I probably shouldn't have said "useless," since obviously people who have beliefs use them, and the question is to what effect. I haven't read much Lenin and Gramsci, but surely they're not saying that the ONLY conflict in WWI was that between economic classes. Or maybe they are, but I'd like to know what their argument is. It seems to me you don't have to be so pathologically extreme to be a Marxist; all you have to say is that the general evolution of society through history is directed by the relations among economic classes. You don't have to say that every single social conflict is entirely caused and can be entirely explained by conflict between classes. E.g., a Marxist can agree with me that the conflict back in high school between freaks and greasers really was a conflict between freaks and greasers and - though fraught with tensions having to do with economic class - that it can't be (and doesn't need to be) mapped directly or entirely onto the conflict between bourgeousie and proletariat. I still think the Marxist would have his work cut out for him in trying to show how the bourgy-prole conflict is the deeper underlying conflict and how the bourgy-prole rather than the greaser-freak-prep thing (it was at least a triad) is THE engine for societal change. But when you go for a detailed analysis of what's going on with greasers vs. freaks, I don't know that my analysis and his would be all that different.

I still don't know what you mean by "incommensurable," or, if you think there is something incommensurable (rather than just "somewhat different") between me and the Marxist, why this is a problem for me.

I also don't know what you mean by "pragmatist." For what it's worth, my philosophical ideas and my social ideas don't match up, since my philosophical ideas are basically a critique of philosophy that leaves philosophy dead; but the critique doesn't tell me either what social role philosophy plays (or played) or what my social ideas should be. I think that the fact I used the term "pathologically extreme" both for philosophy (in my book) and for the idea that all social conflict is economic conflict may have confused you into thinking I had a similar critique of each. But actually my attack on philosophy is something else. And if you want to learn what it is you'll have to stop abandoning conversations.