Marxist Class Analysis of Priests & Preachers

[The Vegan Marxist]

What classification would priests &/or preachers be under through Marxist class analysis? Would they be classified as working class, petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, bourgeois, lumpenproletariat, etc., what?

[Comrade Gwydion]

I think they would belong to the 'managers'-class. Though, if purely related to means of production, they're 'workingclass'. They do not earn they're keeping from what they own, but they get paid by the institute 'church' to perform their labor (communication, spreading of bourgouise ideology).

However, with Liberationtheologists, tiny independend subsects who are not funded by Rome or Moscow, etc, it get's difficult. Yet I'd think they're "working class", just like Glen Beck is workingclass: they're in wage-slavery, though in a luxorious variant of it.

[Comrade Gwydion]

Can anyone confirm/correct my above post?

[AK]

I don't think priests and preachers are even part of the capital/wage-labour cycle...

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Right. They are clergy, a remnant of the past.

There are situations where priests run religious businesses (e.g. televangelists, McChurches, etc.). In those cases, you're dealing with petty-bourgeois proprietors.

They can also act as appendages of the state in certain cases.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

They do not earn they're keeping from what they own, but they get paid by the institute 'church' to perform their labor (communication, spreading of bourgouise ideology).

Getting paid to do a task doesn't make you a member of the working class on its own.

If it did, police, army generals, CIA agents and managers would all belong to the proletariat.

The working class is defined by (1) a lack of ownership or control of the means of production, (2) a necessity to sell labor-power to capitalists in order to survive, (3) the role of expanding of capital.

[graymouser]

In modern terms they are mostly petty bourgeois, although their real social role is a hangover from feudalism where the church was a major component of the ruling class. This is not in their modern role as justifiers of the current ethos, but literally - the church was a major landowner and extracted its due from peasants just like manorial lords. The Catholic clergy owes more to this period with its hierarchy and the rule against their marrying, which was instituted in order to keep their sons from inheriting the Church's land. Modern Catholicism is like royal families, a huge, rich parasite living on its former glory. Protestant clergy (outside the Episcopal/Anglican Church which is more like the Catholic Church except with married and female priests) is more suited to capitalism, which removed the Church as a major part of the ruling class and sees them akin to doctors and lawyers - basically small professionals.