Talk:New class
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"New class" is not a proper term; it is just an expression in a specific context. the article should be renamed. 07:20, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Certainly is a term, look at the adoption of Djilas by the other Eastern European marxists, Rakovski makes great use of it. Fifelfoo 21:31, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- This is not a term. "Class" is a term, "marxist" is a term, "new something" is just new "something" until it got an individual name. If "new marxists" insist that this is a "new term", then they are brain-damaged. What class will emerge tomorrow? "New 'new class'", "extra-new class"? Mikkalai 01:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
While New Class is used, Nomenklatura is approxiamately the same, but shorne of its theoretical implications. Fred Bauder 22:36, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
- What theoretical implications? An implication of thin-stretching to make up a theory? Lack of eductation in modern marxists that don't know Greek or Latin language to invent a new term if they feel it is necessary? Mikkalai 01:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As the additions to the article indicate there were a number of groups using this formulation.
- Pre WWI technocratic "marxists" in the reformist tradition, who thought that by the management of information they'd improve everyone's lives. They had an interest in being "new", and weren't theoretically oriented. Their ideology was false-consciousness in the sense that they were imagining a world. This was a historical usage as reflected in the article.
- Post 1917 anarchists who hadn't made up their mind about the specific historical materialist nature of the new soviet ruling class. Actual debate within anarchism centered on the "repressive state apparatus indicates their class interest, time for a revolution against this new class" rather than economic analysis. This was historical useage.
- Djilas, and Eastern European marxists who followed in his steps. Djilas chose "new class" for a number of reasons: socialist realist's penchant for ordinary everyday language; attempts to avoid ossified Stalinist style theory (IV Stalin's Linguistics frex); and, as Djilas is at pains to point out, the "new class" is not part of a historically permanent mode of production. This was historical usage.
Mikkalai, while you may want to polemicise the use of "new class" as a term, historically "new class" has been used as a term. If you want to continue the polemic, find someone who has contributed a significant polemic against this usage and add a section on polemics against "new class" as a term within Marxism; or, do the original research yourself, get it published, and then refer to the significant original research in a new section on polemics against the use of "new class" as a term within Marxism. yours cordially, Fifelfoo 03:15, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Please don't make guesses what I may and may not want to do. I only yesterday learned about the usage of this expression, and it struck me as ... er... lacking ingenuity, to say it softly. Thank you for significant contribution to the topic. If the term is indeed in serious use, then I feel pity for the fate of communist theory, that's all. Just imagine a biologist who discovered a new bug and gave it a fresh, original, memorizable name, "New Bug" (Bugus Novus)... "New Class"; who would have thought! Do they still call it "Scientific Communism"?Mikkalai 04:20, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Sorry Mikkalai, it just felt like polemic (I'm a little touchy today). On one hand you're right, its an appallingly vague term. You get people talking about the new class (technocrats), and then someone else talking about the new class (Djilas). Now Djilas' analysis is plenty scientific; I think he chose an "ordinary language" term to avoid execution, or even longer gaol sentences, and also to try and inspire something like the 1956 Hungarian Revolution but in Yugoslavia. Personally, much like Karl Marx turned the word capitalist from a vague adjective for owners of capital into a scientific definition, I think Djilas had the opportunity to turn nomenklatura into a scientific term. Perhaps for english: nomination|capital, nominationalist|capitalist, nominationalism|capitalism. Of couse, that still gets at the problem: capitalism sustains itself, reproducing a crisis due to its expansion. The Soviet-style societies (under Djilas) reproduce themselves in a contracted form, and their crisis, rather than being immanent, is continuous. Fifelfoo 04:26, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
