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Class, Politics, and Planning: From Reductionism to Pluralism in Marxist Class Analysis

The fashion for Marxist analysis in planning theory has all but passed without a satisfactory answer being given to the question: what does the theory tell planners to do? This question can only be answered by conceiving of planning as a political activity in the broadest sense, and by examining Marxian political theory which deals with its subject through the perspective of class conflict. The Marxian concept of class, however, is problematic. In this paper recent developments in Marxian class theory are traced and a movement is found away from a reductionist structural perspective towards one which accepts the importance of nonclass as well as class structures, the existence of new classes cutting across the economic categories of capital and labour, and the significance of individual interests and subjectivity, in short a movement towards pluralism. A critique of reductionism is offered, focusing initially on the work of Harvey, and concludes with some tentative answers to the question posed above.