Talk:Social class/Archive 1

message: I added "Class in the United States, c. 2004".
It's long, so it probably needs some work. Also, I tried to keep neutral, but my bias (socialist poet boy) may have snuck in. That's for future editors to decide. I won't complain if some of the leftist teeth are removed. :) Mike Church 21:56, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe it would be better to let "Social class" be an article about the concept of social class, and discuss the class structure of different societies in separate articles? -- till we *) 11:14, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: Good suggestion. I did just that Mike Church 22:14, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: addition

message: I added a short sentence regarding relations of production, because I believe it is important to locate Marx's engagement with social class in his wider notions of 'relations of production' and 'mode of production'.
--Imagine&Engage 10:43, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relations of production 

message: The edits of the 22nd are fundamentally corrupt, particularly the subsumption of a coherent intellectual organisation of ways of thinking about class into a trite iteration of lists.  Most heinous, putting Marxian concepts of class under the heading "2 classes".  The article has gone down hill, and needs reversion, and then reintegration of recent edits. Fifelfoo 23:08, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Markwiki's edits of the 22nd 

message: Is anyone interested in merging working class into this article? I've tried to make some contributions to that article by clarifying the definition, but have been frustrated by disagreements with other editors, and in the end the conceptualization of working class depends on how we conceptualize social classes in general.
The main contribution that working class would make to this article is the discussion on class mobility at the end of the article. If you decide to do this, good luck. AdamRetchless 23:24, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Some info may be useful, but basically working class is supposed to be a subarticle to the more general social class article, I think. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 00:23, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge "working class" 

message: This is a terrible article. It's so skewed towared the Marxist and Weberian concepts of social class that it doesn't even mention the word "nobility" one single time in the article.
Some countries, including Russia, China, and the United States either have little heritage of nobility or aristocracy or have suppressed the old nobility at one time. That is not to say that privileged classes do not exist in such societies. Those privileged may be a former communist-era nomenklatura who dominate the economy after de-collectivization or an executive élite that enriches itself through bureaucratic power. That members of such élites claim that their favored positions result from merit and that they do not take on the behaviors characteristic of old aristocracies does not deny their capacity to exploit others severly. They do not, for example, attach "noble" prefixes as the German von to their surnames and do not have such titles as Count, Lord, Burgess, Baron, or the like as one might expect in much of western Europe, India, or Japan.  
It is my suspicion that most societies have either an aristocracy or a nomenklatura (the American executive class acts much like a nomenklatura) and that one suppresses the rise of the other.--Paul from Michigan 23:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: No mention of nobility

message: In the section on class stratification, this passage
In this way, it used to be assumed that the upper classes were the first to try new products, which then 'trickled down ' (the name of the theory) to the lower classes. Historically, there may have been some justification for this.
is hardly incontrovertible. Although disposable income allows one to purchase objects of technological innovation, one can argue that the middle class was more likely to use automobiles, phonographs, electric lights, and radios. The technology of class upper-class indulgence is more primitive: an army of domestic servants and other retainers from messengers to even household orchestras. If one was in the Esterházy family in much of the eighteenth century, one needed no radio or phonograph for the simple reason that one had an orchestra under employment and a composer (Joseph Haydn) to write the music. Upper-class people didn't need telephones with which to bark out orders, and if there was some distance between the commander and the commanded, there were messengers often under employment to the upper class person. The earliest electric lights did nothing that the gas lamps that the upper classes used with apparent satisfaction -- except to light things more cheaply. The upper class was happy to use horses and carriages that at first were more reliable than the earliest automobiles. Automobiles supplanted horses and carriages because automobiles were cheaper to own and operate.
With their buying power, the very rich of the time in which movies were introduced could listen to live music far superior in sonic qualities to any recordings before recent times and to live theater. The middle class could not afford such entertainment. 
At the extreme, the television was more likely to be adopted by the working class than by the upper or middle classes. Vance Packard tells us that television antennas sprouted profusely in working-class neighborhoods before they appeared in middle-class neighborhoods. In Class, Paul Fussell contends that the rejection of television is a signal of high -- not low -- status. In effect, television generally made its way to the working-class Ralph Kramdens before it reached the middle-class Ward Cleavers.  --Paul from Michigan 23:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technology and social class 

message: One of the surest ways to ruin an insightful article is to turn it into a collection of lists.  I support Fifelfoo's argument that article needs reversion and reintegration.  --Imagine&Engage 11:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Lists are not perfect, but unless they are factually erroneus, they should not be removed, since they contain useful information. Instead of reverting, I recommend expanding/resectioning and possibly moving the information to subarticles if you feel it does not belong here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 14:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reverse Markwiki

message: I think it might be useful to include a short summary of the petty bourgeoisie (small businessmen and professionals) in the discussion of Marxian class. Would anyone be interested in doing this? metzerly 05:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Petty Bourgeoisie in "Marxian class" 

message: I reached this article via link from Gosford Park and comedy of manners so it was disappointing not to find much about social classes other than in the United States. The U.S. material is fascinating, but it would be great to have much more added about other societies around the world. 65.92.125.9 00:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: worldwide view

message: This is simply a question for learned sociologists.  The "Bottom-out-of-sight" class in Fussell's ideology does not seem to be consistent with the rest of his theory.  Suppose Bill Gates is arrested tomorrow, and is incarcerated for one month.  It is not clear how this would drop him so far down, especially since he would most likely be running Microsoft from prison and living in a room full of feathered pillows... Anyone?  And no, I am not writing from prison.—Preceding unsigned comment added by BishopOcelot (talk • contribs) 
:Well, Paul Fussel is not a sociologist and his book was written mostly for entertainment purposes. While it is an interesting book, it is not a textbook. I replaced the Fussel model with one acutally used in a textbook by sociologists. Regards. Signaturebrendel 02:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fussell's class question