[Wright is right!]

"or as Paglia states In the US, salaries of skilled manual labourers have long exceeded those of mid-level office staff."

Let's just put this in plain English. Manual laborers are rewarded more in a Marxian society because their loyalty is more easily bought. The thick-headed are a natural target for class warfare, since many of the simple-minded resent their smarter neighbors. Call it Marx's Revenge Of The Boneheads.

Michael

[Billthedrill]

I think you're right, but Camille's point is that it isn't as easy to buy them off any more because they now have as much income as the folks the Marxists used to play them off against. Class envy now has to be couched in other terms if it's to work these days. Some of the left have caught up to that, the others are still attempting to identify the proletariat with the poor, a mapping which doesn't work as well now, because many of the poor don't work at all.

Here's one place where the left is losing it, IMHO - they can still work up class envy between poor and wealthy, (that stubborn adherence to economic measures I mentioned) but the class of the poor and the class of the proletariat aren't the same anymore. A wise fellow once said "the poor ye have with ye always," and if He was right it's a mighty shaky foundation for leftist politics. I think that's why the latter are shrinking in effectiveness, if Paglia is right on that account (and increasing in stridency).