Class analysis...

dance i am a professional analyst of 20 years experience and i have noticed the same as you at work. Some people just can't put things into categories/classes. If they can't do that, then it's really difficult to do meaningful analysis.

I think it must be a cognitive style thing. Some people look for similarity to make sense of things - they classify. Some look for differences- they individualise.

It is really interesting. If categorising is something that comes naturally it is hard to appreciate that its a difficult thing for others.

It’s not describing people, it’s describing power

Because classes are made of people, and often class analysis is used as a thinly veiled cover to attack the individual.

but a sincerely held belief that class analysis can never, ever be a predictive tool concerning attitudes, beliefs or moral worth

Where I do not understand class analysis is where it leads to ‘your ideas are less valid than mine as you have more privilege’.

What you are all describing is the way identity politics driven by individualism has turned class analysis on it’s head.

Class analysis is not ‘a predictive tool’, individuals are not relevant to it. Anyone who reads an attack on individuals into a class analysis is suffering from an individualistic identity politics way of seeing the world and TBH I don’t think it is often there.... hence NAMALT....

I understand class analysis, however I do wonder if actually the classes are sometimes to big to be useful. Quite often on FWR it’s said men as a class or women as a class.

To put it bluntly (let’s not go down the trans rabbit hole!) that’s approximately half the population that are only connected because of their sex. Is it statistically to large and to vague to be useful in the context it’s used here? I can understand female/male division when used in the context of say the NHS, but here I’m not so sure.

"Why is X earning less than Y? Because X has been judged a part of class Z, which has historically been considered less competent than the class that includes Y. How can we ensure that members of class Z are not further disadvantaged? By eliminating the concept of class Z except as a historical artifact of prejudice."

That breaks down in the last sentence though - the analysis is useful to say WHY X is earning less than Y. It doesn’t logically lead on to say that eliminating class Z is the answer. Once you get onto ‘eliminating class Z’ you’re back round to the identity stuff surely? The answers to how to ensure class Z as a whole are not disadvantaged are rarely so simple and will be dependent on various factors in various times and places.

Is class analysis used for predictions generally?

As I have been taught, it's use is for structural analysis - as you said, socioeconomic and historic understanding of what forces were at play to produce certain conditions.

So it is useful to analyse educational systems as a product of the industrial revolution and the changing demographics of urbanisation. The clarity of being able to see that relationship is important to being able to drive change to produce better educational outcomes.

Class analysis doesn't tell you that being a member of the working class is an ethical attribute, it just helps you describe how society constructs power hierarchies.

Anything beyond that takes you into identity politics again, and concepts like the moral failure of the poor. It is perfectly possible to be a member of an oppressed class and be a reprehensible human being.

Understanding oppression is class analysis. The character and fate of the individual within that class is about other things, including identity.

You might argue that women are under-represented as recognised artists (vide Germaine Greer's book), because of historic oppression of the class of women. It tells you nothing about the artistic capacity or merits of women.

Identity politics might argue that the reason women are under-represented is because the female brain isn't up to the demands of being a genius.

Feminist and class analysis require the strategic analysis of systems and groups. It is difficult to consider the impact of systems if your thinking keeps bringing you back to individual cases.

I think that’s very true. I’d add that there are a few posters in here who just don’t want to accept its true or dontvwant toballow the subject to be raised because it doesn’t fit with their internal view of the world. Alsoit doesn’t allow them to harangue women in these boards with twenty fairly irrelevant examples and demand each one is answered to their satisafaction.
On a previous discussion we got derailed by one of the male posters on this thread insisting that women in the West were not oppressed at all. its hard to start or continue a useful discussion when you’re on the back foot trying to argue that, which of course is what the poster, in any of their incarnations or names , actually wants.

It’s much easier to derail a conversation by focusing on individuals than it is to explore the issue.

Class analysis is just prejudice with letters after it's name.

It's useful as a way of analysing the impact of prejudice in the individual, but it produces nothing but further retrenchment of false, constructed identities when used for anything other than socio-economic historical study.

"Why is X earning less than Y? Because X has been judged a part of class Z, which has historically been considered less competent than the class that includes Y. How can we ensure that members of class Z are not further disadvantaged? By eliminating the concept of class Z except as a historical artifact of prejudice."

I've qualified in sociology and other areas around it. This isn't a perspective born from lack of understanding but a sincerely held belief that class analysis can never, ever be a predictive tool concerning attitudes, beliefs or moral worth. It's like a manipulator arm in a nuclear reactor - crucial within its context, horrible toxic outside of it.

I think that class analysis is valid as analysis. It can also be useful in places like SA after Apartheid, when there was clearly a need to change the race balance in corporates and government.

Where I do not understand class analysis is where it leads to ‘your ideas are less valid than mine as you have more privilege’. Surely, firstly, as soon as you get down to individual level, it no longer applies. It is a tool for analysing populations, not individuals. I cannot imagine Maggie Thatcher, the most powerful person in the UK at the time telling a male colleague to ‘check his privilege’. Same goes for Obama.

Secondly, I personally do believe in objective reality. An idea or thought has validity (or not) per se, regardless of where it comes from.

It seems to me that, often, ‘class analysis’ is used as a tool to shut down free discourse between two populations who are very similar. I.e one may, on average, enjoy more privilege but the population density distributions overlap so much that confounding factors overwhelm it.

The point remains, if your entire rebuttal consists of 'your argument is invalid because you are white/a man', then you don't actually have a rebuttal.

I wouldn't go so far as to render someone's entire argument invalid on the basis of their race or sex, but [white man's] experience of the patriarchy / racism won't be the same as someone who has lived experiences of either / both. So your argument automatically carries less credibility.

I can't think of anything more cringe-worthy than trying to tell a black person that my thoughts on racism carry equal weight as theirs. But we're all different.

I agree that some people do seem to struggle with the bigger picture / landscape / strategic view. You see it on here all the time.

'If you don't like Page 3, just don't by The Sun'.

'If you don't agree with strip clubs / prostitution, don't use them'.

'I shave my legs because I want to, it has absolutely nothing to do with socialisation (or, more likely, 'what other people think').

'I'm proud to be Mrs Husband's Surname - it's my choice and that's what feminism is all about'.

'Britain's has two female (inevitably 'female'!) Prime Ministers, you have equality!'

And yes, I'm sure stripping for men is super empowering for [insert random woman] but it doesn't move women forward at all.

Feminist and class analysis require the strategic analysis of systems and groups. It is difficult to consider the impact of systems if your thinking keeps bringing you back to individual cases.

YY - the lack of systems thinking in politicians and corporates leaders alike is one of the major problems imo - as much as in the general population.

It's why we need a Dummy's Guide to Class Analysis or equivalent - with diagrams and examples - to combat the poisonous identity politics and thinking - which as you adroitly highlighted, is actually small, flawed thinking.

In my experience this rarely happens

But Dowager surely you can see that the frequency that an argument is made has no bearing on whether or not it's true.

I know numerous women who are critical of the idea of 'Patriarchy', and one of my best friends (who happens to be black and from Zimbabwe) hates the entire concept of 'white privilege'. That's just in my (admittedly limited) experience.

The point remains, if your entire rebuttal consists of 'your argument is invalid because you are white/a man', then you don't actually have a rebuttal.

I spent years teaching subjects which required the development of a strategic understanding of the field. That is, to consider not only the mechanics of their job but the political and social implications and contexts of that job, (it was a politically sensitive area).

While it may have been a failure of my teaching, in end I started to think that some people struggle with big picture thinking - either their training, their experience or their wiring hinder their capacity to do strategic analysis. This is not to say they were unintelligent or uninvolved, but that this was a tool they didn't, or maybe couldn't, master.

Feminist and class analysis require the strategic analysis of systems and groups. It is difficult to consider the impact of systems if your thinking keeps bringing you back to individual cases.

I think this is why, when you say, "women are more oppressed than men (as a class), someone will always chime in with, "yes, but I know a woman who is the CEO of a corporation, so how is that oppressed. Hey? Hey?"

Class analysis depends on making broad generalisations in order to discern the systems which create particular conditions. Identity politics is the exact opposite of this kind of thinking because it privileges individuals. Not to say that personal experience isn't important, but the struggle or success of individuals only tells you about those people. Class analysis tells you about what the structural mechanisms are which create oppression.

Identity politics is a logical outcome of the myth of the individual, and it is, as was said above, a useful tool for maintaining privilege.

It's why feminism and Marxism are such powerful tools for the analysis of society: and why they face such hostility.

I don't know how to fix the thinking bit - a concentration of the development of thinking skills in school maybe?

Sorry if this is a bit incoherent - I'm typing on my phone between chores.

Because people have been generally mind controlled by neocon policies for decades now that the individual can achieve anything. Success is all down to the individual, and nothing else, and whether they try hard enough.

If you don't succeed, or are targeted by male violence and /or systemic injustice, then it's all your fault. No problem with the system or men, just with you. /s

They have been poisoned by the US cult-like mantras, as have the Labour Party, the traditional advocates for the dispossessed plus working classes.

So because no-one in politics is talking class, people don't know what it is nor that there is another way of analysing power, privilege and disadvantage - and to that list I would add male violence.

Speaking only for myself, I think your statements demonstrate to everyone precisely who you are in no uncertain terms.

I think we all have your measure by now, Moody.

If a black person/women came along and made the exact same argument, where would the rebuttal be?

In my [online] expertise this rarely happens.

White men hardly ever make the same comments about the patriarchy as, say, a black women.

Black women tend to say, 'well, my experience is ...', while white men tend to just deny the existence of the patriarchy.

So I suppose what you're saying is, if a black woman comes along and denies the existence of the patriarchy, where's the rebuttal? As if a tiny minority of black woman doing that invalidates everyone else, and somehow proves the white guy right.

I meant 'a religion not a race'...

Seriously Moody! Christian nations are bombing Muslim nations every effing day. Read a newspaper.

White males kill, torture, and abuse, more than any other demographic.
For being a shockingly small portion of the world population they score astonishingly high of the deadly to be around hierarchy.
I reported your racist comment Moody.