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The subject we are exploring is the place of Marx in class studies, which is not at all the same as the place of class in Marxist studies. This distinction in the focal point of our work helps us to sort through a number of contentious issues, including the nature of language, or jargon, appropriate for our work.
Starting with the problem of class, we have to say that class is a central feature of society-of modern society and society since the most primitive. That is just a fact. To understand class, then, we must investigate society, which is where Marx enters the picture.
I teach a course in Marx in the economics department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. I start off trying to explain to the students who are there because it fits into their schedule, or because they have to take one more upper-division economics class, or because they're interested, how they're going to explain to their Aunt Sadie and Uncle Roy that they're actually taking a class in Marx. "What is this? Don't you know Marxism is finished-that it's a throwback to the nineteenth century? Get with the times, child, and go out and become a stockbroker."
I start out on the very first day of class by putting four names on the blackboard: Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Marx. I don't think that you can understand the mind unless you go through Freud. I don't think you can understand the natural world unless you go through Darwin. I don't think you can understand the physical world unless you go through Einstein. And in the same way I don't think you can understand society unless you go through Marx. Of course, this doesn't mean that everything these great thinkers thought was correct or that they are the only great thinkers. Nor does it mean that their thinking was comprehensive and all we need to know. But it does mean that you can't understand society, not just class, unless you understand Marx.
On the other hand, when I wrote The Working Class Majority (Zweig 2000), which I tried to root in a Marxist understanding, I didn't use Marxist terminology. The name of Marx appears only in the introduction to...