American Civics Literacy Exam

[Ben Kenobi]

Who said anything about the Democrats of the 60's? Calling Federalists "Jacksonian" does not work. Unless you think "strong executive and strong central government" is a sufficient description of Jacksonian democracy, which is laughable.

Albert understood the point, and you didn't. Odd that.

[Ben Kenobi]

Also, the idea that no concept of social classes existed before Marx

Not in the sense that Marx defined them, no they didn't exist back then, and they didn't refer to themselves as such.

I'd even go so far as to argue that they never existed at all, not in the form Marx describes them.

Even today, we don't have a strict empirical definition of what constitutes a 'class'. Who is 'middle class', who is 'poor'? What are the percentiles? How do you address assets vs income? Etc, and so on. Marx never actually defines anything in a way that others can come to the same conclusion he has by starting from the same point.

[giblets]

Oh God, now Ben thinks you can't use the word "class" unless you're using it the exact same way Marx used it even though people used the word before Marx was even born

[Ben Kenobi]

even though people used the word before Marx was even born

Guess what? Now you get a chance to prove your assertion. Good luck.

[giblets]

Let's try the Online Etymology Dictionary:

class
c.1600, "group of students," from Fr. classe (14c.), from L. classis "class, division, army, fleet," especially any one of the six orders into which Servius Tullius divided the Roman people for the purpose of taxation; traditionally originally "the people of Rome under arms," and thus akin to calare "to call (to arms)," from PIE base *kele- "to shout" (see claim). School and university sense of "course, lecture" (1650s) is from the notion of a form or lecture reserved to scholars who had attained a certain level. Natural history sense is from 1753. Meaning "a division of society according to status" (upper, lower, etc.) is from 1772. The verb is first recorded 1705, "to divide into classes;" sense of "to place into a class" is from 1776. Class-consciousness (1903) is from Ger. klassenbewusst.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=class

[DaShi]

Guess what? Now you get a chance to prove your assertion. Good luck.

Wow, you're incredibly stupid.

[Ben Kenobi]

any one of the six orders into which Servius Tullius divided the Roman people for the purpose of taxation

Gee, I guess then that I was right.

[giblets]

Uhh... what?

[Nikolai]

Marx didn't invent class. He reinvented it and reinterpreted it though.

[SlowwHand]

Like gay? Or even queer? My dad had a hat on once and I told him it looked queer. He emphasized emphatically that the word I meant to use was odd. I was pretty young and didn't understand his consternation.

[Ben Kenobi]

Exactly!

That's my point. Thanks Slowwy.

[giblets]

Your point was that words can acquire new meanings? Did you miss the fact that people have been using "class" to refer to someone's status in society since the 1770s? You've provided absolutely no evidence for your assertion that no one would have used the term "middle class" to describe bankers in the 1780s. You also haven't given any good reasons for your claim that you can't use a new term to describe something in the past. I guess you piss and moan if someone writes "the Byzantine Empire".

[Kitschum]

You answered 29 out of 33 correctly — 87.88 %

Roe vs. Who?

The President can't declare wars? Is this a semantic issue?

In other news, American history is still boring.

[Ben Kenobi]

Your point was that words can acquire new meanings?

The point being prior to Marx, that this understanding was different. That's the whole point of Marx, he provided a different way of examining class, as a purely economic phenemenon.

Did you miss the fact that people have been using "class" to refer to someone's status in society since the 1770s?

Did you miss the fact that Marx defines class as economic? The definition used there is not the same as how Marx defines class. It's similar, but it's different.

You've provided absolutely no evidence for your assertion that no one would have used the term "middle class" to describe bankers in the 1780s.

You've yet to provide a citation of someone, anyone, using the term "middle class" prior to Marx.

You also haven't given any good reasons for your claim that you can't use a new term to describe something in the past.

Never said this. In fact, I'm arguing precisely the opposite. I'm arguing that a new term was coined, by Marx, to refer to economic levels as 'class', and not merely social status.

I guess you piss and moan if someone writes "the Byzantine Empire".

If they refer to Justinian as such, yes. Byzantine is a meaningless term. They didn't refer to themselves as such. More importantly, even their opponents called them Romans.

[MikeH]

In other news, American history is still boring.

At least there isn't very much of it!