erik olin wright, classes (1985)

Chapter One, Posing the Problem: The Agenda of Class Analysis 1. The Legacy of Marx (6-7)

(6): two problems

1. abstract structural maps (class relations
   
2. concrete conjunctural maps (concrete classes-as-actors, political alliances, etc.)
   

(8): the two are, he's arguing, clearly not linked by the contention that gradations will fade as capitalism advances--"this image of a pervasive tendency towards radical polarization... is incorrect..." [the growth of professional and technical occupations, the expansion of managed hieraarchies]

2. The Agenda of Contemporary Marxist Class Analysis (8-16)

(9): we can sidestep the issue, then, no longer

(10): important-- "class structure exists independently of the specific people who occupy specific positions... class formation, on the other hand, refers to the formation of organized collectivities within that class structure on the basis of the interests shaped by the class structure... A given type of class structure may be characterized by a range of possible types of class formation..."

(10-11): three levels of abstraction

1. mode of production (can have different forms, certainly)
   
2. social formation (specific combinations of distinct modes of production--e.g., pre-capitalist classes within capitalism)
   
3. conjuncture (analysis in terms of concrete historical detail, contingent historical factors--this is also where non-class factors are likely to be explored)

(12): for Poulantzas, the State's relation to class can be analyzed at the level of the mode of production; for Skocpol, only at the conjuctural level

(13): embarassment of the 'middle-class'

(13): embarassment of the peasantry

(14): other work suggesting that class formation cannot be deduced from class structure, but is conditioned by the presence or absence of autonomous, institutional factors

(14-15): a new marxist class analysis--(1) self-consciously precise; (2) committed to working at the middle-level of abstraction.

(15-16): outline

PART ONE: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES Chapter Two, The Biography of a Concept: Contradictory Class Locations

(19): not a commentary on epistemology or philosophical principles, but it is, it seems, in a sly way..

1. The Logic of Concept Formation (20-24)
(20): constraints on concept building

1. theoretical presuppositions
2. empirical constraints

(21-22): dangers of theoreticism on the one hand, and empiricism, on the other

(23): "conceptual adjudication" as a "double-process"--in terms of abstract conceptual requirements and empirical observations

(23): 'dogmatism' -- refusing to call theory into question; and 'eclecticism' -- refusing to worry about theoretical coherence

2. Steps in the Analysis of the Formation of the Concept of Contradictory Locations (24-25)

(24-25): five steps (see section headings, below)

3.The Empriical Setting (25-26)

(26): how to categorize people, according to class? "How should we deal with the numerou cases of people who did not seem to be either bourgeois or proletarian?"

4. Theoretical Constraints (26-37)

(27): of two sorts

1. imposed by the explanatory role of class, around issues (1) class formation, structure and consciousness (28-31)--primarily the notion that 'class' has to be intelligible outside these three processes, against EP Thompson; and (2) around class and revolution
2. "not only should class structures be viewed as setting the basic limits of possibility..., but they also constitute the most fundamental social determinant... and thus historical epochs can best be identified by their predominant class structures." [this, he's noting, doesn't require technological determinism (since we are agnostic on what produces class) or class functionalism (since we are not concerned with superstructure in its specificity, just primacy of 'class'). moreover, you can have a struggle on non-class basis, but within the limits set by class (maybe you can eliminate patriarchy, for example, he's saying)]
   

(29): important claim about the way in which other mechanisms (race, gender, etc.) might explain the non-correspondence of class structure to formation and/or consciousness [there is a problem in this formulation, of course, but we can leave it for later; actually he raises this later, see limiation #2]

(30): transformation/limitation/selection diagram, quite useful

(32): map of history as class structures, motor of history as class struggle.

(32-33): class struggle definition has been three-fold:

1. agents--must be class actors
   
2. objectives--must target distribution of resources
   
3. effects--anything with an effect on class relationships, counts
   

(32): "The first of these definitions seems to me to be the most fruitful theoretically."

(34): four basic structural properties of the concept of class, which are also constraints 3-6

1. classes are relational--"classes are always defined" in relation to other classes; not gradationally. (for three reasons, detailed on pg. 35--struggle/conflict, typologies in theory of history, explains essential features of gradiational-based distributions)
   
2. relations are antagonistic--opposing interests
   
3. antagonisms rooted in exploitation--not just simple inequality, causal relationship between affluence of one and poverty of the other
   
4. exploitation based on social relations of production--production-centered concept, even if there are distinctions between three positions: Poulantzas, Roemer, Wright
   

(36): key--"an exploitative relation necessarily implies either that some people must toil more so that others can toil less, or that they must consume less at a given level of toil so that others can consume more, or both." [let's think about this more, as we proceed]

5. Alternative Solutions (37-42)

(37): alternative solutions to the problem of the middle-class:

1. actually, society is simply polarized--that this is apperaence, not essence, based on fact that managers don't own means of production. BUT this fails constraint one--doesn't satisfactorily explain class struggle, etc.
2. 'the new petty bourgeoisie', as owners of skill or human capital (in ideological predispositions, and in intermediate position in class conflict). BUT same problem--too much diversity to be subsumed, here (in sum, first and sixth constraints)
   
3. "the new class," in relationship to reproduction (or cultural production) of capitalism [BUT again, too amorphous--fifth and sixth constraints]
4. "middle strata"--outside of basic class relation
   

6. Building a New Concept (42-51)

(43): key move--dropping assumption that have to be in only one class; possibility of being in "more than one class simultaneously." so you have contradictory positioning, which is generative of contradictory interests.

(45): key--Balibar's distinction between 'ownership' and 'possession'--used by Wright (former means 'real control', whereas latter means 'control over actual operation'). and this can be further divided--control over physical means of production, and control over labor. but this does not go far enough--later discussing control over money capital, physical capital, labor. and four degrees of control.

(47): question of how this ought to be specified, further

(48): class map, figure 2.2 (this is 1979, he's saying)

(51): shift to appropriation and domination relations--so semi-autonomous becomes appropriation of labour process, but not appropriation of product

7. Problems with Conceptualization (51-64)

1. contradiction? how are objective interests of petit bourgeois pole contradictory to objective interests of proletarian role? heterogenous, dual, instead.
   
2. overstating the autonomy of this class; structural underdetermination; empirical anomalies
   
3. classes in post-capitalism?
4. shift from exploitation to domination (most fundamental), which is what the concept really rested on (and not exploitation). this is troubling, because domination, unlike exploitation, doesn't necessarily generate opposed objective interests.
   

Chapter Three, A General Framework for the Analysis of Class

1. Roemer's Account of Class and Exploitation (64-73)

(65): concept of explotiation as a particular way of understanding inequalities, which makes a claim about a causal relationship between rich and poor.

(65) "in Roemer's analysis the rich are said to exploit the poor when it can be established that the welfare of the rich causally depends upon the deprivations of the poor--the rich are rich because the poor are poor, they are rich at the expense of others." The Traditional Marxian concept is a subset of this larger, general concept.

(65): two approaches

1. Labour Transfer--without LTV, "market-based exploitation can be formally derived simply from inequalities in the distribution of property rights in the means of production."
   
2. Game-Theory--(1) would S be better off upon withdrawal? (2) its complement, S', would be worse off. and (3) the background condition is that S' dominates S. this helps Roemer identify four kinds of exploitation: capitalist (with per-capita share of assets), feudal (leave with personal assets--in fact, neoclassical economists only see feudal exploitation, and therefore can't see exploitation in capitalism), socialist (per capita share of inalienable assets), status .
   

(72): agreeing, here, with Roemer that the "basis of the capital-labour relationship should be identified with the relations of effective control... over productive assets" [which is not necessarily Weberian]

2. Towards a General Framework of Class Analysis (73-92)

(73): three modifications, on Roemer

1. economic exploitation and economic oppression--appropriation of 'fruits of labour', such that wealth of exploiting class depends on work of exploited class
   
2. recasting concept of feudal exploitation, by definition of labor power as an asset (thus our definitions are now symmetrical)
3. organization asset exploitation--control over division of labor

(81): "in all exploitation relations... what exploitation generates is effective claims on the social surplus. This in turn gives exploiters at least some control over investments..."

(83): useful Table 3.2

(85): important--skill assets don't really open up to relational hierarchies, which is what is demanded by the concept of class. in this sense socialism can be seen as a society with exploitation, but without fully coherent classes.

(86): communism as the withering away of of skill-based exploitation (i.e., situation in which control over skills gives you preferential access to the social surplus)

(87): a 'heterogenous' exploitation definition of the middle class, now.

(88): KEY table that follows from the previous reflections.

(89): "one of the consequences... is that it is no longer axiomatic that the proletariat is the unique... rival to the capitalist class..." [hmm, this strikes me as a serious stretch--you need to speak about numbers, organization, etc.] The spectre of the 'third class' benefiting from revolutions--unapologetically ahistorical.

(90-91): the possibility of bureaucratic/mangerial alternatives, when capitalism is meeting with difficulty? ok, but again, not very useful...

(91): "...it does suggest that the process of class formation and class struggle is considerably more complex and indeterminate than the traditional Marxist story has allowed..." [ok, this is fair enough, and as far as it goes...]

(91-92): four benefits of these amendments

3. Once Again, Unresolved Problems (92-110)

1. status of organization, in organization assets--is it not just another skill? are these not just strategic jobs, that require loyalty payoffs? BUT we need a concept that maps onto our class structure question.
   
2. relationship between skill and class--can skill-based differences really ground a class relation? are we not just speaking about fractions, within a class?
   
3. interaction among forms of exploitation--managers partaking, indirectly, in capitalist exploitation? we are going to assume this away.
   
4. non-asset bases of exploitation--why not religious classes, military classes, sex classes, etc.? well, unique role of productive forces; or, at least, a 'distinct logic' that systematically implicates 'subsistence'

Chapter Four, Implications and Elabroations...

1. Alternative Class Theories (106)-- Weberian (via Parkin, Giddens), rooted in "social closure" due to unequal ownership of resources (but, again, the key difference is that the Weberian theory doesn't have an account of exploitation, just a notion of inequalities generated though market exchange with this ownership as background. In other words, it becomes a problem of level of abstraction--for Marx, at the level of mode of production, skill-based exploitation doesn't feature; only at the level of the social formation; for Weber, only one level of abstraction exists, and 'class' exists specific to it as well as to the social formation (so feudalism wouldn't have 'class', in this sense). "At the heart of the distinction... is the contrast between an essentially culturalist theory of society and history and a materialist theory," since it enlists meaning-based definitions)
2. Mode of Production and Social Formation (109) -- question of the relative weight of different exploitations, at various levels of abstraction; concept of "dynamic primacy"; question of 'internal-external' relations; the question of 'overlapping exploitations', which ties into the expectations re: class formation.
3. The Theory of History (114): development of forces of production conditions probability of achieving more progressive social formations (not, of course, 'necessity'). Revision of three theses: capitalism can lead to statism, as well as socialism (organization exploitation might not be eliminated); proletariat is no longer only bearer of revolutionary mission; socialism has a distinctive kind of exploitation, not simply transitional.
   
4. Legitimation and Motivation (118): ideologies of two types--(1) rights to defend privilege; (2) welfare to defend privilege [here Wright's point about the 'costs of revolution' comes in; as Vivek says, what about the 'costs of counter-revolution'?]
5. Class Structure and Form of the State (122)
6. Class Structure and Class Formation (123): from class-in-itself, to class for-itself, how? "relative indeterminacy"--the structure, Wright's arguing, constitutes "the material basis for a variety of potential class formations."
7. Class Alliances (124): alliances between 'classes, segments of classes, and between contradictory class locations' are plausible, depending on what strategies actors choose to pursue; concept of 'net exploiters'
   
8. Women in the Class Structure (126): gender as conditioning skill, as credential itself, or as a form of feudal exploitation; but are they a distinct class? depends, says, Wright, on the complex particular to a given household.
   

(130-131): Six advantages of exploitation-based conception of class

1. more coherent way of describing different types of class structures
2. more coherent way of understanding "contradictory nature of contradictory locations."
   
3. much better link to 'interests,' than domination-based concept
4. more systematically materialist
5. more historically coherent
6. critical character, opening up to emancipation
   

(113-114): 'Asiatic' mode of production as, actually, a 'social formation' involving feudal and organizational exploitation.

erik olin wright, classes (NLR, 2009)

[the task:] "I will focus on three clusters of causal processes relevant to class analysis, each associated with a different strand of sociological theory. The first identifies classes with the attributes and material life conditions of individuals. The second focuses on the ways in which social positions afford some people control over economic resources while excluding others—defining classes relative to processes of ‘opportunity hoarding’. The third approach conceives of classes as being structured by mechanisms of domination and exploitation, in which economic positions accord some people power over the lives and activities of others. The first is the approach taken in stratification research, the second is the Weberian perspective, and the third is associated with the Marxist tradition."

(...) [the first paradigm--an "individual-attributes" approach] "‘Class’, then, identifies those economically important attributes that shape people’s opportunities and choices in a market economy, and thus their material conditions. Class should neither be identified simply with people’s individual attributes nor with their material conditions of life; rather, it is a way of talking about the interconnections between these two."

(...) here, "the central concern of sociologists has been to understand how people acquire the characteristics that place them in one class or another."

(...) [the second paradigm--"opportunity-hoarding"] "The second approach, in which classes are defined by access to and exclusion from certain economic opportunities, focuses on ‘opportunity hoarding’—a concept closely associated with the work of Max Weber."

(...) key [Marxist conception, through Weber]--"Accreditation and licensing are particularly important mechanisms for opportunity hoarding, but many other institutional devices have been used in various times and places to protect the privileges and advantages of specific groups: colour bars excluded racial minorities from many jobs in the United States, especially (but not only) in the South until the 1960s; marriage bars and gender exclusions restricted access to certain jobs for women until well into the 20th century in most developed capitalist countries; religion, cultural criteria, manners, accent—all of these have constituted mechanisms of exclusion. Perhaps the most important exclusionary mechanism is private-property rights in the means of production. Private-property rights are the pivotal form of closure that determines access to the ‘job’ of employer. If workers were to attempt to take over a factory and run it themselves, they would be challenging their exclusion from control over the means of production; the capacity of owners to acquire profits, meanwhile, depends upon their defence of this exclusion. The core class division between capitalists and workers—common to both Weberian and Marxian traditions of sociology—can therefore be understood, from a Weberian perspective, as reflecting a specific form of opportunity hoarding enforced by the legal rules of property rights."

(...) "Sociologists who adopt the opportunity-hoarding approach to class generally identify three broad categories in American society: capitalists, defined by private-property rights in the ownership of means of production; the middle class, defined by mechanisms of exclusion over the acquisition of education and skills; and the working class, defined by their exclusion from both higher educational credentials and capital."

(...) important [Weber vs. bourgeois social science]--"The critical difference between opportunity-hoarding mechanisms of class and individual-attribute mechanisms is this: in the former, the economic advantages gained from being in a privileged class position are causally connected to the disadvantages of those excluded from such positions. In the individual-attributes approach, such advantages and disadvantages are simply the outcomes of individual conditions: the rich are rich because they have favourable attributes, the poor poor because they lack them; there is no systematic causal connection between these facts. Eliminating poverty by improving the relevant attributes of the poor—their education, cultural level, human capital—would in no way harm the affluent. In the case of opportunity hoarding, the rich are rich in part because the poor are poor, and the things the rich do to maintain their wealth contribute to the disadvantages faced by poor people. Here, moves to eliminate poverty by removing the mechanisms of exclusion would potentially undermine the advantages of the affluent."

(...) [the third paradigm] "...the landowners not only gain from controlling access to the land (opportunity hoarding), they dominate the farm workers and exploit their labour. This is a stronger form of relational interdependency than in the case of simple exclusion, for here there is an ongoing relationship between not only the conditions but also the activities of the advantaged and disadvantaged. Exploitation and domination are forms of structured inequality which require the continual active cooperation between exploiters and exploited, dominators and dominated." [but it is surely important to ask what kind of an account of exploitation we have here? attached to the LTV, or not?]

(...) important, from least to most relational--"We could, then, summarize the contrast between the role of social relations in each of the three approaches to class analysis as follows. In the stratification approach, neither the economic conditions in which people live nor their activities are understood as directly reflecting social relations; it is the least relational of the three. The Weberian approach sees people’s economic conditions as being formed through relations of exclusion, but does not specify class as embodying relations among activities. The Marxist tradition is relational in both senses, drawing attention to the structuring effect of exploitation and domination on both economic conditions and activities."

(...) "Within this approach, the central class division in capitalist society is between those who own and control the means of production—capitalists—and those hired to use those means of production—workers. Capitalists, within this framework, exploit and dominate workers. Other positions within the class structure draw their specific character from their relationship to this basic division."

(...) [looking forward...] "These three processes operate in all capitalist societies. The differences in class structures between countries are produced by the varying interactions of these mechanisms. The theoretical task is to think through the different ways they are linked and combined; the empirical task is to develop ways of studying each mechanism and the interconnections between them."

(...) [sure, but isn't it worth calling this synthesis Marxist? who's his audience? i mean, as soon as you have an account of the context in which individual attributes are being assigned, you're no longer working with the categories of bourgeois class analysis] One possible nested micro-macro model is illustrated schematically in Figure 4. In this model the power relations and legal rules that give people effective control over economic resources—means of production, finance, human capital—generate structures of social closure and opportunity hoarding connected to social positions. Opportunity hoarding then produces three streams of causal effects: firstly, it shapes the micro-level processes through which individuals acquire class-relevant attributes; secondly, it shapes the structure of locations within market relations—occupations and jobs—and the associated distributional conflicts; and thirdly, it shapes the structure of relations within production, especially relations of domination and exploitation, and the associated conflicts in that sphere. The first of these causal streams in turn directs the flow of people into class locations within the market and production. Jointly the class attributes of individuals and their class locations affect their levels of individual economic well-being.

(...) [an obvious question-begger, not to be resolved here; but clear where erik olin wright stands...] "Such arguments are unconvincing. Marxism is a powerful tradition in social science because it provides far-reaching explanations for a range of important phenomena, not because it has some special method that sets it apart from all other theoretical currents. Of course, it is always possible that future efforts to formulate Marxism as a distinctive, comprehensive paradigm may succeed. But for the present, it seems more helpful to see Marxism as a research programme defined by attention to a specific set of problems, mechanisms and provisional explanatory theories."

(...) [ha--pragmatist realism! bit of a weak ending...] "It might seem from this assessment that, in the end, we should all simply declare ourselves Weberians. This was one of the accusations levelled against my work and that of other Marxists thirty years ago by the British sociologist Frank Parkin when he wrote: ‘inside every neo-Marxist there seems to be a Weberian struggling to get out’ I do not think this follows from the kind of pragmatist realism I am advocating here. Marxism remains a distinctive tradition in social science because of the specific set of problems it addresses, its normative foundations, and the distinctive inventory of concepts and mechanisms it has developed."

(1) worth thinking a bit more about this argument about the creation of a middle-class through expansion of massive education in the US -- is education more-or-less what the middle class rises and falls with, then?

(2) also useful to think about how this would translate to an analysis of the 'global proletariat', a la harman and others, no?

introduction to marxism and politics, with vivek chibber
lecture 1 -- class

---

why is class important? synonymous with "marxism," of course--but made so by the degeneracy of "left" culture (used to be the way any self-respecting marxist thought about capitalism, vivek is arguing)

part of the reason class has been so singularly associated with "marxism" has to do with the history of the Stalinization of the workers' movement.

vivek is stressing, though, that Marxists don't have a monopoly on the concept of class. nothing here is specific to Marx, himself--almost any 19th and 20th century socialist would recognize its importance.

nonetheless, why do we give class this importance? we still have to justify this.

it has to do with the issues that the Left is animated around--all those things which afflict vast numbers of people (poverty, disease, inequality, etc.)--all these things are maintained by people in power.

what the Left found, was when it tried to organize for better wages, etc., it found that it met with resistance. social justice is not going to be something that the well-endowed will agree to.

so, (a) the Left had to understand why the powerful resist / (b) what is the source of their power?

this is what leads, ultimately, to the recognition of class. the view on the marxist left has been that the central arbiter of power is class. and the reason that this is the case is because wielding power requires resources; and class is the chief distributor of resources in a capitalist society (indeed, in any society).

resources include: money, time, space, etc. -- again, the unequal distribution of resources translated into an unequal distribution of power, which facilitates the perpetuation of the status quo.

it's surprising, vivek is saying, how few people can justify the importance of class--it should never be a doctrinal commitment. we need to justify our attentiveness to class.

---

we come, then, to the question of how class appears and reproduces itself--and how does it bring about these inequalities.

surplus

class is not just any old social relation. class is associated with inequalities. what vivek wants to argue, though, is that not all inequalities are class inequalities. only certain kinds give you class relations of inequality.

inequalities that come about through exploitation.

most of human history has lacked "social surplus," don't forget. for exploitation to occur, surplus is a precondition.

imagine an agrarian society--everybody owns a small plot of land, big enough to grow enough food for the family unit. if they live in a village, then there's some common land, as well. after each agrarian cycle, there may be enough surplus to be stored in case of disaster. but basically they consume what they produce.

in a society like that, we can say that there's nothing left after people's needs are met. and thus: a group exercising structural and systematic power will not emerge.

maybe a priesthood will emerge--these priests won't work, will appropriate some of the surplus in the name of the ancestors, etc.

the difficulty, however, will be this, of course--where will the crops/produce come from in order to enshrine these classes. the only way in which such a group can emerge, is if the producers make enough to satisfy their own needs and the desires of an extractive class.

here, historically, in the emergence of this parasitic class, we see the birth of armies, retainers, etc. you will invariably meet a lot of resistance when you ask people to give things up.

therefore, this is also a question of technology--the state of the productive sources has to allow such a situation.

for classes to exist, there must be a social surplus. this is what the surplus does.

already we know two things:
(1) classes that are in power, do so by extracting a surplus produced by others
(2) they maintain that power via other institutions, armies and the State.

---

let us think, a bit, about how class worked during feudalism, in order to understand better the emergence of capitalism.

imagine a society in which there is a bit left over in the form of a surplus. a group of people arise to lay claim to that surplus. the feudal lords, who live of the labor of their peasants. the question, here, is how this happens.

a lord says to the peasants--"it's a bad, rough, mean world. all these other lords will come around with their retainers and seize your produce. i will protect you, at a price."

the basis, then, for taking some of the crop is a direct threat to the peasant. feudalism was simply "organized violence--knights as the guys that busted kneecaps." distinct from what your landlord will do if you don't pay rents to, today--violence was much more direct, overt. the threat of bodily harm underlay this system, always and constantly.

what are the ways in which lords actually obtain this surplus?

serfdom: how did serfs produce the surplus? the month is divided into days you work on your own land (which the lord is indirectly laying claim to), and days that you work on the lord's. it looks like a "rental" payment, but "rent" is more obviously a fiction in feudalism. (obviously, productivity has to be high enough in order to produce his necessities in the three or four days that he's working on his own land). there is absolutely no hiding the fact that the lord is getting fat off of the labor of the peasant. how can it be justified? (god made it this way? not coincidental that the ruling ideology was religious--it is very helpful that the church, itself, was a gigantic feudal lord. the priests, the pope, none of them did any labor, don't forget.)

----

the question then, arises: how in capitalism does exploitation arise? how is it reproduced? (remember: the key in feudalism is that plots of land were, nominally, in the posession of the peasant; the village unit is intact, as well. a fundamental fact, here, is that peasants don't need their lords; lords enforce their right to appropriate surplus through coercion.)

it seems, in capitalism, that there's nothing unfair going on. the serf is told to work on the lord's land, "or else." in capitalism the oppression is more subtle, hidden. in feudalism, the lord seeks out the peasant; in capitalism, the worker has to continuously seek out the capitalist. there doesn't seem to be the same kind of coercion. moreover, workers are free to quit. and thirdly, when workers come in, they agree on a wage.

nobody is being forced to work for any particular employer. they negotiate over their conditions of work, etc. so what's the problem? where's the exploitation? these are the foundations of the ruling ideology, don't forget. so we must be prepared to define exploitation in spite of this.

so we need to ask: is there a surplus in capitalism? where and how is it appropriated?

how does a factory work? how does the capitalist run his factory?

he sells a product for $100. out of that, wages account for 60$. means of production would be, say, $15. rent and overhead account for $10. his profits, then, are $15.

you might say to yourself--alright, you call call the profit a surplus, but so what? the worker is getting his wages, and the capitalist his. where is the devious plot? the capitalist gave them a job, for god's sake. he used his assets to give workers jobs. and they all go home. why would you call that exploitation?

what do economists say about the labor supply curve? what's the fiction about this relationship that we have to expose?

it's true that workers go looking for the capitalist, in a sense. it's absolutely true that he was not ordered to go to Wal-Mart, etc. BUT: the worker is not free to extricate himself from the production process, in toto. and when they negotiate with the capitalists, their independence is not of equal weight. the worker will last days without the capitalists; the capitalist will last for months. the capitalist has assets, that he can alienate to survive, if forced. workers have nothing to fall back on--they depend on selling their labor-power.

so workers need not work for any particular capitalist, but he still needs to work for Capital.

mainstream counter-argument--(1) capitalist has got the skills, (2) he's in possession of the assets (and that took money).

but let's look at it from a systemic level. a class of people with the assets are putting the workers to work. those assets have not been given to you through free exchange--how can it be simply the fact of ownership that entitles you to those profits? that ownership did not fall from the heavens. (political philosophy in the 20th century has failed to justify the unequal distribution of assets, absent the fiction of free exchange).

and the first defense? what are the skills that the capitalist possesses? most of these skills are acquired, and how? you do so by buying them, from business schools, or whatever. that means that the unequal distribution of skills simply reflects the unequal distribution of wealth.

---

capitalism is unlike feudalism in one very crucial respect--peasants have some control over the means of production (their own land). capitalism is different--the first time in human history where the private possession of the means of production is generalized. (and here, of course, we can tell also the story of "primitive accumulation")

the monopolization of the means of productions means that capitalists no longer need to coerce the workers--and, what's more, capitalists set the terms because of their superior structural position.

---

mainstream notions of class associate the concept with income, absolutely -- if someone is making x thousands of dollars, they are assigned to a specific class.

but here, we have defined class such that it precedes the concept of income. we are relating it to the process of production--your place in the class structure, in this sense, determines your income. and you will not fight poverty without fighting the class structure.

you're not a capitalist because you're rich. you're rich because you're a capitalist. it's not because you're poor that you're working class. it's because you're working-class that you're poor. moreover, there's a causal connection between one's wealth and the other's poverty. (and all this, of course, is maintained, in the final analysis, by force).

---

so, there is exploitation transpiring in capitalism. and this appropriation is rooted in domination and coercion, in the final analysis. (workers have to show up to work--they are not free to not work. the capitalist, moreover, can imposes these conditions because he owns the assets).

we've shown that class exists, then, and that it depends on exploitation.

exploitation is not simply a moral problem, it is a material fact. as long as these classes exist, you will have inequality (and conflict).

---

vivek is here making a further distinction between the not-exploited (permanent unemployed, lumpen elements, etc.) and the exploited (in whom the capitalist class still has a stake, don't forget--it needs Labor, and it can never forget this fact)

---

what differentiates classes, fundamentally, is their relation to the means of production, and the powers that flow from that fact.

notes on capital
part five: the production of absolute and relative surplus-value
chapter 16: absolute and relative surplus-value
chapter 17: changes of magnitude in the price of labor-power and in surplus-value
chapter 18: different formulae for the rate of surplus-value
part six: wages
chapter 19: the transformation of the value (and respectively the price) of labor-power into wages
chapter 20: time-wages
chapter 21: piece-wages
chapter 22: national differences in wages
part seven: the process of accumulation of capital
chapter 23: simple reproduction
chapter 24: the transformation of surplus-value into capital

(643): marx is tracking the "hostile antagonism" between mental and manual labor, which he suggests arises as the individual labor becomes replaced by the "collective"--in other words, the many become appendages, the few remain the brains. the question, of course, is simple (quite aside from raymond williams' attempts to complicate the binaries): how does a socialist society manage the collective divison of labor, such that the sovereignty of each individual's mental expression becomes a reality once more?

(647): here he clarifies that the productive base of human society has little to do with "nature," at least in the ahistorical sense (e.g., geoffery sachs, jared diamond). rather, it is again a question of interrogating (from the theses) "sensuous, real-practical life" as it unfolds through history; "the existing productivity of labour...is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries." again, a welcome rebuke to non-radical social science, which sees the barriers of nature where marxists recognize, instead, the relativity (and contingency) of limits. (and then, on 648, he immediately contradicts this with apparent nonsense on 'natural' impediments to advance--on england and india, of course; see though, FN 7 on 666, where marx addresses malthus and attempts to explain 'over-population' by recourse to the eternal laws of nature).

(651): i suppose the above can be reconciled, dialectically, through committing to incorporate 'natural' explanations into the dynamics of marxist explanations. in that sense, the putative invariance of 'nature' is impermissible, forcing a return to history of nature as a source of explanation. marx is doing this here, as he discusses the role of social compulsion in accounting for the division of working lives into necessary and surplus labor (i.e., he's clarifying that this disjuncture has its roots not in nature).

(659): "class struggle" over the spoils of productivity

(659): increasing productivity, marx seems to be suggesting, facilitates greater concentrations of wealth--as the value of labor-power falls, more time can be devoted to the production of surplus-value, all of which makes its way into the hands of capitalists. (imagine their glee at the last 30 years: rising productivity, static wages, cheap imports from china, and easy credit for workers!). there is room, in his analysis, for the place of class struggle in stemming this advance (and it's necessary, given observed patterns in the golden age. yet the fact of this "abyss" is indisputable to observers of the developed economies in the last thirty years.

(664): this attentiveness to time is critical, as it foregrounds an aspect of class conflict long since under-emphasized in analysis of american capitalism: namely, that, as workers are compelled to work longer and longer hours (with less vacation time, more intense work-days), the cost of reproducing them increases (i.e., the value of their labor-power goes up). in this sense, the flattening of the real wage is only part of the story of the assault on living standards in the US. (see also 683)

(667): here, in prefiguring what stands to follow the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, marx notes that not even socialism will limit the working day to necessary labor. the reasoning, i suggest, contains the seeds of the perversion that separates socialism, as aspiration, from socialism as it actually existed. on the one hand, he proceeds from the workers' aspirations to speak of an improvement in his conditions of life--in other words, an extension of what is considered necesary labor. and, on the other hand (and this is, of course, not any less desirable, but nonetheless telling), he speaks of the socialization of appropriation; in other words, surplus labor will exist insofar as some labor will be "necessary for the formation of a social fund." here, of course, we might remember the indignities of bureaucrats gleefully bleeding labor in the name of bold slogans of workers' liberation. again, none of this is intrinsic to the idea of taxation and government; it is simply to make, with hindsight, a point about the need to guard against co-option.

(667): more prefiguring, and no less interesting. capitalism, if defined by the ability of one social stratum to reproduce itself on the basis of another's labor, will only be eclipsed when labor--as in work itself--is universalized. if we accept this, we must confront also the fact of our own parasitism. the life of the university, as it exists under capitalism, could not be a better example of how one social stratum reserves, for itself, all possibilities for "free intellectual and social activity," while another squanders itself to reproduce these kings and queens. the anatomy of the university, in other words, is indistinguishable from the anatomy of the capitalist society which creates and sustains it. this is why, i suggest, battles over the living-wage (and, more ambitiously, visions of re-structuring the university, as workplace) have symbolic importance. until socialism demands that professors clean up their own shit (or, even better, others' shit), and janitors lead classes, we need to remember that we remain far from the world that we hold in our hearts.

(680): capitalism obscuring its mechanism of exploitation in the alleged "equality" of the wage-form; a perversion feudalism could not accomplish, as there surplus labor was "demarcated very clearly both in space and time." this suppression of the awareness of exploitation by folding both the spatial and temporal dimensions of surplus-value production into the factory (and into necessary labor)--the site where has interesting implications, again, for questions of the utility of bourgeois legality (and wars over it).

(680): this anger over bourgeois mystification via the notion of the value of labor (as against value of labor-power) is understandable; think of the behavior of the neoclassicals in living-wage debates, which seeks to naturalize (and de-historicize) a "fair" level of remuneration for labor--an endeavor which obfuscates the fundamental fact of surplus-value creation as a necessary feature of capitalist production. (there is, still, an uneasy question about how this plays out in the service sector--but i need to keep remembering that surplus-value has naught to do with the content of the labor process under consideration, but rather with the anatomy of the production process that mediates it).

(682): there is a latent question about what exactly "science" means for marx, especially as it corresponds to what it has meant for marxists. might we suggest that a critical genealogy of the word could help recover the marx of dynamism and dialectics, as against the vulgarization of his work by the positivists?

(703): this methodical investigation of differences in wages (in addition to the careful attempt to track the development of the "value of labor" in its various wage-forms) gives the lies to attempt to read, from the communist manifesto, a marxist position on "absolute immiseration." it is quite clear that marx was fully aware that this entire question is highly complicated, contingent, and impossible to resolve outside of history.

(709): in this introduction to the process of capital accumulation, two points stand out. first, marx seems to define the act of accumulation as something relentlessly productive--that is, as soon as a capitalist opts to take the fruits of accumulation outside of the cycle of capital circulation, he/she no longer "accumulates." in this sense, accumulation seems tied to the commitment to productively re-invest surplus. second, the fragmentation of the fruits of accumulation (into profit, interest, rent, etc.)--all this offers, perhaps, a good way to theorize the parasitic origins of financial capital. of course, there is more to the story, in the sense that finance, especially when disciplined, opens the circulation of capital, rather than just emerging as a consequence (in that sense, the temporality is reversed, perhaps). even still, at the most fundamental level, the fact of dependence on the real economy can hardly be disputed--ultimately, the accumulation of capital requires the production process.

(712): marx here, in his "accounting," lays the foundation for worker-control, insofar as it clarifies the contradiction immanent in the asymmetries of capitalist production--the worker is at once free from the capitalist (in that he is responsible for his own reproduction), and at once subordinate (in the morphologies of the factory floor). this surely qualifies as one of these "legendary" contradictions, whose resolution presents itself in the dreams of laborers everywhere: collective ownership of the means of production.

(713): here, i think, there's room to explore (or, rather, to clarify) marx's admittedly complicated thoughts on the relationship between material relationships and the ideal forms that interpret the former. the argument is simple: in arguing that the "transaction is veiled by the commodity-form of the product and the money-form of the commmodity," he's quite clearly claiming that certain concepts serve to legitimize actually-existing social relations (in this case, the commodity-form, which prioritizes the process of selling over and above production, and the money-form, which empowers those seeking to transform M into C into M', the capitalist, at the expense of those who earn money only in order to consume). in sum, the heavenly, bourgeois mist that coheres around dirty earthy realities obfuscates the nature of capitalist exploitation. to extend his argument, we might add that his earlier stress on the incessant character of this process is critical, as it speaks to what barbara fields highlights, namely the importance of living and re-living these facts-of-life to the formation of ideal apparatuses that rationalize them. taken even further, against the dogmatists, i think we can recover an almost gramscian notion of hegemony in this presentation of "legitimation"--it is the fact that the laborer receives a wage, week-in, week-out (with which he purchases a "basket of goods"), that cements, ideally, his subjugation to capital, which appears here as his provider. (the abiding question, still, is whether emancipation from this subjugation is primarily ideal--as in, does the worker learn "marxist economic theory" in order to be free--or, primarily material--as in, it requires the overthrow of said material relationships). as with most questions, i think the anticipated answer is likely too simplistic. fields' argument lends itself to a more pessimistic reading (as in one needs to reject the source at which these ideas are reproduced), whereas the dogmatists and parties, of course, invest their faith in the notion of emancipation through "scientific education." we need not review the absurdities of the latter, though we might want to interrogate the limitations of the latter (particularly, in the diagnosis of "hegemony"--is anything so clean, after all? at the very least, we need to re-introduce fanon's notion of hegemony-never-consolidated)

(716): a mutual dependence between capitalist and wage-laborer (insofar as the worker constantly produces "objective wealth," in the form of capital; and insofar as the capitalist "just as constantly produces labour-power...produces the worker as a wage-laborer") obscures the sovereignty of labor (insofar as labor-power is the incessant (though not necessarily original) source of capital's valorization), even while the actual dynamics are inverted in order to crown the capitalist (insofar as the capitalist buys labor-power, and thus reserves the right to dispose of it as he will).

(718): this claim, that the individual consumption of the worker forms an indispensable part of the process of production, is critical, for at least two reasons: (1) it further highlights the myriad ways in which, even in those spheres which he/she might be considered "free" and "autonomous," capital seeps into the non-working life of the worker. in the fact that this "maintenance and reproduction of the working-class remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital," we again see the dialectics of mutual dependence and subjugation. (2) it is within this capillary form of domination, i think, that one must situate analysis of the more overt forms of capital's intrusions (advertising, the company store, credit cards, etc.).

(718-719): implicit in marx's unveiling of the notions of "productive" and "unproductive" consumption is the same claim about the "irrational character of capitalist rationality"--namely, the notion that productivity, efficiency, output, etc., all are measured in relation to the process of valorization. once we break with these limited metrics, however, the massive irrationalities become clearer. to put it more succinctly, the rhetoric of rationality is tied to class. none of this is very distinct from what weber, foucault, or the frankfurt schoool wanted to emphasize--the notion that a prodigiously productive, efficient apparatus was deployed to deplorable, irrational ends.

(720-721): the british cotton industry, calling for a bailout in the aftermath of the blockade of the american south--some things never change! (here, more importantly, marx is relating capital's awareness of its (and society's) dependence on labor.

(722): the desire to restrict freedom of movement of labor reveals, again, the sinister asymmetry at the heart of the dual freedom of the wage-laborer: 'free' to dispose of himself as he will (i.e., not work and starve), but simultaneously 'free' to be disposed of as the capitalist would like. here, as always, "between equal rights, force [is deciding]."

(725-726): i take this opportunity to stress what is argued throughout these sections on accumulation, namely that capital accumulation proceeds only insofar as capital is incessantly deployed and re-deployed--insofar as the cycle of capital's circulation is unbroken. in that sense, latin american elites buying second homes in the US represent the failure of that indigenous bourgeoisie to fulfill its historical vocation. in other words, the unproductive consumption of the capitalist class, though significant, in a historical sense, when assessing third world development, is not marx's concern. again, he takes bourgeois intellectual's at their word when critiquing their "creation." (to review: failed capital accumulation, in marx's terms, is described as "simple reproduction"). (see also 738-739).

(727): in tracing how simple reproduction becomes "a spiral," marx makes room for, within his analysis, the fact of the rising standard of living of the working-class. as he has established, capitalist's are invariably critically dependent on the existence of a laboring population--indeed, the "autonomous" reproduction of wage-labor is part of the cycle of capital's circulation. in this sense, quite apart from that theory of crisis which identifies the contradiction latent in capital's dual relationship to labor (as its workers, but also as its consumers), marx is suggesting that capital cannot avoid the imperative to provide an increasingly larger absolute social product to workers in order that they may reproduce themselves in ever greater numbers. note, he has dwelt carefully on the imperfections, and further contradictions in this process--how this is unsteady, unwilling, and often untrue. and that holistic analysis is really the lesson of this book.

(729-730): an excellent passage, requiring little explication: bourgeois legality mystifies the content of the capitalist's appropriation by presenting in the form of the equal exchange. in other words, the legal framework that regulates exchange enshrines a principle utterly hostile to the equality it purports--namely, the parasitism of capital and the subjugation of labor that ensues. (an interesting additional issue, which is evident from marx's presentation, is the fleeting legality of this relationship. rather than understanding bourgeois legality as incomplete, ideally, in other words, he seems to be presenting it as partial because it is temporary. when we confine ourselves to the act of exchange (the interaction between capital as buyer and wage-laborer as seller), all is well. it is when we move beyond this that we must also move beyond the mist of bourgeois social science).

(731): something also needs to be said about the curious character of labour-power as commodity. as marx notes, while the wage-laborer alienates it in his contract with the capitalist, this alienation is temporary (after the act of exchange, he's free(/condemned) to do this again). in a sense, the entire tragedy of the proletarian resides in his inability to detach himself from what he sells--he must follow his commodity to work, as that commodity is his body, his-self. with this in mind, one can even begin to argue that drugs, religion, whatever else, represent an alienation in response to this fundamental alienation--as he is alienated in following his body to work (ah, the dualists return!), he responds by leaving the factory in order to find god, football, or everything in between. "apathy," then, is only a feature of this underlying injustice.

(733): a need to think this through--"to the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own immanent laws, undergoes a further development into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production must undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become laws of capitalist appropriation."

(740-741): here, marx is telling a story about the capitalist class becoming progressively less "capitalist" (as vocation), as capitalism advances, insofar as they "accumulate" less and "splurge" more. this chronology of increasnig 'lax-ness', i think, seems resoundingly true--though what is needed to make the narrative more robust is specifics rooted in history (note, marx also complicates this significantly--speaking, for example, of the occasional necessity of capital representing itself through luxury). for example, in the US the recent story is well-known, hinging on the neoliberal revolution (de-industrialization, financialization, and macro- and micro-economic indebtedness).

(742): in this brief allusion to the notion that the capitalist, too, is merely a 'machine' means to the end of valorization, there's room to assert, with marcuse and the others, the more total undesirability of modern industrial society. indeed, it is precisely this process of means incessantly and permanently becoming ends-in-themselves that those thinkers foreground as the madness of modernity. of course, no one needs the zerzanite reaction.

(747): "in the chapters on the production of surplus-value we constantly assumed that wages were at least equal to the value of labor-power. but the forcible reduction of the wage of labor beneath its value plays too important a role in the practical movement of affairs for us not to stay with this phenomenon for a moment."

(748): again, in this essay on the english worker of the 18th century lamenting the cheapness of french labor, we confront again the morphological timelessness of the capitalist economy.

(756): here, the fetishism of the commodity re-appears in the fetishism of capital: "all the powers of labor project themselves as powers of capital, just as the value-forms of the commodity do as forms of money." to review, the productive forces of labor--both as it preserves the value of dead labor, and also adds new value to the product--appear as the features of capital's ability to self-valorize. in the case of money, though i need to clarify the argument, money (as universal equivalent) expresses individual properties of specific commodities as general qualities of itself (appropriating, in a sense, their functions to itself).

(758-759, fn 51): marx on bentham, that "soberly pedantic and heavy-footed oracle..."--priceless!

class is still critical:
Class is different. It runs too deep; it allows us to connect the present with the past and to understand the malignancies of a modern economic system based on inequity and fear. So it is seldom spoken about publicly, lest a Goldman Sachs chief executive on multimillions in pay or bonuses, or whatever they call their legalised heists, be asked how it feels to walk past office cleaners struggling on the minimum wage.
(...) Interviewing Keith Vaz, chairman of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, one journalist wondered if "we" should go out and deal personally with our vile, mugging, stabbing, shooting youth. To this, the nodding Vaz replied that the problem was "values". The main "value" is ruthless exclusion, such as the exile of millions of young people on vast human landfills (rubbish dumps) called housing estates, where they are forearmed with the knowledge that they are different and schools are not for them. A rigid curriculum, a system devoted to testing child-ren beyond all reason, ensures their alienation. "From the age of seven," says Shirley Franklin of the Institute of Education, "20 per cent of the nation's children are seen, and see themselves, as failures . . . Violence is an expression of hatred towards oneself and others." With the all-digital world of promise and rewards denied them, let alone a sense of belonging and esteem, they move logically to the streets and crime.
(...) And yet, since 1995, actual crime in England and Wales has fallen by 42 per cent and violent crime by 41 per cent. No matter. The "violence of youth" is the accredited hysteria. A government led for a decade by a man whose lawless deceit helped cause the violent deaths of perhaps a million people in Iraq invented an acronym - Asbo - for a campaign against British youth, whose prospects and energy and hope were replaced by the "values" expressed by Keith Vaz and exemplified by Goldman Sachs and the current imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

amilcar cabral on culture and national liberation (1970):
In order to escape this choice--which may be called the dilemma of cultural resistance--imperialist colonial domination has tried to create theories which, in fact, are only gross formulations of racism, and which, in practice, are translated into a permanent state of siege of the indigenous populations on the basis of racist dictatorship (or democracy). This, for example, is the case with the so-called theory of progressive assimilation of native populations, which turns out to be only a more or less violent attempt to deny the culture of the people in question.
(...) [on giving culture a place in materialist view of history] The value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation on the ideological or idealist plane of the physical and historical reality of the society that is dominated or to be dominated. Culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of history, by the positive or negative influence which it exerts on the evolution of relationships between man and his environment, among men or groups of men within a society, as well as among different societies.
(...) History allows us to know the nature and extent of the imbalance and conflicts (economic, political and social) which characterize the evolution of a society; culture allows us to know the dynamic syntheses which have been developed and established by social conscience to resolve these conflicts at each stage of its evolution, in the search for survival and progress.
(...) [does he distance himself from progressive views of culture, if culture is melded to history?]
Thus it is understood that imperialist domination by denying the historical development of the dominated people, necessarily also denies their cultural development. It is also understood why imperialist domination, like all other foreign domination for its own security, requires cultural oppression and the attempt at direct or indirect liquidation of the essential elements of the culture of the dominated people.
(...) [he is confused, in my opinion: because understands that the old metrics no longer apply] In our time it is common to affirm that all peoples have a culture. The time is past when, in an effort to perpetuate the domination of a people, culture was considered an attribute of privileged peoples or nations, and when, out of either ignorance or malice, culture was confused with technical power, if not with skin color or the shape of one's eyes. The liberation movement, as representative and defender of the culture of the people, must be conscious of the fact that, whatever may be the material conditions of the society it represents, the society is the bearer and creator of culture. The liberation movement must furthermore embody the mass character, the popular character of the culture--which is not and never could be the privilege of one or of some sectors of the society.
(...) [levels of culture?] In the specific conditions of our country--and we would say, of Africa--the horizontal and vertical distribution of levels of culture is somewhat complex. In fact, from villages to towns, from one ethnic group to another, from one age group to another, from the peasant to the workman or to the indigenous intellectual who is more or less assimilated, and, as we have said, even from individual to individual within the same social group, the quantitative and qualitative level of culture varies significantly.
(...) [durkheimian claims] In societies with a horizontal social structure, such as the Balante, for example, the distribution of cultural levels is more or less uniform, variations being linked uniquely to characteristics of individuals or of age groups. On the other hand, in societies with a vertical structure, such as the Fula, there are important variations from the top to the bottom of the social pyramid. These differences in social structure illustrate once more the close relationship between culture and economy, and also explain differences in the general or sectoral behavior of these two ethnic groups in relation to the liberation movement.
(...) [much like fanon here] A reconversion of minds--of mental set--is thus indispensable to the true integration of people into the liberation movement. Such reonversion--re-Africanization, in our case--may take place before the struggle, but it is completed only during the course of the struggle, through daily contact with the popular masses in the communion of sacrifice required by the struggle.
(...) [has been working backward from this point, i suspect] Whatever may be the complexity of this basic cultural panorama, the liberation movement must be capable of distinguishing within it the essential from the secondary, the positive from the negative, the progressive from the reactionary in order to characterize the master line which defines progressively a national culture.

Amilcar Cabral on class, colonization, and reclaiming the march of history (1966):
This leads us to pose the following question: does history begin only with the development of the phenomenon of ‘class’, and consequently of class struggle? To reply in the affirmative would be to place outside history the whole period of life of human groups from the discovery of hunting, and later of nomadic and sedentary agriculture, to the organization of herds and the private appropriation of land. It would also be to consider — and this we refuse to accept — that various human groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were living without history, or outside history, at the time when they were subjected to the yoke of imperialism.
(...) This means that before the class struggle — and necessarily after it, since in this world there is no before without an after — one or several factors was and will be the motive force of history. It is not difficult to see that this factor in the history of each human group is the mode of production — the level of productive forces and the pattern of ownership — characteristic of that group.
(...) If we accept this conclusion, then the doubts in our minds are cleared away. Because if on the one hand we can see that the existence of history before the class struggle is guaranteed, and thus avoid for some human groups in our countries — and perhaps in our continent — the sad position of being peoples without any history, then on the other hand we can see that history has continuity, even after the disappearance of class struggle or of classes themselves.
(...) [the three stages of history - and the end of agriculture?] In politico-economic language, the first stage would correspond to the communal agricultural and cattle-raising society, in which the social structure is horizontal, without any state; the second to feudal or assimilated agricultural or agro-industrial bourgeois societies, with a vertical social structure and a state; the third to socialist or communist societies, in which the economy is mainly, if not exclusively, industrial (since agriculture itself becomes a form of industry) and in which the state tends to progressively disappear, or actually disappears, and where the social structure returns to horizontality, at a higher level of productive forces, social relations and appreciation of human values.
(...) [imperialism: colonialism and neo-colonialism] On the question of the effects of imperialist domination on the social structure and historical process of our peoples, we should first of all examine the general forms of imperialist domination. There are at least two forms: the first is direct domination, by means of a power made up of people foreign to the dominated people (armed forces police, administrative agents and settlers); this is generally called classical colonialism or colonialism is indirect domination, by a political power made up mainly or completely of native agents; this is called neocolonialism.
(...) [on imperialism arresting the march of history] While in classical colonialism this process is paralyzed, neo-colonialist domination, by allowing the social dynamic to awaken (conflicts of interests between native social strata or class struggles), creates the illusion that the historical process is returning to its normal evolution. This illusion will be reinforced by the existence of a political power (national state) composed of native elements. In reality it is scarcely even an illusion, since the submission of the local ‘ruling’ class to the ruling class of the dominating country limits or prevents the development of the national productive forces.
(...) [nationalism as that which reorients, by reinvigorating, this 'march'] On the basis of this, we can state that national liberation is the phenomenon in which a given socio-economic whole rejects the negation of its historical process. In other words, the national liberation of a people is the regaining of the historical personality of that people, its return to history through the destruction of the imperialist domination to which it was subjected.
(...) [nationalism based in this march of history] ...for us the basis of national liberation, whatever the formulas adopted on the level of international law, is the inalienable right of every people to have its own history...
(...) [on 'backwardness' and where it fits] By saying this we do not wish to diminish the importance of other internal factors which are unfavorable to national liberation, such as economic under-development, the consequent social and cultural backwardness of the popular masses, tribalism and other contradictions of lesser importance. It should however be pointed out that the existence of tribes only manifests itself as an important contradiction as a function of opportunistic attitudes, generally on the part of detribalised individuals or groups, within the national liberation movements. Contradictions between classes, even when only embryonic, are of far greater importance than contradictions between tribes.
(...) [like fanon, nationalism on the basis of shared experience] But on the other hand the necessarily repressive nature of the neo-colonial state against the national liberation forces, the sharpening of contradictions between classes, the objective permanence of signs and agents of foreign domination (settlers who retain their privileges, armed forces, racial discrimination), the growing poverty of the peasantry and the more or less notorious influence of external factors all contribute towards keeping the flame of nationalism alive, towards progressively raising the consciousness of wide popular sectors and towards reuniting the majority of the population, on the very basis of awareness of neo-colonialist frustration, around the ideal of national liberation.
(...) [in colonial situation, nationalism is to socialism, as bourgeois revolution is to revolution] The colonial situation (in which the nation class fights the repressive forces of the bourgeoisie of the colonizing country) can lead, apparently at least, to a nationalist solution (national revolution); the nation gains its independence and theoretically adopts the economic structure which best suits it. The neo-colonial situation (in which the working classes and their allies struggle simultaneously against the imperialist bourgeoisie and the native ruling class) is not resolved by a nationalist solution; it demands the destruction of the capitalist structure implanted in the national territory by imperialism, and correctly postulates a socialist solution.
(...) [on violence] We do not think we will shock this assembly by stating that the only effective way of definitively fulfilling the aspirations of the peoples, that is to say of attaining national liberation, is by armed struggle. This is the great lesson which the contemporary history of liberation struggle teaches all those who are truly committed to the effort of liberating their peoples.