Class analysis...

[BertrandRussell]

Why do people find it so difficult? Am I being too simplistic and missing something?
White people as a class have more power than black people as a class.. Men as a class are more violent than women as a class. Is there anything controversial there?

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.

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.

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.

Such brilliant and thoughtful comments on this thread. It does seem to me rgt is is just impossible to talk about some subjects without first agreeing that class analysis is the only way forward- the person who suggested some sort of symbol might have a point. Maybe there's room for a lot more punctuation- but that's for another thread. I do think feminism in particular suffers from a misunderstanding of this issue- it is very easy for "men as a class are more violent than women as a class" to become the "Feminists think all men are rapists and all women are angels" trope so often seen in the media and, sadly, on here. And I think this also feeds into the perception of the FWR boards as academic and requiring lots of pre knowledge. So many discussions have to start with an explanation of "class" that people who haven't come across the idea before feel lectured and patronised. Hard not to when someone says "You have misunderstood the basic premise here- let me explain it to you" But also impossible to have the discussion withour first defining terms.........

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

Well it obviously shouldn't. Anyone who says that is misunderstanding class analysis.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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....

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

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.

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 think in the sex example it IS relevant. It just seems shocking to a reasonable person that simply being a woman is enough to make you seem as an inferior being. But it’s undeniably so.

When you’re a rational reasonable person who treats people as just people that’s not how you see the world. Because it seems to unfair. But it’s no less true. What links all women is being part of the class that have a specific reproductive biology. And that is what leads to repression, in all its forms.

So no, it’s not too broad. Not for looking back and seeing the why of it all.

Surely people belong to multiple classes? And that’s why it gets complicated.

Obliviously white men have more power generally. But what if you are a white man who is also northern, from a deprived area, whose parents had little education and substance abuse issues.

White working class boys do particularly badly in the education system. They don’t really benefit from being a white man.

How do you factor in the multiple classes that apply to individuals?

"It is really interesting. If categorising is something that comes naturally it is hard to appreciate that its a difficult thing for others."
Yes. I find it very hard to understand why people find it difficult to accept or even get upset by a statement like "men as a class are more violent than women as a class". It seems to me just to be purely factual and based on statistics. And it seems to me that we should accept that and move on to "Knowing that, how do we move on? What do we do?" But we so often stumble there.

You generally don’t because it isn’t about individual people. It’s about understanding power.

Sometimes you might look at the intersections of the power dynamics but from a structural perspective.

It’s not about individuals

Constantly- it's not about individuals. You can make the classes smaller- but the analysis still applies. Men have more power than women- even within small groups. So an individual woman may have more power than an individual woman. But even within disadvantaged groups, men still hold more power than women in the same group. Does that make sense?

I find it hard to have patience with the constant ‘making it about me’ stuff TBH.

Quentin’s point may help me with that but I still think a significant amount of this misunderstanding is a direct result of the trend for individualistic identity politics. Not being able to do something yourself or not thinking in that way shouldn’t stop people from understanding what the thing is or isn’t IMO.

It's the equivalent of the physics thing of treating the earth as a globe. Whether that's going to help or hinder depends on what it is you're trying to look at.

Or like in stats - you don't analyse every individual result, you average it all out, have confidence intervals etc.

Class analysis is a blunt tool, for when you need a hammer not a scalpel, and that's just fine.

Hi Babel 👋if you want to talk about me, just name me, it's far less confusing.

I think your post illustrates the point being made here by a number of posters, including me. You perceived our last exchange that you refer to as me 'trying to derail a thread', presumably because you thought I didn't want to discuss the actual issues. I was actually challenge you on some of your core ideas, and you didn't really provide me with a response other than 'this is my opinion'. Which is great, but it's not actually evidence is it? Presumably you believe that because you're a woman and I'm a man, your opinion on objective facts about feminism is worth more than mine.

See my response to Dowager below for why that's not true.

Now I don't want to rehash that debate here again, (I'm genuinely not into derailing threads) but I do encourage anyone who is interested to have a look at Babel and my previous exchange on the topic of men in feminism. It's a pretty good object study in a lot of the points I described earlier in this thread.

And for what it's worth I only ever post under this username (I think I namechanged once when I first joined the site) please feel free to check with MNHQ if you don't believe me.

Dowager

I accept if a white man was talking about what racism feels like, then of course his opinion would carry less credibility. But that wasn't my position.

I'm saying that if someone makes an argument about the substance of a position i.e does racism still exist in the UK, is the gender pay gap a result of sexism/the Patriarchy etc then their personal identity/race/sex is irrelevant to the validity of their argument.

It stands or falls on its own merits and if the only way a person can rebut their argument is to draw their race/sex into the debate, then they simply don't have a rebuttal.

Knowing that, how do we move on? What do we do?

Surely that’s when class breaks down to the individual? And if you’re one very small part of that class, then what can you do to change anything?

We all know the theory of why we should vote, but quite often when you trudge to the polling station you get that sinking feeling that your vote isn’t that important.

It is a blunt tool. But i think we have to be able to look at generalities to allow us to identify specifics.
So white working class boys struggling with education. We know that's a particular issue because we can categorise that group and see they are disadvantaged compared to other groups. Then we can start to look at particular factors causing this. IIRC i heard a radio article saying if you use income as a measure of class rather than free school meals, actually black working class boys and white working class girls are struggling more in education.

So this suggests to me poverty has a bigger impact on attainment than either race or gender.

The white WC boys thing is irritating actually as people have looked for an outlier then used it to try to disprove the whole analysis. Outliers are always there, no patterns hold 100% of the time because humans are messy and complicated

Identity politics is not individualistic, it's a way of gathering collective political power by taking class analysis and using it to define in-groups and out-groups based on birth traits. It is the deliberate pursuit of different social outcomes based on someone's sex or ethnicity.

Racism is class analysis. Sexism is class analysis. When expressed in political terms "Vote for this person! They'll promote the interests of group Y against group X! You're a member of group X, so you're betraying your group if you don't vote for this person!" they are identity politics.

enjoying this...I have pondered the " treat everyone as a unique person" with the "{women} need support " without much resolution in my head .

it seems to me on average that people who are in the more favoured classes, or people who feel their class is not heard { white lads in Sunderland } are more likely to favour the former. they can take a position of "treat everyone purely on their merits" because it is ideal and works within their class but they often fail to see that they actually often treat {whatever} as less worthy and not on merit at all. Plenty of evidence to support this.

some of them fundamentally believe that some classes are just less worthy. This then supports their idealised position, because if you believe that the class average for women is below that of men then of course treating as an individual will show on average that effect. This makes it hard for them to accept that they class difference exists beyond what is natural.

Thinking about it as formal structural analysis is really useful. And let's us express the fact that people can belong to many classes. And accounts for outliers.