Some Thoughts on Class: Many Parts, One Body
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class and the notion of social classes as prime movers of history are recent phenomena, appearing only in the nineteenth century with Marxist philosophies and similar dialectics centered on socialism and the struggles between socioeconomic classes. Though people have long realized a difference between groups of people on the basis of wealth, social standing, ethnic heritage, religion, and gender, the concept of a struggle between these groupings for power and resources over the course of human civilization is relatively novel. Hitherto delineations of people between slaves and free people, nobility and peasantry, and even mercantile and landed aristocracies were accepted as parts of the social structures necessary to the functioning of the body of society. Even during the French Revolution, the lines between socioeconomic classes were unclear as nobles, clergy, and peasantry became separated by the forces of revolution and reaction. Nobles like the Marquis de Lafayette were he discourse on
Tyler Laferriere integral to the formulation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen while the common citizenry of Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulouse resisted the forces of secular and anticlerical revolution. Despite the popular discourse over classes based upon money and the hypothesized dynamic of vitriol and oppression between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, between the “one percent” and “ninety-nine percent,” class cannot be limited to mere analysis of resources and economic standing. Each person is a member of varying cultural, ethnic, vocational, and sexual classes. As a male I am part of class; as an American of French, Irish, Norwegian, English, and Spanish descent I am part of multiple classes; as an economics and political science double major I am part of a class. Classes are part of what make individuals unique but also what binds them together. My classification as a member of the Catholic faith links me to over one billion other individuals throughout the world with whom 61