Down to Earth People: Beyond Class Reductionism and Postmodernism

Published Under the Garamond Imprint

From the Introduction:

This book proposes a substantial revision of the orthodox Marxist approach to understanding group consciousness and action. The tendency to anchor all forms of collective struggle and consciousness in prevailing relations of production is now conceded by both scholars and political activists to be inadequate. The social movements of oppressed peoples that have swept the globe during the post-WWII era-movements for national self-determination, the civil rights of visible minorities and the liberation of women-have conclusively demonstrated the deficiencies of this viewpoint. We seek to break with a ‘class first’ framework which treats gender, generational, and race relations as subsidiary to, or somehow derived from, class relations. But, unlike so many scholars who have made their break with Marxist orthodoxy by embracing some version of postmodernist discourse theory, we remain steadfast materialists.