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Since the 1994 publication of 'Bringing It All Back Home', commentators have raised a variety of questions and criticisms. Subsequently published applications of our book's new class theory of households, by ourselves and others, have raised new issues not foreseen when we first developed the theory. In this paper we will address the major points of these reactions in ways that extend the class analysis of households well beyond our book and the literature it provoked and informed. The following topic areas will sequentially structure our presentation: children, interactions between the class structures of households and of enterprises, the class complexity of the household budget, class contradictions between households and enterprises, fathers' household labor, and when children become household serfs. A short addendum addresses households from which class is absent because production there has dwindled and only consumption remains. Analyzing these new topics broadens and deepens two central points of our 1994 work. First, by conceiving class processes and contradictions and struggles over class as components of households, we can explore how class directly affects all the other, nonclass dimensions of those households: affective, marital, political, sexual, parental, financial, and so forth. We can show in particular how the class structure of households influences in contradictory ways (1) parents' rearing of children, (2) household budgets, and (3) father's household labor. Our analysis demonstrates and underscores how the good and bad of family life are intimately connected to class. Second, we will further develop or analysis of the interaction between household and enterprise class structures. Here we will stress how individuals are shaped by class processes, contradictions, and conflicts not only on the job but also and differently at home. Marxian analyses need to recognize this differential shaping to understand better the complexity of individual behavior including, as we will emphasize, its contradictory nature.

Argues through Marxist analysis that while US workers have enjoyed high levels of consumption & wealth & political freedoms over the past 150 years, they have also experienced the highest rate of class exploitation, as determined by the ratio of surplus to necessary labor, in the capitalist world. Symptoms of this stress include the problems of worker exhaustion, stress, drug abuse, isolation, withdrawal from civil life, family breakdown, & violence in society. The weak Left & trade union movement resulted in a strong capitalism unchallenged by organizations that could limit its effects. Rising consumption masked the rising exploitation. Labor was considered a disutility while consumption was seen as a utility, & the goal was to maximize consumption. This phenomenon is examined in light of Adam Smith's, Thomas Hobbes's, & John Locke's views of economic development, equality, & freedom. Arguments are made for socialism as a solution to US working class exploitation. 2 Tables. Adapted from the source document.

Class analyses are both very old and quite new. This essay argues that Marx contributed a new class definition and analysis focused on the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor. Yet, that innovative, new class analysis was lost by being dissolved into either pre-Marxian conceptualizations of class in terms of property and power or later social theories in which class was determined by people's consciousness and self-identifications. In this context, the essay pays special attention to the recent work of E.O. Wright. Class analysis based on the surplus labor definition of class is compared and contrasted with Wright's differently based definition and analysis.

Hardt & Negri's Empire (2000) may be appropriately situated in the tradition of expansion & revision of Marxism in response to changes in global capitalism. The book is insightful & innovative, although its scope frequently seems to trump concretizing detail. However, its main shortcoming lies in its pointed neglect of Marx's theory of surplus labor, which is here extended to Hardt & Negri's arguments. Marx's surplus theory promotes the kind of complex, dynamic class analysis touched upon by Empire but requiring further exploration. 4 References. K. Coddon

Argues that the notions of overdetermination & contradiction by Louis Althuser offer important avenues to sweeping away the determinants that have haunted Marxist political economy in the past & pave the way for a new postmodernist Marxism. Through the prism of these terms, all theories are understood to be partisan theories composing partial truths. It is suggested that, from this vantage point, a Marxian nonessentialist political economy can be constructed that does not assign ultimate primacy to the economic base of society, & that defines class not as a fundamental essence but as a social process. Research programs in the extant literature based on this reformulation of Marxist theory are discussed, & possible future programs, including a systematic class analysis of the former USSR & a reformulation of Marxian value theory, are considered. 63 References. D. M. Smith