Marxism and the very rich

[Kenco Smooth]

How does Marxism explain individuals who by definition should be members of the proletariat but make vast amounts of money?

I.e. Athletes who make millions a year yet technically still make it on selling their labour.

Is this a slight issue in the Marxist conception of class or am I missing something big.

[Broletariat]

They (athletes) don't have a relation to the means of production or Capital as I understand it.

[Glenn Beck]

A pretty clear cut and dramatic example of labor aristocracy. They're even unionized.

[Zanthorus]

The proletariat is specifically that class in society which can only make it's livelihood through the selling of labour-power. Athletes who make millions a year are rich enough not to keep selling their labour for a wage.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Most of the big star athletes and big movie stars begin to get their money from things outside their wage-job. So Tom Cruise is a producer, not just an actor which means his class interests might make him side with the owners during an actor or writer's strike. Big athletes are similar because they get money from selling and managing their image, not just wage-sports.

But most actors and athletes are workers even though they make a lot of money, just as small businessmen who make the same wages as most workers are NOT workers by class.

It's popular among conservatives to hate the rich - rich workers that is. So they attack the opulence and elitism of actors and athletes on talk radio and in the papers... yet never go after the people who own those rich actors and athletes like Hollywood bosses and producers and the people who own the sports franchises. Sports bosses get millions of dollars from local governments to build private sports stadiums... then in 10 years they threaten to leave that same city unless taxpayers agree to shell out more.

So in my opinion, high-paid actors and athletes deserve our solidarity as workers. Actors and sports players have to sacrifice a lot and if they make it, then they generally have a very small window of time where they can make money doing these things. Many athletes totally destroy their lives for 10 years of professional sport and so it makes total sense for them to try and get all the wages they can. They have strikes and strong professional unions, and aside from the top celebrity players and actors, they actually are not paid that well considering years of paying dues (for actors) and decades of physical problems (athletes).

[ContrarianLemming]

Big stars and athletes like tom cruise or paris Hilton are in a sense Petit bourgeoisie, they are rich enoguh to be self employed, they do sell themselves, but they decide the price, thats one reason why there petit

[mikelepore]

The millionaire athletes don't have to be mentally assigned to one of the classes. The point of identifying classes isn't to have a category that every person can be put into into. The point is to identify the major relationships that characterize the way a society functions. To identity the worker and the capitalist is to explain the relationships the dominate the major social affairs. Not every person is expected to match these categories.

Biologists went through even worse problems with classification. It drove people crazy that the euglena swims freely like an animal but it has chlorophyll like a plant. The fish that don't have bones and the fish that are warm-blooded have caused similar boundary disputes. New categories have been defined more to stop all the arguing than to receive enlightenment from having the new categories.