Who is the working class.

[pierrotlefou]

This question is mostly geared towards americans but is a general question anyone can answer: Who is the working class in post modern late capitalist america? It doesn't seem to be so easy as proletariat and bourgeoisie here. The traditional lines are so blurred now.

[Thirsty Crow]

This question is mostly geared towards americans but is a general question anyone can answer: Who is the working class in post modern late capitalist america? It doesn't seem to be so easy as proletariat and bourgeoisie here. The traditional lines are so blurred now.
Although it may be unfair...but your approach is begging an answer in the form of another set of question:

1) what is "post-modern" about the latest specific means of capital accumulation? What is "post-modern" anyway?

2) why do you think that the lines are blurred? And who is responsible for blurring them? How exactly did the blurring occur? In whose interest?

[Conscript]

The working class in any bourgeois economy is the class of individuals who derive their living either entirely or mostly (as anyone can buy or sell stock for a little extra income) from the sale of their labour power. The amount of gold that makes up their chains makes no difference as far as class is concerned. Consciousness is a different story.

[Meridian]

Why is this question directed towards US citizens ("americans") specifically? There are several other places that can be considered as 'developed'.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

This is just a wild guess, but the O.P. may be one of those persons who think the working class is/was union-dominated auto-making and factory jobs. That may be why he is confused as to who the working class is...

In this current moment, more and more people are becoming part of the service-sector rather than the manufacturing-sector. Grocers, cooks, baristas, assembly-line workers, etc. they're all working-class.

[Sixiang]

This question is mostly geared towards americans but is a general question anyone can answer: Who is the working class in post modern late capitalist america? It doesn't seem to be so easy as proletariat and bourgeoisie here. The traditional lines are so blurred now.
Anyone who must sell their labor power in order to receive a wage to survive is a proletarian. Any proletarian that then does become a wage-slave is a worker.

Here's Engels' definition. I find it correct:


The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labour power and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death,whose sole existence depends on the demand for labour...

And here's Marx:


In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed – a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce.

[Widerstand]

http://libcom.org/library/multitude-or-working-class-antonio-negri
http://www.prole.info/texts/automarx.html

Marx - Grundrisse
Negri - Marx Beyond Marx
Virno - A Grammar of the Multitude

"Social Worker"
"Diffused Factory"
"Biopolitics" (Foucault/Post-Structuralism)
"General intellect"
"Multitude"

etc.

ps: Exuse that this is such a shitty reply.
pps: I really do agree it seems OP is just confused about the concept of working class. Anyone who sells labor and doesn't own means of production is proletarian, pretty much.

[syndicat]

the problem with that ancient quote from Engels is that, by that standard, about 92 percent of the population of the USA would be "working class."

it's true that the working class condition does include being forced to seek out jobs from employers due to the fact you have no independent source of a livelihood, since the capitalist class has a relative monopoly over the means of production, and the majority are excluded from control over the means of production. this is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

exploitation of labor presupposes domination. and monopolizing the ownership of the means of production is not the only way a group can dominate the working class in social production. you also have a relative concentration of decision-making authority and key forms of expertise into a class that includes the bosses that workers have to deal with day to day. I'm talking about middle managers, corporate lawyers, finance officers and top accountants, industrial engineers who design jobs and work flows, judges, military officers. so the bureaucratic class in both the private and public sectors are also a class to which workers are subordinate and receive higher incomes than workers as a premium, and enjoy power over them, and thus participate in the exploitation of labor.

the group whose class situation seems to be a matter of debate on the left are the lower-level professionals, such as programmers, librarians, teachers, and the like. I tend to put them in the skilled section of the working class, others put them in the "middle class". Thus Marxist Michael Zweig, in "The Working Class Majority" puts lower level professionals in the "middle class." This group makes up about 15 percent of the population and are sort at the boundary between the bureaucratic/managerial class and the core of the working class. According to Zweig, the working class is about six-tenths of the population, excluding lower level professionals. if we include lower level professionals, the working class is about 3/4 of the population.

This includes the huge mass of people who work relatively less skilled jobs in services, retail, and workers in public utilities, transportation, construction, mining and manufacturing. About a fourth of the workforce (in USA) works in public utilties, construction, mining, transportation and manufacturing. But people who work in hospitals, schools, health clinics, stores are also part of the working class.

I tend to think of class as a structure of domination and exploitation, so that's how I draw the line. Another way to look at it is to see where conflict arises. Who engage in organizing, strikes, resistance to management? Class conflict makes the class line visible.

[pierrotlefou]

Why is this question directed towards US citizens ("americans") specifically? There are several other places that can be considered as 'developed'.
Because I live in america and what is going on in other places is not the same thing as what is going on in america. it has nothing to do with being a developed nation.




http://libcom.org/library/multitude-or-working-class-antonio-negri
http://www.prole.info/texts/automarx.html

Marx - Grundrisse
Negri - Marx Beyond Marx
Virno - A Grammar of the Multitude

"Social Worker"
"Diffused Factory"
"Biopolitics" (Foucault/Post-Structuralism)
"General intellect"
"Multitude"

etc.

ps: Exuse that this is such a shitty reply.
pps: I really do agree it seems OP is just confused about the concept of working class. Anyone who sells labor and doesn't own means of production is proletarian, pretty much.
Thanks for the links! Also, I was confused about the question I asked. That's why I asked it :).