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Re: Luxury goods and abolishing social classes
by Mike Alexander
18 August 2001 01:56 UTC
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Greetings, Mike!
 
Thank you for your thoughtful critique of my posts regarding luxury goods and abolishing social classes.
 
You are welcome :)
 
Having said this, my main objective is to refute the notion that, in a mass society, abolition of social classes is possible. (Anthropological studies show that in small societies, with populations around 200, social classes may not necessarily emerge, though in some, shamans have higher status. 
 
I believe you would make more progress developing your argument along these lines rather than consumption.  For example as population rises to the thousands or tens of thousands a new phenomenon arises not present in smaller human groups.  The vast majority of the population are strangers from each other.  Social classes appear at just this point.  Here is where one might look to see why abolition of social classes is infeasible.
 
Your main critique appears to be "Reid's argument for the inevitability of classes appears to be circular." Having studied a fair amount of mathematics, you can also say the same thing about the formula, E=MC^2. While you can insert empirical values for these variables and the constant, C, mathematical manipulation always appears to be circular.
 
The statement E=MC^2 is an identity, not a proposition, and as such it cannot be circular. If I say "My name is Mike" and then "Mike is my name" is that a circular argument?  Of course not.  You are making an argument, NOT a statement of identity, and as such it can be circular.
 
But there is a category of definitions that manifest a relationship between the concepts involved. I settle with the relationship that "luxury good is a good that is accessible (or consumed" by 5% of the population". This is empirical. It is operational. You can use it to identify luxury goods.  And you can deduce that, given the definition, a "theorem" follows, namely, that each society has at least two social classes, if it has access to luxury goods.
 
"Accessible" is not the same as "consumed".  Ninety-five percent of lime green leisure suits are likely consumed by less than 5% of the population.  The reason, of course is that the majority does not want a lime green leisure suit.  Determining consumption patterns is empirically determinable, but that is not enough.  How do you determine whether something is "assessible" or not.  To do so you must bring in other factors that imply force.  Consider your Rolls Royce example.  Surely not everybody who wants a Rolls can get one.  But why not?  Why not just take one?  The factor of prohibition, whether by social norms (stealing is wrong) or over enforcement (I will go to jail if I take that Rolls) comes into play.
 
My point is classes are about power and influence in the society.  That is, who gets to make the rules?  Consumption of certain types of goods (e.g. extremely costly feather capes reserved for Hawaiian chiefs) is simply a good indicator of class membership.  For example finding such items amongst grave goods implies that the deceased was a member of the upper class. 
 
Another theorem follows: to abolish social classes, you must abolish luxury goods, which, I assert, cannot be done in a mass society.
 
One can  imagine a class society were there are no luxury goods.  Class differences could still be manifested though occupation (high status individuals get fun occupations and low status individuals get not fun occupations).  I don't see why differential access to certain types of goods is an absolute requirement for the existence of social classes.
 
The final theorem that follows is: attempts to eliminate the luxury good consuming class requires violence, but once implemented, the victors become the new luxury good consuming class.
 
This is not a theorem since it is not derived from any of your postulates.  It is simply a statement.
 
When you say, "We can say that the class of luxury good consumers wields power over others not in their class that is sufficient to prevent those others from consuming luxury goods," you essentially support my position, for here, you recognize the existence of at least two social classes.
 
I said I agree with your basic assertion that classes cannot be eliminated. I simply disagreed with your explanation for it.
 
Mike Alexander,  author of
Stock Cycles: Why stocks won't beat money markets over the next 20 years.
http://www.net-link.net/~malexan/STOCK_CYCLES.htm
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