Compared to the other readings for this week, I enjoyed Sandy Carter’s essay, “Class Conflict: the Human Dimension,” the most as it spoke to the sometimes forgotten human element of class. Some Marxist theorists like to speak of class-consciousness, but then refer to it as an abstract idea. Something has to be alive to have a consciousness. Therefore, Carter’s essay brings humanity back into the equation.
Rather than speaking in only theoretical terms, Carter uses many first-person accounts of the “working-class encounter with the PMC.” It is one thing for a theorist to write of the disparities between the two classes and quite another to hear a factory worker speak to the uneasiness he feels when surrounded by intellectuals. When discussing Raymond Williams, we said that he studies Marxists, rather than Marx himself. Carter speaks to this notion in pointing out that “classical Marxism easily forgets [that] class always remains more than an objective relation.” (115) She continues by returning to the source: the mode of production “must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical existence of individuals. Rather it is a definite form of expressing their life, a defining mode of life on their part.” (115) Abstract notions of class difference only lend itself to such theoretical examinations. When one utilizes the human factor, it opens the theoretical to a true notion of class-consciousness.
**In addition, the various first-person examples used in the Carter essay made me question the basic notion of the working class. How do we categorize movie stars? At the basic level, there are forced to sell their labor (acting) on the market for profit. Does this then make them members of the working class when their personal wealth can be astronomically higher? Just a thought…
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