Relation to others· Society and history
Social realism
Axis: Social identity — Are categories like gender, race or class natural, constructed, or objective social realities?
These categories are neither natural nor mere ideas that thought could dissolve: socially produced, they are nonetheless objectively real, embedded in institutions, material relations and hierarchies. Class is a relation to production, race a social position with very concrete effects.
Movements 1
Marxismexplicit
What defines a class is neither rank, nor income, nor a sense of belonging, but the objective place one holds in the relations of production: whether or not one owns the means of production, whether one sells or buys labor power. Social identity is thus not a choice or a label one adopts, but a material condition that precedes the awareness one has of it, and that can remain hidden until a class has constituted itself "for itself." This rejects both the naturalization of hierarchies and the liberal picture of a society of interchangeable individuals.
Marx, Manifesto; Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Philosophers 1
Marxexplicit
Class is neither a natural given nor a mere idea: it is an objective position within the relations of production, defined by one's place in relation to the means of production. Real and structuring, it shapes consciousness more than it springs from it.
The Communist Manifesto; Capital