What % of the US Population is Proletarian? [Archive]

Proletarian Ultra

20th June 2010, 08:07

this is an invasion

20th June 2010, 08:24

wait...
PhD grad students are lumpen?

lollllllwut

it_ain't_me

20th June 2010, 08:28

mall cops are hardcore. in the moment of revolution their allegiance will be a vital determining factor

bcbm

20th June 2010, 08:29

pensioners are bourgeois?

Proletarian Ultra

20th June 2010, 08:31

wait...
PhD grad students are lumpen?

lollllllwut

I used to be one. Worse scum you will never find. :lol:

But count them as feudal relics or even proles if you wish.

pensioners are bourgeois?

If they live on stocks and bonds? In terms of class position within the relations of production I would say yes.

bcbm

20th June 2010, 08:34

If they live on stocks and bonds? In terms of class position within the relations of production I would say yes.

i don't think being offered retirement benefits like a 401k at your job makes you part of the ruling class. and you also include wage earners with a savings, which is even more absurd.

NGNM85

20th June 2010, 08:34

Regardless of little technical details, this does bring up a point which I've been saying for a long time; we need to get into the 21st century. We need a libertarian socialism that suits the present-day financial/service economy, as opposed to the industrial/agricultural economy of the past. We need a modern Anarchism. 'Anarchy 2.0.'

syndicat

20th June 2010, 08:57

Class has to be understood in terms of power over others within social production. At the same time, people are related to others, they are part of families. So, if, say, a young person is working at the deli as a cashier (a working class job) but her parents are corporate lawyers, she's not working class because of her long term prospects.

But, in general, the working class are those who must selll their ability to work to employers, and who do not have power over other workers, but are subject to bosses.

If a person works in such a job and then retires, they are working class in virtue of the kind of roles they played while still working. It doesn't matter if their employer provided a 401k retirement plan...most employers do exactly that today in the USA.

Students from working class families are still working class. Of course if they are able to eventually become a manager or high-end professional or own their own business, their class position changes.

The people who aren't owners of businesses but middle-managers or high-end professionals who work with management to control workers (industrial engineers, corporate lawyers, finance officers, top accountants, etc) are part of what I call the bureaucratic class. Corporate capitalism is based on a kind of alliance or symbiotic relationship between the top capitalists and the bureaucratic class (which includes managers in the public sector, judges, army officers etc).

Lower level professionals such as school teachers, RNs, programmers, dental hygenists etc i consider part of the skilled section of the working class, along with machinists, electricians, aircraft mechanics, etc.

A person who owns his own tools and is self-employed, such as a plumber with his own truck, who has no employees, isn't quite a capitalist because capitalists have employees. They're sort of in an inbetween position.

But being officially "self-employed" is not the same thing as not being a working class job. A truck driver or cab driver who gets orders from a particular company, like a FedEx driver, is just a worker for that company. their "self-employement" is fake, it's a scheme to keep out unions. They're working class.

among people in illegal positions there is a class division also. so there are owners of drug businesses, and they are petty capitalists. and then there are their employees, the runners etc.

among teachers there is a very fuzzy line betwen tenured profs at elite PhD granting universities, who are members of the bureaucratic class, and school teachers, who are part of the skilled section of working class. teachers are arrayed sort of in a hierarchy, since community college instructors may have more autonomy than primary and secondary teachers, but less so than professors at PhD granting univerties, and adjuncts at state colleges are sort of an academic proletariat.

my estimate is that the core working class in the USA -- those who are highly controlled, work relatively unskilled or deskilled jobs -- are close to 60 percent of the economically active population. the skilled section of the working class are about 15 percent. the small business class are about 6 percent, the major capitalists are about 2 percent. the bureaucratic class is around 17 percent I think. thus the dominating classes are about a fourth of the population. the working masses and their dependents are about three fourths.

Proletarian Ultra

20th June 2010, 08:58

i don't think being offered retirement benefits like a 401k at your job makes you part of the ruling class.

Ruling class is like middle class or working class. It's a sociological definition. If someone lives off the labor of others, regardless of what he or she might have done in the past, that's technically bourgeois. There's plenty of bourgeois who are barely scraping by, on a limited inheritance or a failing business. Their interests are still those of the bourgeoisie; in fact, even more so, since they're desperate. So I don't see why age should be a barrier.

If I depend on a scant six figures of investments to put me through my golden years, I'm going to be fanatical about making sure that corporate profits are high and bond yields are steady. As a class, anyway.

and you also include wage earners with a savings, which is even more absurd.

A proletarian is someone who must sell but his labor to survive. Anyway given how 401Ks are stacked against workers I don't think it's that big a number.

We need a libertarian socialism that suits the present-day financial/service economy, as opposed to the industrial/agricultural economy of the past.

Workers in the financial and services sectors are still proletarians, if they must sell their labor to survive.

syndicat

20th June 2010, 09:07

Selling your labor to survive is necessary but sufficient to be proletarian. Middle managers, industrial engineers, HR specialists, accountants who work for companies whether on salary or as consulants, still must sell their working abilities, and the same is true for university professors, army generals, judges, etc. In other words, the bureaucratic class also are employees, their class position is not based on ownership of the means of production or of businesses.

this class is not proletarian precisely because of their power over other working people, and the privileges and higher income and so on they have from this.

in regard to being paid for your work, you are paid not just for the work you are doing this week, but also for your lifetime of labor and that is how to understand payment for retirement. if an employer provides a pension of some sort, you are being paid for your working abilities when you are paid a pension. it's just that you only get part of what you were paid when you retire.

Proletarian Ultra

20th June 2010, 09:08

The people who aren't owners of businesses but middle-managers or high-end professionals who work with management to control workers (industrial engineers, corporate lawyers, finance officers, top accountants, etc) are part of what I call the bureaucratic class. Corporate capitalism is based on a kind of alliance or symbiotic relationship between the top capitalists and the bureaucratic class (which includes managers in the public sector, judges, army officers etc).

Yeah, this is a difference in Marxist and anarchist understandings of class. You say bureaucratic class. I say proletarians in a contradictory class position (or caste), but either way we leave them out. Yes, your way is simpler. ;)

Lower level professionals such as school teachers, RNs, programmers, dental hygenists etc i consider part of the skilled section of the working class, along with machinists, electricians, aircraft mechanics, etc.

Yeah.

A person who owns his own tools and is self-employed, such as a plumber with his own truck, who has no employees, isn't quite a capitalist because capitalists have employees. They're sort of in an inbetween position.

Yeah. That's what Marxists call the petty bourgeoisie (which I think is probably more condescending than it should be) and I know you guys accord some more dignity to them (which is as it should be). But either way, as you suggest, they're not part of the core core proletariat.

But being officially "self-employed" is not the same thing as not being a working class job. A truck driver or cab driver who gets orders from a particular company, like a FedEx driver, is just a worker for that company. their "self-employement" is fake, it's a scheme to keep out unions. They're working class.

Yup. Fedex and Walmart drivers are both technically self-employed but that's bullshit. Most cabbies don't actually own their medallions and have to pay off the guy who does, often illegally. They're definitely proletarians even if it's under the table.

among teachers there is a very fuzzy line betwen tenured profs at elite PhD granting universities, who are members of the bureaucratic class, and school teachers, who are part of the skilled section of working class. teachers are arrayed sort of in a hierarchy, since community college instructors may have more autonomy than primary and secondary teachers, but less so than professors at PhD granting univerties, and adjuncts at state colleges are sort of an academic proletariat.

Having taught as a community college instructor and an adjunct, I'd put the class position of those occupations somewhere between the guy who sprays disinfectant in the bowling shoes and the guy who mops up customers in the adult video store.

robbo203

20th June 2010, 09:10

Is the proletariat even a bare majority of the adult US population? When you exclude:

Bourgeoisie

Idle rich
Business owners
Retirees living on 401K and other savings
Wage-earners with enough savings to live on if they had to retire
Petty Bourgeoisie

Self-employed professionals
Real estate and insurance agents
Salesmen on commission
Doctors, lawyers, etc. in private practice
Independent tradesmen and truck-drivers
Protestant clergy
Security and management castes

Cops and mall cops
Volunteer military
Mercenaries
Prison and border guards
Managers and supervisors
Lumpenproletariat

Prisoners, parolees, probationees, etc.
Drug dealers and other career criminals
The homeless
Chronically unemployed
People on disability benefits
Retirees living on social security alone
PhD graduate students
Feudal Relics

Tenured and tenure-track university faculty
Catholic clergy
Houswives and househusbands

Disagree on the inclusion or grouping of some of those if you will, but what percentage is actually proletarian?

Apart from (some of) the category , "bourgeoisie", all of the above are essentially part of the proletariat or working class who constitute perhaps 95%+ of the population.

The basic marxian definition of "proletarian" is someone who does not posess sufficient, if any, capital to live upon and is therefore economically compelled to sell their labour power on the market. It is a generalisation, of course, that can be nuanced and refined for some purposes. The long term unemployed for example may live on state handouts but they still have a functional relationship to other members of the working class in the form of Marx's "industrial reserve army". There is some utility from the capitalist point of view in having a pool of currently unemployed workers - most notably it strengthens the hand of the capitalists in wage negotiations and it also permits a degree of flexibility in calibrating the technical mix of fixed capital to labour under uncertain market conditions.

There are many different ways in which to define "class" but how you define class depends on what purpose you have in mind. It is not that other defintions of class are wrong - such as those based on lifestyle, education or income - its just that they are inappropriate from a Marxian perspective.

A socialist revolution depends on the vast majority of the population becoming socialists and the driving force behind this is class struggle. If you start whittling down the size of the proletariat, lopping off huge chunks of it, for the sake of a particular narrow definition of class you are actually in a sense undermining the prospect of revolution or at least disconnecting it from its material basis in class struggle.

This is why we need to resist this divide and rule tendency to which, I am afraid, many on the left unwittingly succumb by projecting a very narrow view of what constitites a proletarian which in their eyes usually constitutes unskilled or semi skilled workers who work in factories and the like, office workers being considered "middle class"and therefore not part of the proletariat.

Such a class perspective actually undermines the case for a revolutionary transformation of society by reducing its political constituency to a minority in society when in fact socialism would be in the class interests of the vast majority in society - the workers, whatever their profession

syndicat

20th June 2010, 09:13

A socialist revolution depends on the vast majority of the population becoming socialists and the driving force behind this is class struggle. If you start whittling down the size of the proletariat, lopping off huge chunks of it, for the sake of a particular narrow definition of class you are actually in a sense undermining the prospect of revolution or at least disconnecting it from its material basis in class struggle.

it's also true, however, that if you mistakenly suppose that the bureaucratic class is part of the working class, this could lead you to mistakenly think that the revolution is a success if only the capitalists are expropriated...leaving in place the power of the bureaucratic class over the working class...and thus leaving domination and exploitation intact.

20th June 2010, 09:24

robbo203

20th June 2010, 09:29

it's also true, however, that if you mistakenly suppose that the bureaucratic class is part of the working class, this could lead you to mistakenly think that the revolution is a success if only the capitalists are expropriated...leaving in place the power of the bureaucratic class over the working class...and thus leaving domination and exploitation intact.

Well according to your argument the "bureaucratic class" as you call it exists in some kind of symbiotic alliance with the capitalist class. If the capitalist class is no more by virtue of the revolutionary transformation of society, with whom does this bureacratic class ally itself with? It seems to me that the material basis for its existence will disappear along with that of the capitalists (and the proletariat, of course) in classless communism.

I prefer not to talk of a "bureaucratic class" as such. There is a managerial elite that straddles that grey area between classes in the marxian sense. Some managers might plausibly be considered part of the capitalist class by virtue of their massive income but most others I would place in the working class, particular middle and low management

graymouser

20th June 2010, 12:19

I prefer not to talk of a "bureaucratic class" as such. There is a managerial elite that straddles that grey area between classes in the marxian sense. Some managers might plausibly be considered part of the capitalist class by virtue of their massive income but most others I would place in the working class, particular middle and low management
The problem with a concept of a "bureaucratic class" is that it is not a thing with coherent interests outside of its relationship to the bourgeois and proletarian classes. In Marxist sociology it would be considered really a detached part of the working class, since it is paid wages to exist, that is welded organically to the bourgeoisie. Every ruling class does this - it has members of the lower class who are attached to it, and who enjoy privileges and benefits for that, but remain totally dependent upon the ruling class. The slave owning and feudal aristocracies certainly had similar layers. Essentially they are a layer within the superstructure, making it possible for exploitation to continue. Now, I don't think management is the place where you can look to build a socialist movement. They recognize that they benefit from the general exploitation and will defend that viciously. Like cops they are technically workers but you can't rely on that fact in a crisis.

Also, talking about a "bureaucratic class" also winds up lumping a lot of government workers into such a construct, as well as upper professional strata, who are the natural targets of fascist demagogy and can't be written off en bloc but should be won over when possible. This is why the term "bureaucracy" is misleading, because it pulls together too many different groups. Government workers, for instance, can get quite radical when pushed, and even some professional workers, but if you throw them in with the managerial layer from the start you're giving up the fight in advance.

Comrade Awesome

20th June 2010, 12:56

Yeah. That's what Marxists call the petty bourgeoisie (which I think is probably more condescending than it should be)
It's actually petite-bourgeoisie, which doesn't carry the same connotations as petty, it's just French for "small bourgeoisie". :thumbup1:
*Goes back to lurking*

danyboy27

20th June 2010, 16:45

housewife or househusband has feodal relic?

what kind of bullshit is that?

I dont see anything feodal in that, if a men or a woman want to stay home to take care of the kid and the home, its their own choices.

28350

20th June 2010, 17:48

I recently came across this book, The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret, in my school library. I actually know the author. Cool stuffs.
I haven't started reading it yet, but I'm pretty sure it deals with the topic at hand.

There's a small google books preview here (http://books.google.com/books?id=1dwfNxZ6c50C&dq=The+Working+Class+Majority:+America%27s+Best+Ke pt+Secret&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=vkUeTMuuKIH68Abg09iHDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false).

gorillafuck

20th June 2010, 18:07

Feudal Relics

Tenured and tenure-track university faculty
Catholic clergy
Houswives and househusbands

No.

Chimurenga.

20th June 2010, 18:21

Truck drivers are petit-bourgeois?

Robocommie

20th June 2010, 18:24

I'm sure liberation theologists and Catholic socialists in general will be thrilled to hear that priests are feudal relics, as well. As someone who was raised Catholic, I rather resent the notion that Protestantism is somehow more advanced than Catholicism.

Truck drivers are petit-bourgeois?

I guess the general idea is that, if truck drivers own their rig, which some do, then they're petit bourgeois because they own the "means of production." But to me, that's rather like relegating construction workers to petit-bourgeois, because they own their own tools.

In general, people ever since the Enlightenment have been obsessed with categories, being able to draw up charts and tables and classify one thing as this and another thing as that. Taxonomy is not merely restricted to biology and the zoological sciences, ever since the Enlightenment it has been obsessively applied to every single intellectual endeavour, sociology, economics, philosophy. It's not very helpful, because in the "soft sciences" - the humanities - the realities of life's weird little inconsistencies make it extremely unhelpful to categorically bunch people into boxes. It is human experience on a practical, day-to-day level that should inform our understanding of class struggle, and it is human experience and hardship which most profoundly shapes social consciousness. Because ultimately, a small farmer or truck driver who faces bankruptcy, destitution and homelessness even though they "own the means of production" cannot be said to be benefiting from the capitalist mode.

syndicat

20th June 2010, 19:42

Also, talking about a "bureaucratic class" also winds up lumping a lot of government workers into such a construct, as well as upper professional strata, who are the natural targets of fascist demagogy and can't be written off en bloc but should be won over when possible. This is why the term "bureaucracy" is misleading, because it pulls together too many different groups. Government workers, for instance, can get quite radical when pushed, and even some professional workers, but if you throw them in with the managerial layer from the start you're giving up the fight in advance.

Class is about power over others in social production. Exploitation is only possible because some have power over others, and can extract an income from the work of others. Rejecting the bureaucratic class, one can't say who the dominating and exploiting class was in the old USSR.

"Government workers" is too heterogeneous to be in one class just as "corporate employees" is too heterogeneous. General managers of big government concerns make CEO level salaries. You have the same internal division of labor as you do within corporations.

Also, calling managers "workers" suggests that you think their position should survive a workers revolution. Again, it makes it sound like you think the only issue is the ownership title. But it isn't. Proletarian liberation is about gaining power over social production and society, and it is therefore also about dissolving the internal hierarchical structures through which workers are dominated.

Moreover, the bosses who workers deal with day to day are mostly not capitalists. There is clearly an antagonistic class relationship between the managers and top end professionals who work directly with them, and the working class.

Also, there are often frictions between various sections of the bureaucratic class and the top capitalists, particularly those sections of the bureaucractic class in government, the big trade unions and big nonprofits. The latter often have some sort of working class constituency for one thing.

Proletarian Ultra

20th June 2010, 19:46

BTW: The point of this isn't to sort out who's good and who's bad, or who's oppressed and who's not oppressed. It's to get an estimate of the core revolutionary class in America. A revolution will necessarily break off fractions of those other groups - and I'm sure self-employed truckers and poor retirees and the homeless would be bravely fighting on the barricades.

So let's drop the label 'proletarian' and just say 'non-supervisory wage workers not employed in the security industry.'

Wait, did you just completely neglect property relations (considering you're a marxist)?

And many that you mentioned are, in fact, more class traitors than anything else. But the homeless, I count as working class. Unemployment does not affect class status (so the chronically unemployed, as well as housewives and househusbands, are working class). When a worker is laid off, do we consider them to be immediately Lumpen? Students belong to whatever class whoever they depend on to survive are in. Anarchist class analysis holds that upper-management belongs to the ruling class; middle-management to a middle class (which shares the status with the petit-bourgeoisie - small capitalists) and the lowest levels of management to the working class.

That's why I said caste, comrade! Proletarians who get paid to watch over other proletarians.

That's also why I only included the chronically unemployed.

syndicat

20th June 2010, 22:02

I recently came across this book, The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret in my school library. I actually know the author. Cool stuffs.
I haven't started reading it yet, but I'm pretty sure it deals with the topic at hand.

yes, it's very good. very clearly written. he starts off in the same vein as i would, saying that class is about power some people have others in production, and the powerlessness of those who are dominated as a result of this.

However, he merges together self-employed, small employers, all levels of professionals and managers as "middle class." This is too heterogeneous to be a class. Also, lower level professionals don't have significant power over other workers. So, at that point he starts to stretch his definition, saying it isn't just power over others but also having autonomy or control in your work. But this doesn't seem right to me. Skilled workers such as an electrician, aircraft mechanic, auto mechanic have somewhat more autonomy in work than more highly controlled workers. but they're still working class. same, then, with lower-level professionals such as RNs, school teachers, programmers, etc. In fact he's not consistent here either as he sometimes says programmers and RNs are part of the working class.

Proletarian Ultra

20th June 2010, 22:07

However, he merges together self-employed, small employers, all levels of professionals and managers as "middle class."

I'll have to get this book. If you have it handy, does he come out with a hard number or percentage for what he considers 'working class'?

Foldered

20th June 2010, 22:11

A lot of OPs categories really make me think "wtf." I'm not sure why it is necessary to make all of these categories and how it helps anything to know who the "core revolutionary class in America" is.

syndicat

20th June 2010, 22:20

to answer ultra, the answer is "yes." Zweig uses Bureau of Labor Statistics tallies of the various occupations to reach a conclusion of 62 percent for the U.S. working class, 36 percent for "middle class" and 2 percent for big business class.

I've also used these BLS tallies myself, but because I include the lower-end professionals, I come up with approximately 75 percent fior the working class.

one disagreement i have with Zweig is that he includes cops and sheriffs in the working class, whereas I regard them as supervisors of the streets. in other words, i think they are in whatever class lower level management is in. I'd say bureaucratic class. In any event, I don't think cops are a part of the working class, even tho they are often recruited from the working class (as are supervisors).

Proletarian Ultra

20th June 2010, 22:26

Raúl Duke

20th June 2010, 22:38

Lumpenproletariat

Prisoners, parolees, probationees, etc.
Drug dealers and other career criminals
The homeless
Chronically unemployed
People on disability benefits
Retirees living on social security alone
PhD graduate students

I increasingly am finding the term "lumpen-prole" to be out-right worthless.

Feudal Relics

Tenured and tenure-track university faculty
Catholic clergy
Houswives and househusbands

lol wut?

Also I wonder why you put catholic clergy in this category and not protestant ones (instead labeling them as petit-bourgeois)?

graymouser

21st June 2010, 02:48

Class is about power over others in social production. Exploitation is only possible because some have power over others, and can extract an income from the work of others. Rejecting the bureaucratic class, one can't say who the dominating and exploiting class was in the old USSR.
No, class is about relation to the means of production, fundamentally whether or not one would survive without being paid a wage. A manager or bureaucrat does not "extract an income from the work of others." He or she is paid an income for work performed - albeit work that may consist of regulating or supervising the work of others. It's still work done for pay, and there's still in some sense surplus-value extracted, albeit in a roundabout manner.

As far as the USSR - there was no exploiting class in relation to the means of production. There were proletarian norms of production, engineered such that a bureaucratic caste that politically dominated the working class could live relatively comfortably by overcompensating itself for necessary technical and organizational tasks. Trying to create "classes" in the USSR raises the question of how the law of value operated, when it in fact did not.

"Government workers" is too heterogeneous to be in one class just as "corporate employees" is too heterogeneous. General managers of big government concerns make CEO level salaries. You have the same internal division of labor as you do within corporations.
This is a problem for bureaucratic class theories, because any "bureaucracy" that doesn't include government workers violates the basic understanding of the term.

Also, calling managers "workers" suggests that you think their position should survive a workers revolution.
That's not true at all. I think there are a lot of positions that are working class but shouldn't survive a workers' revolution. The entire finance sector, for instance, shouldn't exist at all, but there are still people who are sociologically working class within it. I'm focusing on their relation to the means of production, not on the power they have in one-on-one relationships.

Again, it makes it sound like you think the only issue is the ownership title. But it isn't. Proletarian liberation is about gaining power over social production and society, and it is therefore also about dissolving the internal hierarchical structures through which workers are dominated.
Fundamentally socialist revolution is about the workers controlling the means of production, period. That's what counts. "Internal hierarchical structures" are just ways of implementing control over the means of production, and they are not the fundamental problem.

Moreover, the bosses who workers deal with day to day are mostly not capitalists. There is clearly an antagonistic class relationship between the managers and top end professionals who work directly with them, and the working class.
No, there is not. At the end of the day the managers and professionals are just doing their jobs, and they are just as subject to the whims of capitalists as the workers themselves. The manager does not get extra surplus-value for making workers stay late or speed up, the capitalist does. That the capitalist may choose to share a crumb of this is a corrupting factor, which is why I emphasize that managers are a detached stratum of the working class that has aligned itself with the bourgeoisie for its own benefit. But in terms of the system of production they still don't live off the profits of capital. Moreover, they don't have any common interest with each other, but rather exist because they make their interest identical with that of the bourgeoisie.

Also, there are often frictions between various sections of the bureaucratic class and the top capitalists, particularly those sections of the bureaucractic class in government, the big trade unions and big nonprofits. The latter often have some sort of working class constituency for one thing.
This is a good demonstration of why your "bureaucratic class" notion is ridiculous - managers in capitalist firms hate what you call other members of the "bureaucratic class" and in fact have no common interest with them whatsoever. There is nothing in common between layers of your bureaucratic class other than the fact that you don't like what they are paid to do - that's a sign that you're not looking at a class at all.

syndicat

21st June 2010, 05:42

No, class is about relation to the means of production, fundamentally whether or not one would survive without being paid a wage.

the "relation to the means of production" bit is vulgar Marxism of the sort I expect from Stalinists and Stalinoid Trots. Your sentence here is also internally inconsistent because whether someone could survive without being paid a wage depends on social relationships. When the capitalists monopolize ownership of the means of production this generates a social power relationship in regard to the propertyless proletarian class. For Marx "being paid a wage" within capitalism is part of the capital/wage labor relation...and this is a social relation between groups. The means of production in themselves have nothing whatsoever to do with class.

Moreover, the middle managers and high end professionals of the corporate bureaucracy would certainly be unable to obtain the high pay and prestige and decision-making power in the workplace they have were it not for the working class being forced to accept subordination to them, since that is what we agree to when we take a job for a firm. The bureaucratic class participate directly in the exploitation of the working class and their power and incomes are symptoms of this.

Taylorism for example is a management strategy for control over workers, for increasing the pace of work, reducing the wage bill thru deskilling, and reducing worker leverage thru deskilling, monitoring and other forms of managerial practice. The fact that these methods were also put into play in the Soviet Union is surely evidence of the position of workers as a subordinate, exploited class. And certainly evidence that no "proletarian norms" were in play. A necessary condition for "proletarian norms" prevailing is that workers have the collective power to manage production themselves.

robbo203

21st June 2010, 09:37

No, class is about relation to the means of production, fundamentally whether or not one would survive without being paid a wage. A manager or bureaucrat does not "extract an income from the work of others." He or she is paid an income for work performed - albeit work that may consist of regulating or supervising the work of others. It's still work done for pay, and there's still in some sense surplus-value extracted, albeit in a roundabout manner.

As far as the USSR - there was no exploiting class in relation to the means of production. There were proletarian norms of production, engineered such that a bureaucratic caste that politically dominated the working class could live relatively comfortably by overcompensating itself for necessary technical and organizational tasks. Trying to create "classes" in the USSR raises the question of how the law of value operated, when it in fact did not..

Ownership is the same thing as ultimate de facto control. Try separating these things - you can't. It just can't be done. In the USSR the class that exerted control over the means of production , that dictated the allocation of resources and the distribution of the socal product was in effect the owning class - the state capitalist class. The form of ownership was different to the form that hisorically manifested itself in the West where you had individual de jure legal title to means of production but even here in the West as Engels noted the property form was changing with the emergence of the joint stock company , trustifciation and state takeovers.

In the Soviet union the state capitalist class exercised de facto ownership as a class - not as mere individuals - via their control of the state. Neccesarily that entailed the exploitation of the great majoirity and the extraction of surplus value from the latter out of which capital was accumulated and, as a result of which, the Soviet Union was enabled to industrialise. In the Stalin period particularly wages were held down ruthlessly in order to maximise the rate of capital accumulation.

Further evidence of the exploitative and capitalist nature of the regime in the Soviet Union was the existence of massive inequalities, comparable, according to some studies, to that found in some OECD countries. The soviet capitalist class disguised the source of its wealth - as incidentally do many company directors in the West - by calling it "wages" or "salaries". But in fact these massively inflated salaries - actually multiple salaries in many cases - bore little relation to their actual contribution. This is even more apparent when you take into account the non-monetary benefits in kind which members of state capitalist class enjoyed such as free dachas, chauffer driven limos and the like. Roy Medvedev, I think, gives a raio of approximately 1:100 as the difference between low and high incomes in the Soviet Union (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976). And of course there is that embarrasing pamphlet which the stalinists would dearly love to sweep under the carpet called "Soviet Millionaires" published in 1945 by the Russia Today Society (London) and written by Reg Bishop, a supporter of the Soviet regime, who proudly boasted of the existence of rouble millionaires in Stalin's so called "socialist" paradise which he saw as an clear proof of its economic success

Nothing Human Is Alien

21st June 2010, 11:12

Backing his findings with a thorough and convincing analysis, Michael Zweig wrote in his book "The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret" (2000, Cornell University Press) that:

"The majority of people are in the working class, those who do the direct work of production and who typically have little control over their jobs and no supervisory authority over others. The working class is the clear majority of the labor force, 62 percent. At the top of the class order, controlling the big business apparatus, is the capitalist class, about 2 percent of the labor force. A small fraction of the capitalist class operates on a national scale, and an even smaller network of several tens of thousands of interlocking directors among the largest of businesses is the core of the national ruling class. Between the capitalist class and the working class is the middle class, about 36 percent of the labor force."

graymouser

21st June 2010, 12:26

Moreover, the middle managers and high end professionals of the corporate bureaucracy would certainly be unable to obtain the high pay and prestige and decision-making power in the workplace they have were it not for the working class being forced to accept subordination to them, since that is what we agree to when we take a job for a firm. The bureaucratic class participate directly in the exploitation of the working class and their power and incomes are symptoms of this.
Every ruling class in history has had layers of functionaries who do its day-to-day dirty work, and those functionaries have always had gains that are derived from their role in the exploitation of others. This was true in the slave system and in the feudal system as well as in capitalism. However, these functionaries have never existed as a class with their own interests but as a layer or stratum welded to the ruling class. (We can particularly tell this because they have no common interest, only the fact of making the ruling class's interest their own.) You have not proven that your "bureaucratic class" is fundamentally different from previous functionaries, and anything you choose to compose it from is organically so diverse in its actual interests that lumping it together in a single class is almost humorous.

Nothing Human Is Alien

21st June 2010, 13:25

Every ruling class in history has had layers of functionaries who do its day-to-day dirty work, and those functionaries have always had gains that are derived from their role in the exploitation of others.

And those functionaries are exploiters, not workers. They are not classless or benign.

The proletarian revolution aims to get rid of "the exploitation of others," not continue it as "every ruling class in history" has done.

"...the present-day oppressed class the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without at the same time emancipating society as a whole from division into classes and, therefore, from class struggles." - Engels

Blake's Baby

21st June 2010, 15:30

the "relation to the means of production" bit is vulgar Marxism of the sort I expect from Stalinists and Stalinoid Trots...

Funny, the 'co-ordinator class theory' disproves the Soviet Union being state-capitalist, can't get much more 'Stalinist or Stalinoid Trot' than that. Me, I believe in state capitalism and as a result think all the 'managerial class/co-ordinator class' theories are bollocks. The ruling class in the USSR was a class of collective capitalists. Engels was pretty clear about this in the 1880s, and any guff about 'new classes' is just nonsense.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that there are people that claim the heitage of Anarchism that deny that the Soviet Union was capitalist, or have such a shaky analysis of class, but I still find it saddening.

syndicat

21st June 2010, 16:14

Every ruling class in history has had layers of functionaries who do its day-to-day dirty work, and those functionaries have always had gains that are derived from their role in the exploitation of others. This was true in the slave system and in the feudal system as well as in capitalism. However, these functionaries have never existed as a class with their own interests but as a layer or stratum welded to the ruling class. (We can particularly tell this because they have no common interest, only the fact of making the ruling class's interest their own.) You have not proven that your "bureaucratic class" is fundamentally different from previous functionaries, and anything you choose to compose it from is organically so diverse in its actual interests that lumping it together in a single class is almost humorous.

blah blah. but actually the bureaucratic class under late capitalism is different than "overseers" under slavery or the Confucian bureaucracy. It's different because of the way it is rooted in changes in the organization of production. Since the early 1900s, with the rise of the big corporation, and the emergence of "scientific management," certain principles & practices have shaped and continue to shape organizational structures and organization of work and selection of technological change. These principles were first articulated by Frederick Winslow Taylor back in the 1890s and extended by Henry Ford with his "progressive production" system, which extends Taylorism through extensive use of machine pacing, and then in post-World War 2 era was extended by the work of Japanese industrial engineers and since the '80s the extensive application of IT to work reorgaization and intensification of pace of work and monitoring.

These practices require extensive hierarchies for planning and control separate from the workers, and systemic deskilling. So craft skills that would have still existed under precapitalist systems in the heads of workers get taken from them and contributed to the bureaucratic bloat characteristic of late capitalism.

the last donut of the night

21st June 2010, 16:42

chegitz guevara

21st June 2010, 18:26

Ownership is the same thing as ultimate de facto control. Try separating these things - you can't.

Oh yes you can. Just because you own something doesn't mean you can control it, and just because you control something doesn't mean you own it. The state can, and often does, force capitalists to do certain things or refrain from doing certain things all the time. State capitalism is the ultimate expression of this, where the state takes control of industry, but allows the owning class to continue to extract a profit. We saw this historically in WWI and WWII. Nazism imposed state capitalism on the capitalist classes.

graymouser

21st June 2010, 19:21

but actually the bureaucratic class under late capitalism is different than "overseers" under slavery or the Confucian bureaucracy. It's different because of the way it is rooted in changes in the organization of production.
This is my whole point about the bureaucracy being superstructural. As long as your target is in the organization of production you are going to be aiming away from the ownership of the means of production. Once you start locating classes in the organization of production you can start drawing conclusions that are unrelated to the fundamental class conflict.

You still haven't presented a coherent theory of the class interest of your bureaucratic class. I have identified them as a parasitic detached stratum that exists by identifying its interests with those of the ruling class - for the actual managers, the others (who you present as representative of the interests of the bureaucracy) are parts of the periphery of capitalist production and don't cohere as a class in themselves.

syndicat

21st June 2010, 19:29

This is my whole point about the bureaucracy being superstructural. As long as your target is in the organization of production you are going to be aiming away from the ownership of the means of production. Once you start locating classes in the organization of production you can start drawing conclusions that are unrelated to the fundamental class conflict.

well, see, you can't even apply the base/superstructure distinction correctly. the social relations of production are part of the "mode of production" for Marx and hence part of the base. this is what i mean by your "vulgar marxism".

but, hey, as Ellen Meiksin Wood said in one of her recent books, the base/superstructure distinction is nothing but a vague metaphor...and one she believes marxism can do without.

for example the "means of destruction" (military forces and technology) seem as "material" as the means of production.

Proletarian Ultra

21st June 2010, 20:20

but, hey, as Ellen Meiksin Wood said in one of her recent books, the base/superstructure distinction is nothing but a vague metaphor...and one she believes marxism can do without.

I'm not familiar with Woods' work, but complicating the base/superstructure distinction is the central task that postwar French and Italian Marxism set themselves (e.g. Gramsci, Althusser). In general we have to ourselves that ideology is a material thing, that ideological production and reproduction are material tasks.

I lost track of where this fits in with your argument, but carry on!

Robocommie

21st June 2010, 21:01

I'm not familiar with this concept, of removing the distinction between the base and the superstructure. Could someone explain it to me?

robbo203

21st June 2010, 23:35

Oh yes you can. Just because you own something doesn't mean you can control it, and just because you control something doesn't mean you own it. The state can, and often does, force capitalists to do certain things or refrain from doing certain things all the time. State capitalism is the ultimate expression of this, where the state takes control of industry, but allows the owning class to continue to extract a profit. We saw this historically in WWI and WWII. Nazism imposed state capitalism on the capitalist classes.

I chose my words carefully when i said ownership is tantamount to ultimate control. True, there is a hierarchy of levels of control within any business - from CEO down to the new apprentice. A degree of control and constraint is likewise exercised from outside- by competitors, consumer pressure groups, trade unions and of course, the state. The state can, as you say, proscribe certain things and enforce others but this does not constitute ultimate control. Ultimate control is still vested in the owners of the business in question who as owners have the right of disposal over company property and the right to extract a profit. They would hardly be in a position to do that if they did not have ultimate control, would they? Legal responsibility for the business is vested in them precisely becuase they are held to be ultimately responsible for decisions involving the business

Of course the state can can chose to nationalise the business in which case it would become the nominal owner and exert ultimate control as well. But unless and until it does that ultimate control is still vested in the owners of this business. In the Soviet Union a large chunk of economy was indeed nationalised but you wouldnt suggest that in any meaningful sense that the "people" owned the industries. In fact the relationship of workers to nationalised industries is essentially no different at all from its relationship to privately run businesses. In both case they, the workers, are excluded from effective ownership and control.

Unlike the bourgeois-legalistic approach which sets so much store by formal property titles, the marxist approach looks at the de facto situation on the ground. Thus in the Soviet Union there was clearly a tiny class of people who made all the important decisions about industry who exercised ultimate control and who therefore constituted the de facto owning class - the state capitalist ruling class