Absolute beginner questions

[Cijji Dubz]

I am very new to political theory and almost completely new to Socialism/Communism/Anarchism, so I expect that I'll embarrass myself pretty thoroughly via my ignorance, limited thinking, and assumptions. I beg your indulgence.

All of these topics, and even just wandering about here at RevLeft can be a bit overwhelming and my head is swimming a bit as I try to acclimate.

I've read a little bit on Socialism and am currently reading The Communist Manifesto. I don't often get called dense, but I have to admit that I'm not fully "getting" Marx's writing and that's frustrating me because I really want to understand it.

I wonder whether the current information-driven economy has affected Marx's classes at all. It seems to me that there are more classes than simply the bourgeoisie and proletariat today, but that may be because of my faulty understanding of the classes. To help me understand, perhaps some folks here could tell me into which class each of the following would fall:
1. Perpetually unemployed welfare recipient
2. Minimum wage worker
3. Sanitation worker
4. Construction worker
5. Dental office receptionist
6. Paralegal
7. Database manager or computer programmer
8. Attorney
9. CEO of large corporation
10. John F. Kerry

I suppose I may be mixing occupation and income to come up with my own class divisions, but that's part of what I'm trying to figure out. Are the proletariat conceived of by Marx purely as manual laborers or any occupation?

Thanks in advance for your patience.

[Broletariat]

I am very new to political theory and almost completely new to Socialism/Communism/Anarchism, so I expect that I'll embarrass myself pretty thoroughly via my ignorance, limited thinking, and assumptions. I beg your indulgence.

All of these topics, and even just wandering about here at RevLeft can be a bit overwhelming and my head is swimming a bit as I try to acclimate.

I've read a little bit on Socialism and am currently reading The Communist Manifesto. I don't often get called dense, but I have to admit that I'm not fully "getting" Marx's writing and that's frustrating me because I really want to understand it.

I wonder whether the current information-driven economy has affected Marx's classes at all. It seems to me that there are more classes than simply the bourgeoisie and proletariat today, but that may be because of my faulty understanding of the classes. To help me understand, perhaps some folks here could tell me into which class each of the following would fall:
1. Perpetually unemployed welfare recipient
2. Minimum wage worker
3. Sanitation worker
4. Construction worker
5. Dental office receptionist
6. Paralegal
7. Database manager or computer programmer
8. Attorney
9. CEO of large corporation
10. John F. Kerry

I suppose I may be mixing occupation and income to come up with my own class divisions, but that's part of what I'm trying to figure out. Are the proletariat conceived of by Marx purely as manual laborers or any occupation?

Thanks in advance for your patience.
1. Lumpenproletariat
2. Proletariat
3. Proletariat
4. Proletariat
5. Prole
6. I'm not too sure what a paralegal does, sounds like petit-bourgeoisie
7. Prole
8. petit-bourgeoisie
9. Bourgeoisie
10. I don't know much about the fella in particular but I'm just going to say Bourgeoisie and let someone else correct me.

Proletariat is just the class of society that is dependent upon their wage for their livliehood. Whether that be a monthly or an hourly wage matters not.

[Cijji Dubz]

1. Lumpenproletariat
2. Proletariat
3. Proletariat
4. Proletariat
5. Prole
6. I'm not too sure what a paralegal does, sounds like petit-bourgeoisie
7. Prole
8. petit-bourgeoisie
9. Bourgeoisie
10. I don't know much about the fella in particular but I'm just going to say Bourgeoisie and let someone else correct me.

Proletariat is just the class of society that is dependent upon their wage for their livliehood. Whether that be a monthly or an hourly wage matters not.
Thanks so much for your reply, Broletariat. It's helpful.
I guess some of my confusion comes from the differences I see between a counterperson at McDonald's and a C++ programmer. Though both rely on someone else for their wages, there would seem to be a world of difference between their living circumstances and therefore their political concerns and their relative degrees of affluence and "freedom."

P.S. - Dumb question, but is there a difference between "Prole" and "Proletariat"? Or is Prole just an abbreviation of Proletariat? Sorry.

[Cowboy Killer]

It is true that we all have different needs and wants. But It is also true that we all have UNIVERSAL needs and wants food,shelter,water,protection,etc...
So that being said does it make sense to work together to make sure we have those things or to constantly compete for those things?
If you agree with the former you are on the left and if you agree with the latter you are on the right. It becomes more complex when you start to ask yourself, "what is the best way to bring about revolutionary changes (or to keep thing the same if you're on the right)."

[Apoi_Viitor]

1. Perpetually unemployed welfare recipient
2. Minimum wage worker
3. Sanitation worker
4. Construction worker
5. Dental office receptionist
6. Paralegal
7. Database manager or computer programmer
8. Attorney
9. CEO of large corporation
10. John F. Kerry

1.Lumpen-proletariat
2.Proletariat
3.Proletariat
4.Proletariat
5.Proletariat/Petite-Bourgeios
6.Petite-Bourgeios
7.Petite-Bourgeios
8.Petite-Bourgeios
9.Bourgeios
10.Bourgeios

Both occupation and income are important in determining one's social class. For example, the police (even though it is mostly made up of working class citizens) would be regarded as a Bourgeios position, due to the fact they are directly engaging in an occupation based on the preservation of Bourgeios society.

Also, here's a cheap, over-simplifying means to determining one's social class.

Manual Labor = Proletariat
Low-Mid Level Managerial Work = Petite-Bourgeios
High Level Managerial Work = Bourgeios

[Die Rote Fahne]

Proletariat - Working class. Labour is exploited for profit by the bourgeoisie. Rely entirely on the sale of their labour-power for survival.

Lumpenproletariat - the "refuse of all classes", including "swindlers, confidence tricksters, brothel-keepers, rag-and-bone merchants, beggars, and other flotsam of society". Rely entirely on the sale of their labour-power for survival.

Petit-bourgeoisie - shopkeepers and others in managerial positions. They may buy the labour power of others, however in contrast to the bourgeoisie, they typically work alongside their own employees; and although they generally own their own businesses, they do not own a controlling share of the means of production - Wal-Mart has a manager. That manager is petit-bourgeois. Whilst the CEO would be bourgeois as they own the building and everything in it.

Bourgeoisie - Exploiting class. Owner of the means of production in capitalist society. Accumulating capital through the hiring of wage labour.

[Trigonometry]

Difference in proletariat and bourgeosie is that the proletariat does not own capital ie. means of generating income.

E.g. Ben owns a huge self sufficient farm with farm hands, and its wealth output is sufficient for Ben to live without working, Ben is a part of the bourgeoisie
Daniel is an average white collar worker at an IT firm taking calls from the customer service, he needs to work 8-5 to pay his rent, Daniel is a part of the proletariat

[Niccolò Rossi]

I expect that I'll embarrass myself pretty thoroughly via my ignorance, limited thinking, and assumptions.

Don't worry, you won't. The only dumb question is the one you're too embarrassed don't ask.


I wonder whether the current information-driven economy has affected Marx's classes at all. It seems to me that there are more classes than simply the bourgeoisie and proletariat today, but that may be because of my faulty understanding of the classes. To help me understand, perhaps some folks here could tell me into which class each of the following would fall:
1. Perpetually unemployed welfare recipient
2. Minimum wage worker
3. Sanitation worker
4. Construction worker
5. Dental office receptionist
6. Paralegal
7. Database manager or computer programmer
8. Attorney
9. CEO of large corporation
10. John F. Kerry

I suppose I may be mixing occupation and income to come up with my own class divisions, but that's part of what I'm trying to figure out. Are the proletariat conceived of by Marx purely as manual laborers or any occupation?The problem here is not Marxism itself but the way in which the question is posed.

Marxism is not an acedemic sociological theory, it is a weapon. Marxist class analysis does not have as it's purpose the categorisation of individuals.

Marxism class analysis is a weapon in that it allows us to understand the motion of society in order to change it.

I'm not very eloquent when it comes to explaining things in writing. Amadeo Bordiga, a famous Italian left communist, puts it best in his 1921 Party and Class:


"What in fact is a social class according to our critical method? Can we possibly recognise it by the means of a purely objective external acknowledgement of the common economic and social conditions of a great number of individuals, and of their analogous positions in relationship to the productive process? That would not be enough. Our method does not amount to a mere description of the social structure as it exists at a given moment, nor does it merely draw an abstract line dividing all the individuals composing society into two groups, as is done in the scholastic classifications of the naturalists. The Marxist critique sees human society in its movement, in its development in time; it utilises a fundamentally historical and dialectical criterion, that is to say, it studies the connection of events in their reciprocal interaction. Instead of taking a snapshot of society at a given moment (like the old metaphysical method) and then studying it in order to distinguish the different categories into which the individuals composing it must be classified, the dialectical method sees history as a film unrolling its successive scenes; the class must be looked for and distinguished in the striking features of this movement. In using the first method we would be the target of a thousand objections from pure statisticians and demographers (short-sighted people if there ever were) who would re-examine our divisions and remark that there are not two classes, nor even three or four, but that there can be ten, a hundred or even a thousand classes separated by successive gradations and indefinable transition zones. With the second method, though, we make use of quite different criteria in order to distinguish that protagonist of historical tragedy, the class, and in order to define its characteristics, its actions and its objectives, which become concretised into obviously uniform features among a multitude of changing facts; meanwhile the poor photographer of statistics only records these as a cold series of lifeless data. Therefore, in order to state that a class exists and acts at a given moment in history, it will not be enough to know, for instance, how many merchants there were in Paris under Louis XIV, or the number of English landlords in the Eighteenth Century, or the number of workers in the Belgian manufacturing industry at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Instead, we will have to submit an entire historical period to our logical investigations; we will have to make out a social, and therefore political, movement which searches for its way through the ups and downs, the errors and successes, all the while obviously adhering to the set of interests of a strata of people who have been placed in a particular situation by the mode of production and by its developments."

Hope it helps!

Nic.

[La Peur Rouge]

I liked Engel's Principles of Communism better than the Manifesto if you're looking for the basics of socialism/communism. I've heard that a lot of people consider Engels easier to read than Marx.

There's a stickied thread here in Learning on Principles of Communism if you haven't read it yet called "Communist Theory FAQ".



P.S. - Dumb question, but is there a difference between "Prole" and "Proletariat"? Or is Prole just an abbreviation of Proletariat? Sorry.

Yes, Prole = Proletariat

[ContrarianLemming]

the term "prole" is a reference to the novel by George Orweel "1984" in which the proletariet are called proles, we've kept it since.

The communist manifesto isn't the best introduction, you may be surprised to know that wikipedias articles on marxism and anarchism are prety decent.

I cannot stress how useful the anarchist FAQ is, it's just a fantastic online free book, containing an answer to basically every question you have about anarchism.

http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnAnarchistFAQ

[#FF0000]

Going on what ContrarianLemming said, a good primer for Marxism is "The Pinciples Of Marxism" by Frederick Engels.

[#FF0000]

1.Lumpen-proletariat

A "perpetual welfare-recipient" is not "lumpen".

People who are unemployed are not lumpen.

[ContrarianLemming]

A "perpetual welfare-recipient" is not "lumpen".

People who are unemployed are not lumpen.

what are they?

[Niccolò Rossi]

what are they?

Wrong question

Nic.

[syndicat]

yes, there are more classes.


1. Perpetually unemployed welfare recipient

A very large part of the working class are unemployed during any given period of a few years. Usually people getting welfare would work if a job were available. Hence they are part of Marx's "reserve army" -- people who can potentially be taken on as employees. Hence working class. Not all members of the working class are working.



2. Minimum wage worker

Working class. But the working class is divided into various subgroups, often due to things like sex and race discrimination, differences in skills and education, and so on. These divisions affect things like wage rates.



3. Sanitation worker
4. Construction worker
5. Dental office receptionist

All working class. Many construction workers have certain craft skills and may be union members. these things can enable them to have higher wages. But construction is also highly susceptible to ups and downs of business cycle, and due to the housing crash many are now unemployed.



6. Paralegal
7. Database manager or computer programmer

Like other lower level professionals I would place these in the skilled section of the working class, tho some people may say "lower middle class" due to things like college education. I say working class because they don't have any significant power over other workers typically and typically don't participate in management of the firm or control of other workers.



8. Attorney

I'd say bureaucratic class, along with other high-end professionals who work closely with management, that is, a similar class to industrial engineers, judges, middle managers, medical specialists, etc. Their position and prospects isn't based primarily on capital ownership but on their expertise and the decision-making authority they have in some organization, such as a corporation, the state, whether they are on staff or work as consultants. Attorneys and industrial engineers work either on staff or as consultants.

People might say doctors or lawyers with their own practice are "petit bourgeois" but the ownership value of their "firm" is not independent of the skills and connections of the members which is their real class basis. The petit bourgeoisie would be people who have small capital assets, such as they own a corner store or a bar.


9. CEO of large corporation
10. John F. Kerry
Both are in the plutocracy or capitalist elite (haute bourgeoisie in 19th century terminology). CEOs of big corporations typically own stakes in companies, are given huge salaries which they can invest, etc. Kerry is married to a wealthy heiress. Class isn't based only on your current job but also on the family you are a part of.

[ellipsis]

I wonder whether the current information-driven economy has affected Marx's classes at all. It seems to me that there are more classes than simply the bourgeoisie and proletariat today, but that may be because of my faulty understanding of the classes.
I suppose I may be mixing occupation and income to come up with my own class divisions, but that's part of what I'm trying to figure out. Are the proletariat conceived of by Marx purely as manual laborers or any occupation?

Information is still a commodity, economies based on them are still capitalist. The understanding of "class" among marxists has evolved quite a bit since marx, so you aren't the only person to find it limiting.
Any occupation can be prole(short of proletariat) at any wage as what defines the prole is his or her relation to the means of production, that is that they do not own any besides their own labor power which they sell to the bourgeoisie, those who control/own the means of production. Even if I am making x thousands dollars doing a high paying, specialized job like oil rig worker or x ray technician, you are still selling your labor power.




Also, here's a cheap, over-simplifying means to determining one's social class.

Manual Labor = Proletariat
Low-Mid Level Managerial Work = Petite-Bourgeios
High Level Managerial Work = Bourgeios

a better over simplification

sell labor=prole
own some means and buy labor=petite bourgeois
controls sigificant means of production, buys labor=bourgeois

[Manic Impressive]

A "perpetual welfare-recipient" is not "lumpen".

People who are unemployed are not lumpen.

I'm glad someone said it.
To those who think the long term unemployed are lumpen I'd like to hear your justification for that statement. One of the characteristics of the lumpen-proletariat is that many of them will take the side of the bourgeois in times of political unrest. For example the Mafia being used to disrupt unions, high end drug dealers wouldn't support the legalization of drugs as this would end their obscene profits similarly pimps don't want regulated prostitution as this would put an end to their exploitation. These are the lumpen-proletariat and this is why they are potentially an enemy of the proletariat, however the unemployed are potentially the most revolutionary of the working class as they have the perception of the least to lose.

[(A)(_|]

Hmm, I've never really grasped what social class software programmers and the like would be put under. Wouldn't they be considered proletarians as they do not gain the full profits of what they produce in labor, and are therefore exploited? (For those not self-employed of course)

[ContrarianLemming]

I did this just now, I thought it was useful, possibly use it in future.
Should I add peasants?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=7861&stc=1&d=1286883250http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/472/classstructure.png (http://img89.imageshack.us/i/classstructure.png/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

Perhaps make a thread for this?
http://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/12-040139L/6493/png/10/2010/img5/glowfotohttp://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/12-040139L/6493/png/10/2010/img5/glowfoto

[Ovi]

How about freelancers?

[ContrarianLemming]

I did this just now, I thought it was useful, possibly use it in future.
Should I add peasants?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=7861&stc=1&d=1286883250

Perhaps make a thread for this?
http://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/12-040139L/6493/png/10/2010/img5/glowfotohttp://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/12-040139L/6493/png/10/2010/img5/glowfoto

http://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/12-082541L/2287/png/10/2010/img4/glowfoto

that

[Jimmie Higgins]

I guess some of my confusion comes from the differences I see between a counterperson at McDonald's and a C++ programmer. Though both rely on someone else for their wages, there would seem to be a world of difference between their living circumstances and therefore their political concerns and their relative degrees of affluence and "freedom."While things like income level and job security no doubt impact the way people perceive themselves (and why so many workers in the US call themselves "middle class") and many of their attitudes, it still does not change the basic nature of their relations to production. I think we are seeing now that many occupations where people might have thought they were "above" many of the pressures faced by most workers, are actually being put under attack and having their wages lowered and working conditions made worse. My favorite example is people who got tech jobs in the mid-1990s in California - many people were getting paid 6 figures for jobs that today might be an unpaid internship because the conditions that had been favorable for this skilled job have changed (more people with that skill along with changes in the structure of that industry).

I think the thing to remember re: class is that what Marx describes is always in broad strokes... he identifies the workers and the owners as the two main opposed groups in society, but there is a lot of gray area and a lot of people who don't fit neatly into a category. The important thing is that these are the big forces acting on society... mom and pop stores or private contractors or lawyers don't have the inherent social weight or impact of either labor or the bosses.

[Diello]

I liked Engel's Principles of Communism better than the Manifesto if you're looking for the basics of socialism/communism. I've heard that a lot of people consider Engels easier to read than Marx.

Say, that reminds me-- does anyone know where I can purchase Principles of Communism in pamphlet form? If not, I suppose I'll have to pamphletize it myself.

[Meridian]

Words like "class traitor" really irks me. Not everyone in the military is a "class traitor", for example. And the same is actually true of the police. I understand there is a special meaning to the term, but using words like "traitor" seems kind of a bad idea.

I agree with the clear division between f.ex. capitalist and working class, as there the difference already lies in the words.

[ContrarianLemming]

Words like "class traitor" really irks me. Not everyone in the military is a "class traitor", for example. And the same is actually true of the police. I understand there is a special meaning to the term, but using words like "traitor" seems kind of a bad idea.

I agree with the clear division between f.ex. capitalist and working class, as there the difference already lies in the words.

I assume you're talking about my graph?

anyhoo i know it sounds rather perjoritive but that is exactly what they are: traitors, they have placed themselves directly as opponants to change, the police and military always have been and always will be on the frontline fighting against socialism, they serve the state and the capitalist class in a way which works directly counter to our goals, ergo, traitors, collaborators.

[GPDP]

I assume you're talking about my graph?

anyhoo i know it sounds rather perjoritive but that is exactly what they are: traitors, they have placed themselves directly as opponants to change, the police and military always have been and always will be on the frontline fighting against socialism, they serve the state and the capitalist class in a way which works directly counter to our goals, ergo, traitors, collaborators.

The military is debatable (think the Russian Revolution, where much of the Tsarist military joined the side of the revolutionaries, or the Vietnam War where soldiers would sometimes defect or even frag their own commanders), but I agree about the police.

[ContrarianLemming]

The military is debatable (think the Russian Revolution, where much of the Tsarist military joined the side of the revolutionaries, or the Vietnam War where soldiers would sometimes defect or even frag their own commanders), but I agree about the police.

The moment the soliders joined the revolutionaries they ceased being soldiers and became revolutionaries.
It only applies to capitalist serving soldiers, which basically means almost every solider.

[Thirsty Crow]

6. (programmer) Petite-Bourgeios Sorry broadcasting, but this is bull. Such mechanic application of concepts of manual and mental labour are detrimental as hell itself. And it seems to me that you do derive the class position of this profession by mechanically applying the before mentioned distinction.
Instead, you should ask yourself: what is the relationship of a specific programmer to his/her means of production. And it is not necessary that the programmer de facto owns the means of production.


Both occupation and income are important in determining one's social class. For example, the police (even though it is mostly made up of working class citizens) would be regarded as a Bourgeios position, due to the fact they are directly engaging in an occupation based on the preservation of Bourgeios society.I don't know where you come from, but I assure you that there are nation-states that are not so generous to their police force. One of these states is the state I will give money to, due to taxes (however, there is sharp internal stratification, in relation to income, in the Croatian police).
I don't think your generalization is valid.
Furthermore, the police couldn't belong to the bourgeois class since there are no structural necessities for them owning capital.


Also, here's a cheap, over-simplifying means to determining one's social class.


Manual Labor = Proletariat
Low-Mid Level Managerial Work = Petite-Bourgeios
High Level Managerial Work = Bourgeios
You're right, this is a cheap, over-simplifying manner of determining people's social class. As such, it is practically useless.

[Cijji Dubz]

I'd like to thank everyone who replied to this thread so far; it's been extremely helpful. Thanks also to everyone for not flaming me or talking down to me - I've seen some forums where that was pretty common.

Also:
I've seen at least one thread on this board discussing how to reach the masses with the revolutionary message. I'd like to emphasize, as a relatively intelligent and non-sheltered layperson, just how mind-blowing, paradigm-shaking, and very foreign these concepts are to me. (I guess you could call them revolutionary... ahem.)
I say this because it may be helpful for some folks to hear my perspective. Generalizing from my own perspective, it seems like it must be tremendously difficult to get such a message out and get it heard and understood.

I'm starting to understand terminology, but I'm just starting to scrape the surface of the content. Especially appreciated are all the recommendations of additional reading materials.

[Amphictyonis]

A good question you could ask is how would socialism manifest in the US seeing it doesn't have an industrial work force but a service sector economy. Did Marx see the advanced capitalist nations exporting manufacturing jobs (jobs which hold the most potential power)? Are there any 'means of production' to take over in America and the west in general?

Socialism, as Marx said, could only manifest in advanced capitalist nations but if the advanced capitalist nations have no industrial means of production.......?(I'll answer this if you want ;) )

[Apoi_Viitor]

Sorry broadcasting, but this is bull. Such mechanic application of concepts of manual and mental labour are detrimental as hell itself. And it seems to me that you do derive the class position of this profession by mechanically applying the before mentioned distinction.
Instead, you should ask yourself: what is the relationship of a specific programmer to his/her means of production. And it is not necessary that the programmer de facto owns the means of production.

The problem I have with using Marxist terminology, is I don't understand how it relates to the tertiary industry. Despite the similarities in their relationship with the modes of production, I think there is a difference between wage laborers whose work involves the creation of material goods, and those whose work consists of 'service' or 'informative' labor. I guess my grouping of 'programmers' into the petite-bourgeios class was incorrect, but I'm not sure if Marx's class analysis is relevant to modernized economies, of which the tertiary sector is the prominent industry.


I don't know where you come from, but I assure you that there are nation-states that are not so generous to their police force. One of these states is the state I will give money to, due to taxes (however, there is sharp internal stratification, in relation to income, in the Croatian police).
I don't think your generalization is valid.
Furthermore, the police couldn't belong to the bourgeois class since there are no structural necessities for them owning capital.

Leon Trotsky - In case of actual danger, the social democracy banks not on the "Iron Front" but on the Prussian police. It is reckoning without its host! The fact that the police was originally recruited in large numbers from among social-democratic workers is absolutely meaningless. Consciousness is determined by environment even in this instance. The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker. Of late years, these policemen have had to do much more fighting with revolutionary workers than with Nazi students. Such training does not fail to leave its effects. And above all: every policeman knows that though governments may change, the police remains.

[ellipsis]

How about freelancers?

As a freelance anything, you sell your labor in writing code or copy or what have you, you do not own any newspapers or software publishing apparatus etc. Somebody is paying for you to add value and transform a commodity into a new commodity. (an alpha is worth much less than a beta but a free lance programmer helping to get it to beta adds more value to the code than he receives in wages.

[#FF0000]

Keep in mind that class, like race and gender, are social constructs. People don't always fit neatly into one or the other when it comes to specifics like lumpenproletariat, petit-bourgeois.

[Manic Impressive]

anyone else think that a free lance computer programmer could be a modern equivalent of an artisan?

just a thought I may be completely wrong :lol:

[syndicat]

I think the thing to remember re: class is that what Marx describes is always in broad strokes... he identifies the workers and the owners as the two main opposed groups in society, but there is a lot of gray area and a lot of people who don't fit neatly into a category. The important thing is that these are the big forces acting on society... mom and pop stores or private contractors or lawyers don't have the inherent social weight or impact of either labor or the bosses.

but a lawyer does have more "social weight" than a worker in isolation. it is only when there is the growth of collective action and self-organization by workers that they are able to build a social power that can potentially affect the society as a whole...and only in periods of large scale strikes and other major opposition.

[stella2010]

It is true that we all have different needs and wants. But It is also true that we all have UNIVERSAL needs and wants food,shelter,water,protection,etc...
So that being said does it make sense to work together to make sure we have those things or to constantly compete for those things?
If you agree with the former you are on the left and if you agree with the latter you are on the right. It becomes more complex when you start to ask yourself, "what is the best way to bring about revolutionary changes (or to keep thing the same if you're on the right)."

Its a good thing you ask.
Today in a global world it makes alot of sense to develop local community approach. Competition only leads to DEATH.
I have seen this death.
Equality and communal collectivization CAN compete with Globalisation and is the only answer.
A TRUE capitalist will talk this approach down and twist is into competition.
Its their way.
We are their competition. They like leftist for this reason.
Agreeing with them can help.

[Diello]

I'd like to emphasize, as a relatively intelligent and non-sheltered layperson, just how mind-blowing, paradigm-shaking, and very foreign these concepts are to me. (I guess you could call them revolutionary... ahem.)

I often feel the same way (as someone who is in a similar position in these terms).

The biggest relevance all this has to me, at this moment in my life, is that it completely reframes the worries about human society that have plagued me for years. Previously, the capitalist model of society had seemed to me to be society's inevitable form, with the powerful savaging the weak in one form or another. (My impression of communism came almost entirely from some rather mangled descriptions I received in high school. I live in semirural Oklahoma; there aren't a lot of left-wingers around here, to say the least.) The notion that there might be a greater-than-infinitesimal chance of fundamentally changing the basis of society for the better is one that has altered my outlook on humanity.

(My introduction to these ideas was kicked off by an anarchist friend of mine who lent me a copy of Live Working or Die Fighting. So I suppose handing out literature really can convert people.)

[Zanthorus]

think the Russian Revolution, where much of the Tsarist military joined the side of the revolutionaries

The Russian army was conscripted during the first world war, which is how revolutionary sentiments managed to spread through them in the first place.

[ZeroNowhere]

The moment the soliders joined the revolutionaries they ceased being soldiers and became revolutionaries.Which is to say nothing other than that you use the word 'soldier' in an idiosyncratic manner.


The problem I have with using Marxist terminology, is I don't understand how it relates to the tertiary industry. Despite the similarities in their relationship with the modes of production, I think there is a difference between wage laborers whose work involves the creation of material goods, and those whose work consists of 'service' or 'informative' labor.Luckily for you, that same anachronism Marx wrote a fair bit about the productive-unproductive labour divide under capitalism. As is appropriate to the present mode of production, past labour continues to prevail over living labour.

[Zanthorus]

In response to the whole discussions of class and what defines a class, I can't claim any great knowledge of sociology, apart from Marxism I guess, although it's debatable wether Marxism is actually a sociological theory. But the way Marx uses these terms varies quite a lot, and it seems highly futile to construct a one-size fits all definition of 'class' which can automatically classify a particular individual as proletarian, bourgeois or lumpen.

One of the key aspects of Marx's analysis seems to be struggle. Groups constitutes classes insofar as they struggle against other groups. In the German Ideology he talks about how the bourgeoisie only forms a class insofar as it carries out a struggle against other classes, and how on all other occasions they stand opposed to one another. In the Communist Manifesto he talks about one of the three key aims of the workers' movement as being the formation of the proletariat into a class, implying that there are circumstances under which the proletariat does not, in fact, constitute a class. Earlier in the Manifesto he had referred to the proletariat organising itself as a class and consequently as a political party, indicating that his idea of the proletariat as a class is bound up with it's political organisation and political struggle with other classes. In a letter to Kugelmann he talks about the program of the First International as aiding the constitution of the workers into a class. In a letter to Liebknecht he states that "the working class is revolutionary or it is nothing." There is definitely a sense in which, for Marx, the idea of 'class struggle' is something of a tautology, as the concept of class implies struggle against other classes.

On the other hand, the idea of relationship to the means of production and the distribution of surplus-value is also a fundamental point. In the Manifesto Marx talks about society becoming divided more and more into two classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, with the former defined by it's ownership of the means of social production, and the latter defined by it's seperation from the means of production and the consequent compulsion to perform wage-labour for a living. In Capital Volume 3, in the chapter where he is beggining to define class, he starts off by noting the three main classes which he percieves to exist in modern society: wage-labourers, capitalists and land-owners. In various other places he speaks of the petit-bourgeoisie or 'small masters', lumenproletariat, peasantry and landlords. He also talks about divisions between the fundamental classes. Capitalists are divided up into industrial capitalists and finance capitalists, labourers are divided up into productive labourers and un-productive labourers. In the Manifesto he speaks in terms which seem to echo the pareconist, anarchist and council communist theory of a beuracratic class which regulates the working class on behalf of the capitalists when he speaks of "masses of labourers, crowded into the factory... organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker".

One key might be, as The Best Mod notes, that people don't always fit into strict class categories. In the unfinished discussion of class in Capital Volume 3 he refers to middle and intermediate strata and various groups which blur the lines of demarcation away from the "pure form" of the stratification of classes. This is tied up with Marx's method in Capital, which goes through varying levels of abstraction. To begin with we start with the most basic unit of capitalist society - the commodity. Marx then precedes to analyse this commodity and bring out the immediate consequences of it's existence. This analysis is then continually built up and refined to get us closer and closer to the actual historical reality of capitalism. At it's pure level, the production and reproduction of capital necessitates two clearly opposed classes, the capitalists and wage-labourers. However outside influences on capitalism, such as hangovers from previous epochs the necessity of adapting to various concrete conditions can force the existence of various classes outside this basic schema.

But yeah, I think it is correct to say that people cannot simply be grouped into classes according to a precise sociological schema. When we talk about classes, we talk about abstractions from reality which nonetheless attempt to tell us something fundamental about reality.

[ellipsis]

LOL capital vol. 3 is probably the least widely read peace of marx you could have referred to.

[Vendetta]

1. Perpetually unemployed welfare recipient
2. Minimum wage worker
3. Sanitation worker
4. Construction worker
5. Dental office receptionist

all are working class. a difference in job description does not mean a difference in how you are looked down upon

sorry, extremely drunk. its a long night

[Armchair War Criminal]

LOL capital vol. 3 is probably the least widely read peace of marx you could have referred to.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say Scorpion and Felix is a bit less prolific.

[ellipsis]

OK but vol. 3 is up there.

[ContrarianLemming]

don't read capital, read a modern book like "Marxism: a graphic guide" for your own good, these oldie books are just to hard on the brain, terribly dry, same goes for all the classics, just read modern versions, there easier to read and more relevant.

[Armchair War Criminal]

Capital is great and still extremely relevant, but don't attempt it - or at least, don't attempt the first couple chapters - without a tour guide. David Harvey has a excellent series of free lectures on his website.