4. The authors ask a very important question for this course: "What...is the use of developing...a class analysis". Summarize their answer to this question. What do you think?

The article, "Class Structure and Class Struggle in Capitalist Society", by Yow-Suen and Alvin Y.So define class "by social economic relations of ownership and exploitation in the sphere of production." It's goals are to filter through all the major definitional distractions and to "locate the fundamental source of conflict, to delineate the major cleavages and to understand the pattern of political struggles." This in return helps to give another perspective into class and perhaps gives us a better understanding. The function of class analysis is much more than categorization and it is to serve as a critical tool in our understanding of all the events and movements within the current capitalistic structure. Further, class analysis goes back to history to link the class struggle with the present existing society. Class analysis is important to an informed understanding of the social economic and political fabric of present day capitalism.

I think class analysis is important to understand it better, but what good is it if there are no solutions for the future. It seems like society breaks things down into very definite boundaries, but it doesn't make a difference. It's okay to do it, but we need some solutions for the future so that we can improve our present conditions and for the future as well. Poverty and population keep increasing, and continue to increase globally. I question the very usefulness of class analysis. While I understand that class analysis as a definition helps us understand the issues of poverty about which I am concerned, as I come from India. In what way does class analysis serve as a tool to bridge the gap between the wealthy and the poor?

A comparison between the capitalist countries, such as the United States of America and Europe and the socialist countries such as India reveal a tug of war between the high demands of the western world and the cheap labor of the third world countries. In a sense this stipifies a class struggle between the rich and the poor. So that when the debts of the third world countries are under written by the capitalist countries, it is really the relationship between the patron and the worker.

The very definition of first, second and third world has evolved from the capitalist society. This marks a class analysis.