Non-Marxists like Charles and Mary Beard practiced economic determinism, too. It helps to have a class outlook, which overlaps economic determinism but is not the same thing.
Here we have the NY Times and Gandall take-away: economic determinism of the non-class sort goes toward explaining workers who have become disaffected with the Democratic Party and some of them have signed on to Trump. Conveniently overlooked: small businessmen and self-employed who are, by some surveys, an outsized percentage of Trump enthusiasts. As for the relative shifts of occupational income within the working class, the basic fact for the class overall is that real median weekly earnings peaked in 1973 and have never recovered ( http://www.hollowcolossus.com ). The solution is not reforms aiming to realign incomes within the working class; it requires the overthrow of capitalism and a socialist regime of no rich, no poor. As for the catch-all service category, the last chart in the article puts a glow on all education and health care workers. Yet there is a capitalist drive to break up these two fields, redivide the work and routinize the "production" of education and health, and so to downgrade most of the workers. An earlier chart in the article at least hints at this. Even though the text claims, "Also higher in the economic pecking order than factory supervisors today: registered nurses and dental hygienists," the chart shows that RN relative income peaked around 2010. "Medical assistants" are not mentioned, while their numbers increase and they do more of the redivided work, at pay well below RNs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#33192): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/33192 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/109242631/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
