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Sociology without class analysis is like physics without calculus: it always entails a primitive regression to magical and occult forces. I’m thinking here of Elizabeth Kolbert’s article about spoiled American children inthe New Yorker, which has bits in it like: “ The books [about disciplining children] are less how-to guides than how-not-to’s: how not to give in to your toddler, how not to intervene whenever your teen-ager looks bored, how not to spend two hundred thousand dollars on tuition only to find your twenty-something graduate back at home, drinking all your beer. ” The last, of course, is the kicker – we are firmly in the territory of the top ten percent. The “you”, the “we”, these marks that seal the unsealable class divisions that now, more than ever, have appeared on the surface of every developed economy in the world – these interest me. This is not just the usual ideological brainwashing, the disguising of those divisions – this is a step further in magic think