“Unnecessary conflicts between different ill-defined “classes” of people benefit the state. Bastiat called the state “the great fiction” by which everyone tries to use the state to plunder everyone else. This simultaneously enriches and empowers the political caste and its beneficiaries and gets the people to conflict with each other rather than the political caste.“
https://mises.org/mises-wire/class-analysis-marxs-shell-game
Though it is full of fallacies, so-called Marxian “class” analysis still pervades much popular and political discourse. This divisive worldview unnecessarily exacerbates conflicts between groups (so-called “classes”) and is a convenient worldview for the political state because it empowers it to treat all differences between groups as moral inequities and “problems” to be solved by treating groups unequally in the name of equity, justice, and fairness.
Previously, I have written about Marx’s “class analysis” and what I call the “ideological fallacy”—if all argumentation is necessarily biased special pleading on behalf of one’s “class,” then Marxism itself is admitting non-objectivity as just another class-biased ideology. In that case, Marxism cannot be an objective science; or, if it claims that objective truth and persuasion through argument is possible between “classes,” class consciousness and analysis are bogus.
Whenever someone claims, “All people are slaves of ideological bias,” then they have two options—either their statement does apply to them (and is not to be trusted as objective), or it does not apply to them (and the theory is not true). The consistent arguer of ideological bias and Marxist class warfare is inviting you not to believe him either way! Additionally, if the Marxist arguer of ideological bias and class conflict truly believes what they argue—that no one can be convinced against their class interest and no one can objectively stand outside their ideology, then the logical conclusion is clear, “Shut up!” This is the error of polylogism, that is, the self-defeating argument that different groups of people (“classes”) have fundamentally different different logics.
Marx’s Sleight of Hand: “Class”
This article attempts to expose another fallacy within Marx’s theory—his sleight of hand regarding class conflict. Marx engages in a form of the fallacy of equivocation, that is, he argues with one definition, but then switches the definition, or what it designates, in the conclusion. His shell game is subtle, especially because it actually begins with a statement that is largely true historically,
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another…
So far, this is true. These were state-imposed legal castes. They involved the creation of legal categories imposed by the state. Ralph Raico distinguished, however, that “these opposed pairs turn out to be, either wholly or in part, not economic, but legal, categories.” In short, Marx borrowed the coherent libertarian class-caste analysis—that various groups attempt to use state power to privilege themselves and/or to restrict others. This was used to establish his point only to quickly smuggle in a voluntary-contractual relationship as if it was also obviously one of class-caste conflict: capitalists and workers.
Class versus Caste Analysis
“Marx obfuscated the problem by confusing the notion of caste and class.”—Mises, Theory and History
Libertarianism has a rich tradition of class-caste analysis, in fact—focusing on the key distinction between political elites and state-connected cronies on the one side (the “few”), and the productive public on the other (the “many”)—caste analysis is key to libertarianism. Furthermore, Marx simply borrowed these concepts and wording from classical liberals (though he equivocated on the definition). Marx even admitted in an 1852 letter,
…no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes.
But Marx took a voluntary-contractual, intertemporal exchange—that between the capitalist-entrepreneur and the wage-earner—and placed it into the category of exploitation with other exploitative relationships (land-owner/serf, slaveholder/slave, etc.), applying the slippery concept of “class conflict” to both. This is akin to creating two categories with accepted definitions—squares and triangles—followed by a list of square-shaped things only to include a triangle-shaped item in the square category.
Because of this confusion and ambiguity in the concept of “class,” we are now treated to a seemingly-endless, ever-growing list of neo-Marxist “classes” in conflict—race, sex, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. For example, see the Intersectionality Wheel of Privilege and Power. Virtually every perceived and actual difference between peoples puts them into some sort of intersectional “class.” These differences are patent evidence of injustice and require the political state elites—in actuality, the most privileged class!—to treat unequal peoples unequally in order to achieve “equity.”
“Class” Categories
See the rest here
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