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Marx's Theories on Social Class Applied to Modern-Day Brooklyn
The dust covered books, mostly by Marx, that where on the shelves is what my first encounter was in researching the concept of class. Social Class, being a taboo subject in American society, offers little account of how involved the separation and struggle is between classes. It affects our everyday lives, our past and our futures. Marx set the foundations upon which we define and understand class. In his work, Manifesto of the Communist Party, he claims the history of all society is the "history of class struggles," {Massey, 159}. Marx's theories can be loosely applied to modern American society today; the differences are in the emergence of the dominant middle class. For Marx "class is quintessentially a relationship of exploitation and conflict," {Katz, 9}. What happens when that conflict is hidden even deeper than it was in Marx's time? Marx: Dead or Alive?
Marx's theories focused on the class struggle between the "bourgeoisie and the proletariat"{Massey, 159}. Modern society and economics have created many mutations and variations of these two class brackets. The attempts to clearly define what class means today have been few and far between and often lack the passion to which Marx held his theories. This is why his theories have sustained the impact they made more than a hundred years ago. Overview:
"Means of production" were the defining lines of class for Marx where two groups, the owners and those who sold their labor power, made their living, {G&D, 170}. In this class separation existed a struggle where the proletariats were exploited by the bourgeoisie. Both classes worked towards profit, but only the owners, or the bourgeoisie, reaped of its rewards. The proletariats suffered long hours, low pay and increasing alienation as the upper class bourgeoisie profited from the fruits of their labor. The bourgeoisie developed out of another group called the burghers. The burghers were a class of men that "traveled freely" conducting trade and planting the seeds of capitalism, {www.stier.net.}. This bourgeoisie class built industry and spread a capitalist wildfire to the west. As Marx put it, "The discovery of America opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie,"{Massey, 160}. For Marx this spread would increase the rising separation between the two classes. There was no way for him to predict this accurately, as America generated its own class lines. Marx was right in predicting that the rich would grow richer and the poor get poorer, but a varying middle class has blurred the lines of class separation. The changing times have taken away, as well as added to Marx's theories of class. The single line between bourgeoisie and proletariat is now a latter we can either climb up or fall down. People are relatively "much better off" in today's economic climate, {G&D, 171}. Just as the laws of Marx's time cushioned the rich and sustained the poor, the laws of today offer more opportunity for both classes. Even though Marx's enemy was the capitalist, "ownership means something very different under feudalism as opposed to under capitalism," {www.stier.net}. Capitalism has run rapid across the world, but acts of democracy have controlled it, along with allowing opportunity to more sectors of society. Read on at the links provided to see:
The Choice of a New Generation
American Class
The Ignorance of Class
The Brooklyn Class Project - as well as the works cited.
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Contributor's Note
When the past meets future for Jason, the moment is fueled by a creative background in music, writing, film and philosophy providing a nexus of the complex world to come. He is currently a freelance writer and ghostwriter of books, articles and screenplays. http://www.yuwie.com/cangialosi
http://jason-cangialosi.blogspot.com/
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Within the Diversity that is Brooklyn, NY, Class Lines Take Many Shapes and Forms
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