurance by health insurance companies). Things actually will have to get a lot worse before the people will revolt, but the history of the world is clear … wealthy classes have NO sense of compassion where middle class and lower classes are concerned, and things WILL get worse. I hate to see all the unnecessary suffering and death that is occurring and will occur, but it seems kinda inevitable at this juncture. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/19 "2011-01-01T07:23:00Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > **BrainGlutton** , sure you defined your terms, In a manner that was sloppy and overly broad to the point of meaninglessness. -Classes exist, but we can’t say what exactly they are or what their limits are. -Classes are, depending on how we define them, groupings of people who generally have similar characteristics and situations, to a degree. There are other possible ways to group society, and they will possibly have their own differences and situations, and they will possibly also come into conflict too. -But each group, depending on how exactly we define them, will have some things that, depending on who you ask, are where their interests do or should lie. -And, well, some things that we say are in that group’s interest aren’t actually good for all the people in that group, and some may say that what I claim is their group’s interest isn’t in their interest at all… but nobody would dispute that groups (depending on how we define them and what we agree their interests are) have some sort of interests or other. -If people do things that they think will help themselves, or simply do things with no care or knowledge at all of whether or not it will even effect their meta-group, then that’s meta-group action . -Whenever the interests of individual A come into conflict with Individual B, there is conflict, but it’s totally different if there are a few people on each side and if we divide them into classes, depending on how we define them, first. -And even within a meta-group, there may be individual groups who all disagree and do not want the same thing at all, but we can still call it meta-group struggle if we can claim that some actions undertaken by a group might possibly, depending on who says so and independent on whether or not they mean to, be in the interests of the meta-group. And so on. The issue isn’t, even, whether or not there are number of academicians who use the terms. There are plenty of literary critics who know _exactly_ what you mean if you announce that you are going to conduct a post-modernist analysis of a text. Conformity among academic groups does not show that the terms they’re using are worthy of consideration or that the analytic framework they’ve set up is particularly useful, predictive, or descriptive. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > No, I would say that they have no clue **and then I would proceed to post the definition lthat I see as appropriate**. Really, I’m tired of playing the game of “He should go first” if it is clear that you have a definition just say it. Really? If someone told you that you were wrong and "climate struggle’ was driving 100% of climate change, instead of just pointing out that he hadn’t proven his position, and maybe pointing out the mechanics that do actually drive climate change, you’d try to define “climate struggle”? Really? So if I tell you now “climate change is not driven by human actions or atmospheric interactions with the biosphere, or anything like that. It’s driven by Snugglity Wumppitz…” you’d try to define Snugglity Wumppitz? And if I tried to define it and couldn’t, you wouldn’t say that was evidence that my position wasn’t worthwhile, you’d try to define it? That’s the same situation here. Yes, depending on how we define “class struggle” it might or might not exist in a specific situation and/or might or might not serve as a valid analytical framework. Do we define classes consistently, or does the definition shift for each conflict we see? Does conflict have to be based around the issue of class itself, or merely involve participants from various classes and a completely unrelated issue? Do the sides have to be homogeneous, or do low, middle and upper class people arguing for both different sides of a discussion mean that it’s a class struggle if the outcome may disproportionally effect one group? What if people congregate and agitate for purely selfish reasons that have nothing to do with any larger groups to which they might be assigned, but their actions have secondary effects that benefit those groups, is that class struggle? What if their secondary actions hurt the larger group they’re assigned to, is that now not class struggle? Is it still class struggle, but also class sabotage at the same time? How do we even define what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for groups, what their interests are beyond the objective facts of survival and health? And so on, and so on. I don’t have to define the term, GIGO, because I’m not the one advancing it and arguing that it has an objective and specific definition and it fits within a useful and logically consistent framework. It’s not my job to come up with a definition for “conflict between groups” when the person advancing the term as useful can’t even come up with a definition that’s more specific than “conflict between groups”. When I advance a claim, then I have to provide proof for it. My claim, at this point however, is that Olent and now Glutton are using language and rhetoric sloppily and in a tremendously imprecise manner, such that it provides no proper framework for analysis. I’ve proven that. I don’t, then, have to provide him with definitions. Glutton: I see you’ve avoided all the frustrating points, like how you invented me saying that “[no] such a thing as class struggle even exists, ever or anywhere” or your earlier claim that sociology could some day be a science just like physics which, when proven wrong, you responded to with an ad hominem fallacy. Go figure. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > :dubious: I’m not surprised that the response is dubiousness. Incomprehensible text, and all. Of course, yet again you’re playing a funny game. I already cited how you outright refused to provide any definitions, as you claimed it was not necessary since it was a “fact”. And you were indeed demanding that I define your terms. Even after you deigned to provide definitions for the terms you were using, you repeatedly asked me to define your terms after I’d point out that you were using sloppy definitions and logically bankrupt analytic structures to describe them. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > **I** defined my terms. Plainly and clearly and unambiguously and, by any reasonable standard in a non-academic discussion of this kind, **rigorously.** You go on believing that if you’d like. We just saw the first two responses to your thread, independent of anything I ever said, echoed the same criticisms and were met by your same devastating ‘Nuhn unh!’ rebuttals. The first, by your brilliant factual rebuttal of "Dead flat wrong. Read it again. " And the second, which I responded to, was the awesome factual refutation of simply stating your terms again and repeating your assertions. It’s been pointed out to you, numerous times, that your definitions are sloppy and overly broad, your analytical framework lacks specificity and objectivity, and your interpretations are much the same as various literary critics’. That was the point about how your comparison to physics was fallacious. To which you responded, naturally, with the devastating factual rebuttal of ‘u r dum!!!’. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Nonsense. We might say that the Russian October Revolution and the Russian Civil War was a class struggle. Neat bait and switch. We were talking about Athens. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2011, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017/20 "2011-01-01T07:37:27Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > In a manner that was sloppy and overly broad to the point of meaninglessness. I’m afraid you missed the sarcasm there. (Hint: I was not agreeing with **BrainGlutton** ) But yeah, I would define the terms, and no, if I found someone that claimed that climate was driven by “Snugglity Wumppitz…” I would show how clueless he his by showing what Snugglity Wumppitz is and how that is not related to the issue. For example, many deniers say that the Sun is responsible for the recent increase in global temperature. Now, would \*\*you \*\*say that the Sun does not exist? 🙂 Or should I say \*\*endlessly \*\*that they are not using proper definitions or clear terminology? No, I would say that the Sun is not responsible for the current warming and why it is so, then post the true reason for the current warming. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-virginia-there-is-class-struggle/566017.md?page=2)