Sunday 21 February 2016

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO CLASS ANALYSIS?

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO CLASS ANALYSIS?
The SWP is currently obsessed with Islamophobia - an odd preoccupation for an organisation that hasn't had time for religion in the past. Class analysis is painfully unfashionable, even as the Marxism of the Frankfurters is dominant in establishment cultural theory.

It has been pointed out to me that this suggestion for an article unfairly blames the SWP for a lack of class analysis and might suggest that attacking prejudice is not a function of the revolutionary left. I recognise that this is unfair on the SWP, since the lack of class analysis goes far beyond their ranks: The Guardian abandoned it around the time it started to lose its reputation for bad spelling, and The Labour Party invented the Third Way so it didn't have to work out the difference between bourgeois and middle-class.

Equally, answering the Islamophobia of much right-wing rhetoric is an important task. Whether taking it on as the SWP rather than through another organisation, or whether there is revolutionary potential in this activity, is the subject of heated and thoughtful debate.

However, that isn't the point I wanted to make. I do not feel qualified to make judgements based on class analysis - I lack an appropriate knowledge of Marxist thought. I'd be, as pointed out, a terrible socialist in 1933, Germany, or any other time because I lack the theoretical grounding to articulate a socialist position. 

I do believe a class analysis of many situations would be helpful - I think that The Glasgow Effect business could have done with one, since the division between a perceived 'working class' and the intelligentsia was pretty evident. 

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