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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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.
Marx did not include slaves as part of the proletariat. Not that they weren't a class that did not deserve and should fight for emancipation, but that they did not have the means and knowledge to recreate society in such a way that could de-fetishize and out-compete industrial capitalism. Marx believed that slave-based production was incredibly economically inefficient compared to capitalism and would die either a natural or artificial death, and be replaced by the proletariat and peasent class. Of which he was partially right, though slavery has never really gone away it is no longer the base of production for any society (though it is the base of infrastructural development in most of the Gulf States).
it is very important to make a distinction between classes of different modes of production