HREQ 3125 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Final Analysis, Visible Minority, Labour Power

• School: York University
• Department: Human Rights and Equity Studies
• Course: HREQ 3125
• Professor: James Laxer

Document Summary

I have already made the case that there are two kinds of social classes: dominant and dominated and that dominant and dominated social classes are inexorably linked in unequal relationships with one another. The key to understanding the relationship between social classes is to consider the role each social class plays in the productive process. Capitalists from the super-rich to the not-so-rich exercise immense power over others because they decide whose labour will be purchased and whose will not. And wage and salary earners in non-managerial positions---those i suggest make up the new working class-middle class---are the sellers of labour power. What gives the capitalists an immense community of interest, despite their intense struggles for dominance against each other, is precisely the fact that they are the purchasers of labour. There is little they will not do to protect this privileged societal relationship from which their power flows.