The Classes in Marxism

[mel]

I've seen a lot of posts recently that seem to work off of the mistaken assumption that the only classes which exist in Marxist analysis are the Bourgeoisie, the Petit-Bourgeoisie, and the Proletariat. I know, for example that there is at least one other class, the Lumpenproletariat, but I also know that there are other professions which don't cleanly fit into any of these categories. (lawyers, advertisers, managers without a controlling share, etc.).

Questions:

What are the terms for the classes (including the ones mentioned, for completion's sake) in traditional marxist analysis and how are they defined?

How many of them still exist and how many have largely been made obsolete? (like the peasant class)

Has the "proletarianization" of all of these other classes yet occurred, or are we still in the process of that now?

[New Tet]

I've seen a lot of posts recently that seem to work off of the mistaken assumption that the only classes which exist in Marxist analysis are the Bourgeoisie, the Petit-Bourgeoisie, and the Proletariat. I know, for example that there is at least one other class, the Lumpenproletariat, but I also know that there are other professions which don't cleanly fit into any of these categories. (lawyers, advertisers, managers without a controlling share, etc.).

Questions:

What are the terms for the classes (including the ones mentioned, for completion's sake) in traditional marxist analysis and how are they defined?

How many of them still exist and how many have largely been made obsolete? (like the peasant class)

Has the "proletarianization" of all of these other classes yet occurred, or are we still in the process of that now?

I don't know a complete answer to all those questions but I think that a good starting point would be to define classes in terms of their relationship to the means of production.

[mel]

I don't know a complete answer to all those questions but I think that a good starting point would be to define classes in terms of their relationship to the means of production.

Of course, but there is a distinctly different relationship to the means of production between a manager at a fast food restaurant and the CEO of a corporation, even between the fast food manager and a shop-owner who hires one or two employees. There is also a distinctly different relationship to the means of production between a worker in a factory and a clerk at a walmart.

I know that there are certain types of workers that marxist theoreticians have placed into classes other than bourgeois and proletariat, whose labor is ultimately not productive but who nevertheless do labor. In this category I'd imagine would be lawyers, advertisers, and certain types of clerks. Mostly, I am wondering what the terminology is which is used to describe these other classes and their peculiar relationship to the means of production, to enhance my own understanding and to make my own class analysis, when discussing with marxists and non-marxists alike, less muddled.

In addition to that, I am under the impression that Marx believed most of these alternative classes would eventually be absorbed into the proletariat, and I'm asking to what extent it is believed that this has already happened, and to what extent it's projected to continue to happen. Have theoreticians since Marx determined that this won't occur? Has globalization changed class analysis fundamentally? Does Marxist class analysis need to be updated or is it just that its usual permutation is incomplete?

[New Tet]

Of course, but there is a distinctly different relationship to the means of production between a manager at a fast food restaurant and the CEO of a corporation, even between the fast food manager and a shop-owner who hires one or two employees. There is also a distinctly different relationship to the means of production between a worker in a factory and a clerk at a walmart.

I know that there are certain types of workers that marxist theoreticians have placed into classes other than bourgeois and proletariat, whose labor is ultimately not productive but who nevertheless do labor. In this category I'd imagine would be lawyers, advertisers, and certain types of clerks. Mostly, I am wondering what the terminology is which is used to describe these other classes and their peculiar relationship to the means of production, to enhance my own understanding and to make my own class analysis, when discussing with marxists and non-marxists alike, less muddled.

In addition to that, I am under the impression that Marx believed most of these alternative classes would eventually be absorbed into the proletariat, and I'm asking to what extent it is believed that this has already happened, and to what extent it's projected to continue to happen. Have theoreticians since Marx determined that this won't occur? Has globalization changed class analysis fundamentally? Does Marxist class analysis need to be updated or is it just that its usual permutation is incomplete?

From where I'm standing I see two classes remaining; wage workers and profit takers.

I hope I don't have to define for you what a wage worker is or explain that a profit taker is part or whole owner of the means of production and derives their income from accrued surplus value.

You mentioned peasantry before. Marxism has already tackled that question with enough printed words to fill a medium-sized library. The peasant question was one that tormented Lenin so much that he squatted to lay an egg and out came Stalin, red feathers and all. The peasantry in Russia got a whacking that rivaled the Industrial Revolution in all but length of duration.

WW1 and WW2 were what done in what was left of the North American 'peasantry'. In the U.S. you can see it most clearly.

Or, rather, you can notice most clearly, as it were, the absence of even a whiff of a peasant.

In the U.S. there are large, corporate-owned agricultural expanses owned by Fortune 500 companies, listed on the exchange, managed and operated by agricultural employees. Wage workers.

In short, a few multi-billion dollar private companies control at least 90% of all agricultural business in America and beyond. Wherein is the noble peasant?

[ArrowLance]

If I remember right, Landlords and Peasants are considered to be in their own classes.

[Dave B]

There are formally only three economic classes in capitalism in Das Capital Marxism, the working class, the capitalist class and the land owning class.


I think Karl considered the peasant and artisan class or small independent producers and family sized anarcho-syndicalists, who owned still owned their own means of production, as a kind of evolutionary Dodo and Neanderthal class and doomed to extinction.


Although Proudhon regarded them as the salvation of humanity.

The issue of classes in a kind of Marxist economic/sociological/consciousness context is interesting.


When I read through Capital, particularly Volume III, I got the sense that he realised that it was a question that required some further theoretical analysis and that he was going to deal with it.

I was of course greatly excited by the beginning of the last chapter, having not read the end first. Only to be somewhat disappointed to discover that the last pages were missing.


n

[Janine Melnitz]

WW1 and WW2 were what done in what was left of the North American 'peasantry'. In the U.S. you can see it most clearly.

Or, rather, you can notice most clearly, as it were, the absence of even a whiff of a peasant.

[...]

In short, a few multi-billion dollar private companies control at least 90% of all agricultural business in America and beyond. Wherein is the noble peasant?
What weird language. I might be dense, but you're not implying that peasant life is better than that of a proletarian, are you?

Re: "lumpenproletariat" -- I'm not convinced this is a useful designation, and I am convinced that nobody's really clear on what it means. In the Manifesto they're specifically called the detritus of the "old order" (feudalism basically), which suggests that they don't really exist much anymore in most countries. Of course Marx did later say the Manifesto was no longer of any interest beyond historical. Most people who use the word seem to be using not a definition so much as a laundry list, lifted from the Eighteenth Brumaire: "criminals" (both petty and organized), homeless, street performers -- without the "detritus of the old order" definition, this grouping becomes rather incoherent, especially when you consider that full-time "criminals", for example those in the drug industry, are very obviously either (petit-)bourgeois or proletarian full stop -- legality doesn't determine class, it's a complication of class war, and "legitimacy" is an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie.

Engels, in The Constitutional Question in Germany, complicated things further by mentioning the lumpens strictly as a sector of the proletariat, alongside (wage earning) farm laborers, factory workers, day laborers etc. Obviously Engels and Marx, at that specific time and place, considered the industrial workers to be the leading sectorof the revolutionary working class, but that was by virtue of their relative organization, concentration and numbers -- this merely put them in a strategically good position, it didn't make them "more proletarian".

As for the "unemployed, unemployable", petty thieves and disabled and folks on the dole, lack of work doesn't make you less a proletarian, does it? It just puts you in the "reserve army", as I understand it. Whether such shiftless rogues deserve their reputation as more susceptible to rightist indoctrination, I really can't say for sure, but I suspect that this is much less the case where even minimal welfare programs exist than it was in Marx's day, when streets were full of starving men who'd jump at the opportunity to bash their neighbors' heads in for a decent wage.

[mel]

Great post, but in some places I believe this


streets were full of starving men who'd jump at the opportunity to bash their neighbors' heads in for a decent wage.

is still the case.

[Janine Melnitz]

In most places that's the case. Like I said, "less the case where even minimal welfare programs exist" -- of course that's a small part of the world still.