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One of the Stupidest critiques of Marxist Class analysis I've seen was just recommended to me by my poli sci professor
(hexbear.net)
This small essay by Janine Brodie called "Power and Politics" has several other issues, but their most frustrating one is their outright DISMISSAL of Marxist class analysis for the stupidest reasons. Economic determinism? I guess if you yearned to softly dismiss marx by misrepresenting him.
God I fucking hate poli sci majors.
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The next one:
I'm not the brightest crayon in the box but is it just me or does Doctor Brodie somehow make politics and power some sort of vague, unsolvable mystery? Like fr I don't want just an echochamber of nodding heads plz help am I in the wrong?
I need help putting words to my issues with it.
It's been awhile, but If I remember correctly, proles have to be free citizens, because they have to be free to move to where work is. While you could theoretically have a slave that you contract out to industries, the fact that you have to make a contract with an owner means you bear a fiduciary duty to that person that you (at the time of writing) did not owe to a prole. However, contracting slave labor for factory work did not fit the model of slave-based production at the time (the Southern U.S. being the model Marx would be discussing).
Now that doesn't mean that most proles aren't engaged in wage slavery, but that is a fundamentally different animal than legal slavery, as the slave is not a legal 'person' but instead a literal commodity, the slave being the commodity rather than strictly the labor the slave provides.