Economic Class
Economic Class is a term used by sociologists to refer to an individual's economic location 'vis a vis' the extant Regime of Accumulation, specifically their relationship to the Mechanisms of Accumulation. There are two broad economic classes, the Accumulating Classes which uses various Mechanisms of Accumulation to extract Labour Value, and the Slave Classes whose labour value is extracted via those mechanisms.
List of Economic Classes
Economic Class > Accumulating Class, Slave Class
Related LP Terms
Non-LP Related Terms
Notes
The Capitalist Regime of Accumulation (all regimes, actually) operate with only two economic classes, the Accumulating Class and the Wage Slaves.].
Emile Durkheim understood the two-class nature of The Regime. His opening address to the elite students graduating from the French “Lyceens of Sens” is a sickening paean to the “great men” of history whose job, Durkheim argued, was to lift up the “little men” with “little minds” and “simple souls” who would otherwise percolate in the “gentle illusion of the ignorant” and “vegetate in their [general] lack of consciousness.”[1]
Justifications that support the manifestation of economic class can be found in pop Darwinism, traditional religious dogma, or pseudo-scientific constructions like IQ.
Not everyone accept the inevitability of economic class and the power, privilege, ideology, and hierarchy that goes along with them. Although Karl Marx accepted the reality of social class, he rejected (as others did) it's inevitability. Marx predicted a time in the future when class-based societies would disappear and be replaced by socialist utopias ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"). Marx even provided a blueprint for such a "communist" utopia. However, as history has shown, his vision was horribly flawed. The truth is, his prescription for utopia lead to some of the worst human rights violations ever. The flaws are to be found in his rejection of a common spiritual heritage and shared divinity, and his advocacy of violence as a means towards a utopian
It should be noted that the idea of social class, and the inequality of wealth, power, and opportunity that is associated with class, is incompatible with the higher truth of our fundamental, and inviolate, divinity. Therefore, as we return to full consciousness, the class-based systems of this world will, along with all the accoutrements and structures which support the class system, pass away.
The elimination of the class system requires, among other things, the elimination of ideological and archetypal supports for the system. Merely expanding consciousness into the physical unit is not enough since (as various "secret orders" have shown) it is possible, as consciousness comes in, to lock a moderately expanded mind into an ideological straight jacket that supports class and prevents further expansion.
Footnotes
- ↑ Durkheim, Emile. “Address to the Lyceens of Sens.” In Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society, edited by Robert N. Bellah, 25–33. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. https://www.lightningpath.org/readings/Address%20to%20the%20Lyceens%20of%20Sens.pdf.
