OCMD
19th March 2009, 15:40
A really good analysis of present day class society and its struggles.
The Four Post-Marxist Classes of Society
There are four major social classes in the post-Marxist system.
(1) The Parasite Class
This class creates a negative value for society because they suck up more value from society than they create through their labor. It includes not just people in prison and people collecting welfare, but the working poor as well. In the United States, government spending per capita exceeds $20,000 per year, so the way I see it, a person who makes less than $20,000 per year is most likely creating less value than he sucks out of the system.
Now it’s true that the person earning $20,000 per year is actually creating more value than his salary because some of the value he creates has been transferred to the value transference class before he receives his paycheck, but the working poor also tend to use up more government services than people in the higher classes; their low class behaviors place greater burdens on the police, they receive various public benefits because society deems them too poor to get by on their own, and their children are more expensive to educate because they are “at risk” and cause behavior problems in the schools, etc.
Additionally, their low class behaviors create negative externalities, imposed mostly on the class immediately above it, the proletariat.
In Karl Marx’s day, the parasite class existed, but it was a much smaller percentage of society and more easily ignored. The parasite class has expanded because of dysgenic breeding and dysgenic immigration which has increased the percentage of low-IQ people, and because government spending per capita was tiny in the 19th century; there were no food stamps, no social security, and no free medical care.
A sensible society would try to reduce the parasite class by discouraging this class from reproducing, but our current social policies do the opposite. Women from the parasite class are rewarded with welfare payments when they have a baby.
(2) The Proletariat
This is the modern-day laboring class, not too much different than Karl Marx’s proletariat. This class has a higher IQ than the parasite class below it, but a lower IQ than the college graduate class above it.
This class is predominately a value creation class. Being even minimally successful at legal forms of value transference requires higher IQ than most people in proletariat possess. Maybe some people from this class are working as car salesmen are in other low-paying value transference jobs, but for the most part the men from this class do traditional blue collar work, and the women do low-paying office work, retail work, or medical work.
What has changed since Marx’s day is that there are no longer any high-IQ people in this class; they are now part of the college graduate class. This is the reason why the labor unions are dying out. Back in the old days, there were high-IQ laborers who would organize the workers, but today these high-IQ individuals are now in the college graduate class and are not interested in unionizing.
The people in the value transference class have convinced the people in the college graduate class that unions are for low class people. The proletariat no longer has any members capable of organizing a union, and over the last century, the value transference class has successfully trained this class to believe that they are not worth any more than they are getting paid.
The other thing that has changed since Marx’s day is that the size of this class has shrunk considerably. The majority of people in the parasite class and the college graduate class used to be in the proletariat.
(3) The College Graduate Class
This class has a higher IQ than the proletariat, and the overlap in IQ with the class below it is rather minimal. Most people whose IQ is high enough to graduate from college do so. And the proletariat contains many people who started college, but their IQ just wasn’t high enough for them to last long enough to graduate.
This class is the most productive class in terms of value creation, which explains why they have higher incomes than the proletariat. In a modern society such as we live in, value creation requires a high IQ. At the top end of this class are people making six figure salaries doing technical work like engineering or computer programming. This class includes middle management, but not upper management.
Compared to the class below, a higher percentage of the work done by this class is value transference work, but members of this class are not successful enough at transferring value to themselves in order to be part of the value transference class. They may make work in value transference industries like finance or advertising, but they get paid regular cubicle-worker salaries.
This class is comparable to the “petit-bourgeois” in orthodox Marxist theory, but Karl Marx didn’t think the petit-bourgeois were very important, and he thought that they would eventually move down to proletariat, with a lucky few moving up to the true bourgeois class.
Boy was he wrong about that!
This class has grown and become a very important class. In fact, it’s the growth of this class which has fueled the argument that Marx was wrong about everything.
The growth of this class has been of much benefit to the value transference class, because a great deal of the value created by the college graduate class is transferred to the value transference class.
Furthermore, the value transference class encourages class struggle between the proletariat and the college graduate class. Members of the college graduate class are made to feel like they are the economic winners, thus they ignore the fact that the value transference class is stealing a good portion of the value they create.
(4) The Value Transference Class
At the top of the Marxist class structure was a class called the bourgeois or the capitalists. This class owned the “means of production,” and thus they profited from the labor of the proletariat. The “means of production” meant owning a factory.
There are some members of the value transference class class who own factories, but what has changed since Marx’s day is that owning factories is no longer the primary means by which members of the value transference class transfer value. What we can say is that members of this class have value transference capital, and it’s this value transference capital which allows this class to be far richer than the value they create with their labor.
There is some value transference capital which can be bought and sold. You can buy or sell a value transference business, which I define as any business which primarily makes money by transferring value rather than by creating it. But much value transference capital is human capital. The CEO of a corporation has a great deal of value transference human capital. He is unable to sell his CEOship, but as long as he works as the CEO, he transfers value from the corporation’s employees and shareholders to himself.
Because value transference capital usually doesn’t exist as a tangible asset, or even as something you can purchase (accountants would call purchased value transference capital “good will”), a lot of people will deny its existence. They will insist that the CEO is making millions of dollars a year because he is creating millions of dollars of value per year through his labor, even though they can’t pinpoint anything that a CEO can do that many people in the college graduate class can’t also do.
The average IQ of the value transference class is somewhat higher than the average IQ of the college graduate class, but there is a great deal of overlap between these two classes. Most people with IQs higher than the average member of the value transference class are nevertheless stuck in the college graduate class. Most people with high IQs are able to use their IQs to create value, but they lack the value transference capital which is necessary for membership in this class.
Much of my analysis is based on the innate genetic IQ differences between the post-Marxist classes, and leftists are the people who are outraged at the idea that group differences in IQ are responsible for group differences in outcomes.
Furthermore, as I’ve pointed out before the modern left is no longer very much concerned with issues of class struggle. Instead, their focus is on egalitarian issues such as affirmative action and gay marriage, and on promoting the new religion of Earth Worship.
Credit: halfsigma
The Four Post-Marxist Classes of Society
There are four major social classes in the post-Marxist system.
(1) The Parasite Class
This class creates a negative value for society because they suck up more value from society than they create through their labor. It includes not just people in prison and people collecting welfare, but the working poor as well. In the United States, government spending per capita exceeds $20,000 per year, so the way I see it, a person who makes less than $20,000 per year is most likely creating less value than he sucks out of the system.
Now it’s true that the person earning $20,000 per year is actually creating more value than his salary because some of the value he creates has been transferred to the value transference class before he receives his paycheck, but the working poor also tend to use up more government services than people in the higher classes; their low class behaviors place greater burdens on the police, they receive various public benefits because society deems them too poor to get by on their own, and their children are more expensive to educate because they are “at risk” and cause behavior problems in the schools, etc.
Additionally, their low class behaviors create negative externalities, imposed mostly on the class immediately above it, the proletariat.
In Karl Marx’s day, the parasite class existed, but it was a much smaller percentage of society and more easily ignored. The parasite class has expanded because of dysgenic breeding and dysgenic immigration which has increased the percentage of low-IQ people, and because government spending per capita was tiny in the 19th century; there were no food stamps, no social security, and no free medical care.
A sensible society would try to reduce the parasite class by discouraging this class from reproducing, but our current social policies do the opposite. Women from the parasite class are rewarded with welfare payments when they have a baby.
(2) The Proletariat
This is the modern-day laboring class, not too much different than Karl Marx’s proletariat. This class has a higher IQ than the parasite class below it, but a lower IQ than the college graduate class above it.
This class is predominately a value creation class. Being even minimally successful at legal forms of value transference requires higher IQ than most people in proletariat possess. Maybe some people from this class are working as car salesmen are in other low-paying value transference jobs, but for the most part the men from this class do traditional blue collar work, and the women do low-paying office work, retail work, or medical work.
What has changed since Marx’s day is that there are no longer any high-IQ people in this class; they are now part of the college graduate class. This is the reason why the labor unions are dying out. Back in the old days, there were high-IQ laborers who would organize the workers, but today these high-IQ individuals are now in the college graduate class and are not interested in unionizing.
The people in the value transference class have convinced the people in the college graduate class that unions are for low class people. The proletariat no longer has any members capable of organizing a union, and over the last century, the value transference class has successfully trained this class to believe that they are not worth any more than they are getting paid.
The other thing that has changed since Marx’s day is that the size of this class has shrunk considerably. The majority of people in the parasite class and the college graduate class used to be in the proletariat.
(3) The College Graduate Class
This class has a higher IQ than the proletariat, and the overlap in IQ with the class below it is rather minimal. Most people whose IQ is high enough to graduate from college do so. And the proletariat contains many people who started college, but their IQ just wasn’t high enough for them to last long enough to graduate.
This class is the most productive class in terms of value creation, which explains why they have higher incomes than the proletariat. In a modern society such as we live in, value creation requires a high IQ. At the top end of this class are people making six figure salaries doing technical work like engineering or computer programming. This class includes middle management, but not upper management.
Compared to the class below, a higher percentage of the work done by this class is value transference work, but members of this class are not successful enough at transferring value to themselves in order to be part of the value transference class. They may make work in value transference industries like finance or advertising, but they get paid regular cubicle-worker salaries.
This class is comparable to the “petit-bourgeois” in orthodox Marxist theory, but Karl Marx didn’t think the petit-bourgeois were very important, and he thought that they would eventually move down to proletariat, with a lucky few moving up to the true bourgeois class.
Boy was he wrong about that!
This class has grown and become a very important class. In fact, it’s the growth of this class which has fueled the argument that Marx was wrong about everything.
The growth of this class has been of much benefit to the value transference class, because a great deal of the value created by the college graduate class is transferred to the value transference class.
Furthermore, the value transference class encourages class struggle between the proletariat and the college graduate class. Members of the college graduate class are made to feel like they are the economic winners, thus they ignore the fact that the value transference class is stealing a good portion of the value they create.
(4) The Value Transference Class
At the top of the Marxist class structure was a class called the bourgeois or the capitalists. This class owned the “means of production,” and thus they profited from the labor of the proletariat. The “means of production” meant owning a factory.
There are some members of the value transference class class who own factories, but what has changed since Marx’s day is that owning factories is no longer the primary means by which members of the value transference class transfer value. What we can say is that members of this class have value transference capital, and it’s this value transference capital which allows this class to be far richer than the value they create with their labor.
There is some value transference capital which can be bought and sold. You can buy or sell a value transference business, which I define as any business which primarily makes money by transferring value rather than by creating it. But much value transference capital is human capital. The CEO of a corporation has a great deal of value transference human capital. He is unable to sell his CEOship, but as long as he works as the CEO, he transfers value from the corporation’s employees and shareholders to himself.
Because value transference capital usually doesn’t exist as a tangible asset, or even as something you can purchase (accountants would call purchased value transference capital “good will”), a lot of people will deny its existence. They will insist that the CEO is making millions of dollars a year because he is creating millions of dollars of value per year through his labor, even though they can’t pinpoint anything that a CEO can do that many people in the college graduate class can’t also do.
The average IQ of the value transference class is somewhat higher than the average IQ of the college graduate class, but there is a great deal of overlap between these two classes. Most people with IQs higher than the average member of the value transference class are nevertheless stuck in the college graduate class. Most people with high IQs are able to use their IQs to create value, but they lack the value transference capital which is necessary for membership in this class.
Much of my analysis is based on the innate genetic IQ differences between the post-Marxist classes, and leftists are the people who are outraged at the idea that group differences in IQ are responsible for group differences in outcomes.
Furthermore, as I’ve pointed out before the modern left is no longer very much concerned with issues of class struggle. Instead, their focus is on egalitarian issues such as affirmative action and gay marriage, and on promoting the new religion of Earth Worship.
Credit: halfsigma