Series · 6 Jul 2026From Plato to Proust - Readings on the SpotClass
Worked through in 42 videos · 61 passages.
What Dominique Pagani says
Dominique Pagani takes from Michel Clouscard a criterion that he repeats from 2012 to 2025: classes come down to two, the one that produces more than it consumes and the one that consumes more than it produces. In his view, this division is measurable and has nothing of a moral invective about it1. For him, class cannot be reduced to income. It arises from the social division of labour and belongs to historical inheritance, not to heredity2. It also affects education, language, and aesthetic and romantic choices. He uses Rousseau and Proust to show that the class relation determines even the object of desire3. He sets this concept against identities of race, colour or sex, which in his view replace class struggle and carry civil war among the poor. He says that his experience of Africa made him understand that class matters more than race4. He also stresses the working class, which has become a "phantom class": it has not disappeared, it has been lost from view5. Finally, he recalls that Marx aims at the abolition of classes.
- 1#3.6 D'Ulysse à Dédale1 Aug 2017 · 1:23:38
- 2Avec Clouscard2 Aug 2016 · 33:08
- 3Dominique Pagani : De la débauche du sens à l'orgie du sentiment29 May 2023 · 1:55:27
- 4N comme Niger28 Dec 2014 · 4:31
- 5TOUT EST PERMIS, RIEN N'EST POSSIBLE ! Michel Clouscard, Mai 68 et le capitalisme de la séduction14 Jul 2021 · 48:10
Summary produced automatically from 61 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Series · 6 Jul 2026From Plato to Proust - Readings on the Spot
Season 14 · 4 Feb 2026The return of fascism- 54:15Between two big bosses, a Dutchman and a Japanese, the differences are negligible; between each of them and their workers, there are worlds apart.
Season 13 · 6 Feb 2025On the anti-Sovietism of the Khmer Rouge-Greens- 44:51According to Clouscard, the multiple classes reduce to two: those who produce more than they consume and those who consume more than they produce.
Season 12 · 11 Jul 2024After the vote - Entering a zone of turbulence
Talks · 29 May 2023Dominique Pagani: From the debauchery of sense to the orgy of sentiment
Series · 5 Mar 2022Panzer-philosophy against the cogito: neo-fascism or the ideology of nature. Heidegger/Descartes- 48:41The "passion of ignorance" is analogous to the supposed absence of alternative to capitalism; "and yet it struggles": the class struggle continues.
Series · 17 Nov 2021Left-washing: Are the woke the most asleep?
Series · 14 Jul 2021EVERYTHING IS ALLOWED, NOTHING IS POSSIBLE! Michel Clouscard, May 68 and the capitalism of seduction
Series · 14 Jul 2021EVERYTHING'S ALLOWED, BUT NOTHING IS POSSIBLE! Michel Clouscard, May 68, French Theory & Capitalism- 44:37The working class has become a ghost class: it has disappeared from discourse, not from reality, and it is growing worldwide.
Series · 31 Mar 2021"Red-browns", "decolonial": Should we use the dominant language? • Philosophical Q&A • Pagani
Series · 25 Mar 2021Musicosophy 17. Interpretation- 50:10Cortot's contempt for "a cleaning woman" shows that race is class.
Series · 10 Mar 2021Musicosophy 16. Programme music / Pure music- 1:03:46The middle classes, where everything is decided, choose after 1929 either Nazism in Germany or alliance with the working class in France.
Talks · 16 Jan 2021The World Before, The World After - Part 2- 32:55The right launched identities to make people forget class struggle.
Talks · 5 Oct 2020Calves and Things (2): Ecologism, the highest stage of capitalism?
Talks · 4 Oct 2020Calves and Things, preface by Dominique Pagani- 24:12The middle strata, a majority, do not hold the bourgeoisie's ideology. The bourgeoisie must supply them with one to secure its domination.
Season 8 · 23 Jul 2020#15 • Return to the logics of the subject
Season 8 · 30 May 2020#9 • Return to the logics of the subject- 42:56Two fundamental classes: those who consume more than they produce and those who produce more than they consume.
Talks · 6 Dec 2019The brass band's journey - by Dominique Memmi- 35:59In a colonial context, color is a social determinant rather than a visual one: the Black person is poor, the white person has servants, and even children perceive it.
Talks · 29 Sept 2019The religion of Money- 1:17:22Man in general does not exist: there are social classes, and the capitalist management of the planet is disastrous.
Season 5.1 · 2 Nov 2018#5.1 bis FaceBook Live / Questions- 46:22Class separation is not merely economic; it has effects on psychology, aesthetic choices, and love.
Season 5.1 · 24 Oct 2018#5.1 The philosopher's Odyssey: Revolutionary thought
Season 5.1 · 15 Oct 2018#5.0 Presentation of the 2018-19 Workshop Season- 16:01Marx moves from the people, too generic a notion, to social class, which allows a move from genus to species.
Talks · 6 Oct 2018Dominique Pagani "On Marx"
Talks · 12 Jun 2018In conversation: Dominique Pagani - Bernard Friot - 1 June 2018- 1:37:53For Friot, communism does not abolish classes: it euphemizes the violence of production; the class struggle over what has value remains.
Talks · 20 May 2018Marxist Café - Work and the right to work
Season 4 · 4 Feb 2018#4.4B Objections to Dominique Pagani
Season 4 · 24 Sept 2017#4.0 Dominique Pagani, Presentation of the 2017-2018 workshop: Nerval's "Angélique"- 12:54We prefer to speak of fantasized identities rather than the reality of social classes, of which men and women are part.
Season 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.6 From Ulysses to Daedalus- 1:23:38According to Clouscard, there are two classes: one that produces without consuming and one that consumes without producing. This is a measurable criterion, not a moral invective.
Talks · 17 Jun 2017Adotevi: Negritude and negrologists (1)
Series · 2 Aug 2016With Clouscard- 28:28Class is not a matter of income: there are always two classes, the one that produces more than it consumes and the one that consumes more than it produces.
- 33:08The social division of labor produces classes. They belong to the code of our historical heritage, not to heredity, and the goal is a classless society.
Talks · 19 Jun 2016At the bistro with Pagani: part 2- 29:27The obscenity of porn is its glamour element, a class element that signals to workers that money is needed to have pleasure.
Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 5/5- 42:01In Proust, social class explains the homogeneity of the little band; a notion declared outdated by contemporary ideology.
Series · 7 Jan 2015X for Xanthippe- 5:41In refusing Alcibiades, Socrates refuses class domination.
Series · 28 Dec 2014N for Niger
Series · 23 Dec 2014I for Island- 9:41The new couple belongs neither to the peasantry nor to the aristocracy, but to the rising middle classes of which we are the heirs.
Series · 21 Dec 2014G for Gauche (the Left)- 5:27Suspicion of the plumber reveals to him that class relation, not color, governs the relation to the "savage."
Series · 17 Dec 2014C for Consumption- 5:36Those who consume the most condemn the timid access of the most exploited class to mass consumption.
Series · 27 Sept 2014#5 Libertarian liberalism, libidinal consumption and music...
Series · 20 Sept 2014#2 Rousseau, a world that begins- 35:04Fantasized identities are set against each other so as to stop talking about class struggle; Marx aims at a classless society, and the strike is an act of defense.
Series · 7 Jul 2012Radio Galère - Michel Clouscard - 2
Series · 6 Jul 2012Radio Galère - Michel Clouscard - 1
Series · 29 Jan 2012Everything is allowed but nothing is possible - Michel Clouscard - 1