College students are not working class

[twenty percent tip]

Most members of socialist organizations in America is college students. Socialist organizations recruit on campuses. Its a yearly ritual. Yet only 29 percent of the population of America has a diploma. The working class is about 75 percent of the population according to labor statistics. We can assume that nearly all capitalists and petit-bourgeois graduated college. It's expected of them and even required for alot of their positions. So we can see that at most about 4 percent of college graduates are working class. And those are the most well off minority. How did the labor movement end up in this predicament and how can we get out of it?

[Robespierre Richard]

You sure bout those numbers, hon?

And yeah most people in college are not of working class background, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any people who would be interested in our cause among them. The one thing about them is that they are young and see everything ahead of them, so it generally makes sense to recruit them because of the idealism that comes with that.

[Tablo]

Most student in university are working class. You guys have no clue what you're talking about. A college degree today is to employers what a diploma was years ago.

[NGNM85]

I'm working class, and I'm a college student.

[Robespierre Richard]

I don't think office work is working class. Middle class has a very definite definition in this country, it's having generational wealth. The working class doesn't have generational wealth. So sure there may be people on a million loans and grants who are from a poor family who may not even have generational wealth because they're so deep in debt and the housing market collapsed, but they usually still try to position themselves as middle class. If they don't I guess they are working class

[ChampionDishWasher]

Where did you get those stats?

[HEAD ICE]

Hmm. I come from a working class background and I go to college. So do most of the people I know. I don't think students wouldn't be in so much debt if they weren't. Many students also work as well.

The problem I think is more with the university than the backgrounds of the students that compose them. Despite claims by right wingers and even some on the left I see absolutely zero evidence that the university is at all "radicalizing", in fact the opposite. The university, at least in the USA, operates either as an arm of the state or as a private business. As a tool of the ruling class, the university trains people in ruling class ideology.

[Kassad]

I work three jobs and I'm a full time student. Fuck yourself.

[Summerspeaker]

While I think the current left may well focus too much on the university, plenty of working-class people (by any definition) go to college.

[Jose Gracchus]

I don't think office work is working class. Middle class has a very definite definition in this country, it's having generational wealth. The working class doesn't have generational wealth. So sure there may be people on a million loans and grants who are from a poor family who may not even have generational wealth because they're so deep in debt and the housing market collapsed, but they usually still try to position themselves as middle class. If they don't I guess they are working class

This is a ridiculous low-rent sociological model of class. Workers are all those who subsist off the wage fund and do not have general authority in the workplace over other wage-earners. If you work for money, and don't give orders, you're a worker. If you work for money, and give orders, you're a coordinator. If you own something and work it for money while giving orders, you're a small capitalist or petty bourgeois. If you own things and do no work for money - rather, your ownership or money works for you, you're a capitalist. This isn't the 1950s; the boss isn't "the guy with the degree" anymore. Large portions of college educated people are unambiguous workers - nurses, physicians' assistants, many banking employees, teachers, paralegals, etc. Today even many lawyers are fully salaried employees with little job security, enormous debt loads which render them dependent and tied to their employer, and do not even have assistants or subordinate workers to them. There is an entity called "skilled worker", you know.

"Middle class" is something the liberal intellectual mainstream, trying to defuse working class consciousness as well as materialist conceptions of history, has made up following the expansion of consumption society following the Second World War and the crushing of radicals in the unions, in order to persuade Americans that working class doesn't exist. To the extent it does, it means dumb workers who can't do any better, or they would be virtuous middle class people (even if all they do all day is take orders and trade their time and work for subsistence). Looks like you fell for it.

This is not a trivial distinction. It is very pertinent even today. Take austerity: official media and commentators describe the whole effort at best as an attack on the "middle class", preferring to avoid the term working class at all costs (obviously the former is a self-consciously privileged and non-majoritarian group, while the latter is a large majority formation of society with distinct social interests against the capitalists and state - acknowledging the working class is itself subversive to capitalism). Even the labor aristocrats in the AFL-CIO indulge this in public here in the U.S.

[Q]

Students are not part of the working class by being students, most have extra jobs though to make ends meet and are very much workers indeed. And because of their studies most are workers-in-preparation, which is why student interests are closely interlinked to workers interests and where students struggle occurs (occupations, demonstrations), you only see the lower end of the students (the big majority) on these fights. In the UK for example, I don't think you'll see any elite students demonstrate over the tripling of the fees as an average public (for the rest of the world that means "elite", those English are weird) secondary school already costs much more.

[Robocommie]

This is a ridiculous low-rent sociological model of class. Workers are all those who subsist off the wage fund and do not have general authority in the workplace over other wage-earners. If you work for money, and don't give orders, you're a worker. If you work for money, and give orders, you're a coordinator. If you own something and work it for money while giving orders, you're a small capitalist or petty bourgeois. If you own things and do no work for money - rather, your ownership works for you, you're a capitalist.

Hey, that's a pretty good rendition of a short and sweet breakdown of classes. Kudos.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Many college students are more working class than "real revolutionaries" like Lenin, Guevara, Trotsky, Castro or Mao IMO, including socialist students. They all had pretty middle class origins.

Also, i had friends who had to pay their way through college or are massively in debt.

[Robespierre Richard]

This is a ridiculous low-rent sociological model of class. Workers are all those who subsist off the wage fund and do not have general authority in the workplace over other wage-earners. If you work for money, and don't give orders, you're a worker. If you work for money, and give orders, you're a coordinator. If you own something and work it for money while giving orders, you're a small capitalist or petty bourgeois. If you own things and do no work for money - rather, your ownership works for you, you're a capitalist.

Office work is mostly coordination unless it's the lowest positions that serve the coordinators - secretary, quota-based data entry, etc.

And it's not a sociological model, it's basically the requirements for participating in American society politically, socially, economically, as we are constantly told. Working class people simply don't have a place like that in American society, even if they have the income.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There is some irony in this post getting 13 -- mostly defensive -- replies in less than 30 minutes.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Office work is mostly coordination unless it's the lowest positions that serve the coordinators - secretary, quota-based data entry, etc.

And it's not a sociological model, it's basically the requirements for participating in American society politically, socially, economically, as we are constantly told. Working class people simply don't have a place like that in American society, even if they have the income.

And how exactly is office work coordination even when you ask for reports, generate your own reports beyond basic data entry, and analyze them but are not involved in the decision-making process? :rolleyes:

[Robespierre Richard]

And how exactly is office work coordination even when you ask for reports, generate your own reports, and analyze them but are not involved in the decision-making process? :rolleyes:

Because it adds no value to the product in question and is not directly distribution or exchange. Therefore it's coordination.

[Summerspeaker]

The Inform Candidate makes a valuable point. While it's important to remember the vast social difference between a technical professional making $100,000 a year and a shelf stocker making $10,000, both sell their labor to survive.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Because it adds no value to the product in question and is not directly distribution or exchange?

I think you've got a rather crude concept of "value."

[Robespierre Richard]

I think you've got a rather crude concept of "value."

I have the Marxian one which does not consider overhead as contributing to production. Neither does managerial accounting. I think only liberal economics (Keynesian and such) considers overhead to be a part of value, and this is because it considers value to be created by exchange and not by production as Marx and others state. The same logic is used to justify the idea that exploitation does not exist because "compensation" of the capitalist is one of the things revenue is spent on, while in reality it comes from surplus value created by the workers.

Here is a helpful text on this, the Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm (can't have links for 2 more posts)

[Tablo]

I have the Marxian one which does not consider overhead as contributing to production. Neither does managerial accounting. I think only liberal economics (Keynesian and such) considers overhead to be a part of value, and this is because it considers value to be created by exchange and not by production as Marx and others state.

Here is a helpful text on this, the Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm (can't have links for 2 more posts)
Yeah, where do you place office workers in your "Marxist" class analysis.

[Rusty Shackleford]

im guessing teachers are inherently bourgeois then too?

[Robespierre Richard]

Yeah, where do you place office workers in your "Marxist" class analysis.

As I said, they are part of production overhead, the middlemen between the capitalist and the workers.

[Robocommie]

I really wouldn't go so far as to suggest that office work is all socially unnecessary. That seems a little shortsighted to me.

[Jose Gracchus]

Because it adds no value to the product in question and is not directly distribution or exchange. Therefore it's coordination.

:rolleyes: Only factory workers are workers!

This is not what coordinator means. Coordinators are a class who monopolize work place authority and privileges. Coordinators are usually a group which is subordinated (and usually allied) to the capitalist class. In the "command economies" or "really existing socialist states", they ultimately became the ruling class. Doing mental work rather than Taylorist repetitive manual actions does not suddenly mean you do not contribute to production. Furthermore, there are proletarians - even factory ones - which do not do productive work anyway (like arms manufacturer factory workers).

How are cubicle rats without job security, access to decision-making, or access to capital, who sell their time and work to subsist, not proletarians? Because they don't make widgets?

Proletarians can be involved in the valorization process (like being a cashier) may not be exploited in direct production of commodities, but they are still proletarians.

EDIT: Are you also claiming there are no service commodities?

[Robespierre Richard]

I really wouldn't go so far as to suggest that office work is all socially unnecessary. That seems a little shortsighted to me.

I don't think it's socially unnecessary, I think it's economically necessary in neoliberal capitalism where overcentralization of capital has made it a requirement to process disproportionally large amounts of data and make decisions on it in every step of the supply chain. I think this was only a process though, and now with the economic crisis/restructuring the trends will change, because a 5:1 overhead to direct labor spending ratio in corporations was never meant to be sustainable.

[Jose Gracchus]

So what? Capitalists still bought and sold people like us on the labor market to realize their dictatorship by specific means you describe; who cares if the exact conditions by which it was favorable to them were transient? Materialist history concieves of things as being dynamic and evolving in their essence.

[Robespierre Richard]

:rolleyes: Only factory workers are workers!

This is not what coordinator means. Coordinators are a class who monopolize work place authority and privileges. Coordinators are usually a group which is subordinated (and usually allied) to the capitalist class. In the "command economies" or "really existing socialist states", they ultimately became the ruling class. Doing mental work rather than Taylorist repetitive manual actions does not suddenly mean you do not contribute to production. Furthermore, there are proletarians - even factory ones - which do not do productive work anyway (like arms manufacturer factory workers).

How are cubicle rats without job security, access to decision-making, or access to capital, who sell their time and work to subsist, not proletarians? Because they don't make widgets?

Proletarians can be involved in the valorization process (like being a cashier) may not be exploited in direct production of commodities, but they are still proletarians.

EDIT: Are you also claiming there are no service commodities?

As I just said, office workers do not directly partake in distribution or exchange. This means that they are neither warehourse workers, truck drivers, shelf stockers, or cashiers. They do not produce any services either unless they are data entry or secretary work which are services under any reasonable definition. In the last 30 years much of office work has been made into services through the division of labor, but the rest is still coordination. Their job is helping the boss decide what decisions to make. They don't physically do anything.

And it doesn't matter how much someone earns in some respects. I earn (on a warehouse floor) more than an assistant manager at Taco Bell, but if I worked on the floor at Taco Bell, my interests would be diametrically opposed to his.

[wunderbar]

I guess I forgot that you're only working class if you work in a factory and your job involves swinging a giant hammer. Every time I think the left has finally gotten rid of their factory-fetish, I'm proven wrong.

[Jose Gracchus]

Again, just because you do not participate in production does not mean you are non-proletarian. A disproportionate number of proletarians in the West are engaged in labor for assisting the exercise of decision-making authority in a subjectively rational fashion for capitalists and coordinators, versus indirect or direct service in production. Are proletarians who participate directly and indirectly in production a key substratum of the working class in the class struggle? Of course. That doesn't mean that nonproductive proletarians are exploiters. Is that what you claim?

The assistant manager at Taco Bell is a coordinator - he directly exercises decision-making power over wage slaves.

[Robespierre Richard]

Again, just because you do not participate in production does not mean you are non-proletarian. A disproportionate number of proletarians in the West are engaged in labor for assisting the exercise of decision-making authority in a subjectively rational fashion for capitalists and coordinators, versus indirect or direct service in production. Are proletarians who participate directly and indirectly in production a key substratum of the working class in the class struggle? Of course. That doesn't mean that nonproductive proletarians are exploiters. Is that what you claim?

The assistant manager at Taco Bell is a coordinator - he directly exercises decision-making power over wage slaves.

Dude that's management. It's in their class interest for the price of labor to fall as it means more management jobs in this system. Proletarians produce surplus value, whether in production, distribution, or exchange. These guys don't. It's literally impossible to produce surplus value in management unless you've suddenly become a libertarian and anything is possible.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

I don't think office work is working class.
You're half way there to MTW, aren't you? I guess we can ignore the old calls for all laborers, who work with either their brain or brawn, to unite.
You're going to have to get over that our country isn't all about factory work anymore. This is 2011. Anyone who works in an office can be just as easily exploited as someone in a drive-thru lane, someone working the assembly line, a construction worker, a barista at the cafe, and so forth.

[Kibbutznik]

Dude that's management. It's in their class interest for the price of labor to fall as it means more management jobs in this system. Proletarians produce surplus value, whether in production, distribution, or exchange. These guys don't. It's literally impossible to produce surplus value in management unless you've suddenly become a libertarian and anything is possible.
I have a feeling that Marx is rolling in his grave right now with how you just butchered Capital.

First off, it is labor that produces use-value in itself. Surplus value is the value that is produced after inputs are serviced and replenished, and a finished product is produced and sold for its exchange value. You don't have surplus anything until the commodity is sold/exchanged.

Proletarians don't have a monopoly on producing surplus value. And not all proletarians produce surplus value for society. A worker at an arms plant making bombs is producing a commodity that by its very definition has a negative use value.

Proletarians, further, are defined by their relation to the means of production. The Inform Candidate summed it up properly. If you work for someone else, and don't have a coordinative function to your work, then you're a proletarian, regardless of whether the work you do is socially necessary or not.

And the simple fact is that, on some level, the work that office workers do is socially necessary. You cannot run an enterprise without administrative overhead of some kind, whether the enterprise is a seignorial manor in a feudal society, a capitalist firm, or a socialist planned economy. To call it not real labor just because it doesn't directly manipulate something concrete is a reactionary, bourgeois sentiment.

Remember, like William Morris said, we're supposed to be fighting for a vision of society with "neither heartsick handworkers nor brainsick brain workers".

[black magick hustla]

college has a disproportionate percentage of like petit bourgie/bourgie people but i think most of em are workers. idk i guess it depends on the college. i go to a large state university and virtually 80% of the people i hangout with grew up in shitholes or in "lower middle class" or whatever. idk all the people i drink with are like sons of electricians, masons, or secretaries or grew up in the ghetto. i dont know who you hangout with. i guess if you chill in nyu or like new school then everybody is rich as hell

[Jose Gracchus]

Yeah there's probably a big split between Land Grant universities and private colleges.

[Ⓐaron]

Capitalists must love this "Only factory workers are real workers" bullshit. They couldn't come up with a better way to divide the working class if they tried.

[Devrim]

Students are not part of the working class by being students, most have extra jobs though to make ends meet and are very much workers indeed. And because of their studies most are workers-in-preparation, which is why student interests are closely interlinked to workers interests and where students struggle occurs (occupations, demonstrations), you only see the lower end of the students (the big majority) on these fights.

It is probably not an exaggeration today to say that large numbers of students are working class., but that doesn't mean that most working class people go to university. They don't. Only a tiny minority do.


In the UK for example, I don't think you'll see any elite students demonstrate over the tripling of the fees as an average public (for the rest of the world that means "elite", those English are weird) secondary school already costs much more.

I think all sorts of people demonstrated. Didn't the son of someone in Pink Floyd get arrested. He can hardly be short of a bob or two.

The English term 'public' school isn't hard to understand if you see the historical context. At the time of the opening of these schools, the existing schools were clerical, i.e. for members of the clergy. These schools that accepted the public, were refereed to as 'public schools' quite logically. The fact that they were fee-paying isn't really the point. It comes from a completely different historical period, then the US term 'public school', which uses public in a completely different way as the opposite of private.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have a feeling that Marx is rolling in his grave right now with how you just butchered Capital.

First off, it is labor that produces use-value in itself. Surplus value is the value that is produced after inputs are serviced and replenished, and a finished product is produced and sold for its exchange value. You don't have surplus anything until the commodity is sold/exchanged.

Proletarians don't have a monopoly on producing surplus value. And not all proletarians produce surplus value for society. A worker at an arms plant making bombs is producing a commodity that by its very definition has a negative use value.

You summed it up nicely too. However, the part where I'd disagree with you on a more detailed level of discussion is the very definition of "proletarian" re. productive vs. unproductive labour.

Yes the petit-bourgeoisie and coordinators can produce surplus value, but so can the modern proletarii (revival of the old Roman class which wasn't very productive but wasn't characterized by beggars on the streets). That is the class to which exclusively arms manufacturer factory workers belong.


It is probably not an exaggeration today to say that large numbers of students are working class., but that doesn't mean that most working class people go to university. They don't. Only a tiny minority do.

That is so 1970s. Define "university." In today's world, it's shorter slang for "post-secondary education," which encompasses community colleges, regular colleges, technical institutes, and the like.

[Devrim]

That is so 1970s. Define "university." In today's world, it's shorter slang for "post-secondary education," which encompasses community colleges, regular colleges, technical institutes, and the like.

This is so North American. I just had to look up on wiki what a community collage was.

Devrim

[Robespierre Richard]

I have a feeling that Marx is rolling in his grave right now with how you just butchered Capital.

First off, it is labor that produces use-value in itself. Surplus value is the value that is produced after inputs are serviced and replenished, and a finished product is produced and sold for its exchange value. You don't have surplus anything until the commodity is sold/exchanged.

Proletarians don't have a monopoly on producing surplus value. And not all proletarians produce surplus value for society. A worker at an arms plant making bombs is producing a commodity that by its very definition has a negative use value.

Proletarians, further, are defined by their relation to the means of production. The Inform Candidate summed it up properly. If you work for someone else, and don't have a coordinative function to your work, then you're a proletarian, regardless of whether the work you do is socially necessary or not.

And the simple fact is that, on some level, the work that office workers do is socially necessary. You cannot run an enterprise without administrative overhead of some kind, whether the enterprise is a seignorial manor in a feudal society, a capitalist firm, or a socialist planned economy. To call it not real labor just because it doesn't directly manipulate something concrete is a reactionary, bourgeois sentiment.

Remember, like William Morris said, we're supposed to be fighting for a vision of society with "neither heartsick handworkers nor brainsick brain workers".

Yeah, all those poor lawyers and accountants being exploited by The Man. :(

Seriously, this is the attitude that justifies bureaucracy. "Oh no they must feel so bad running our shit, we should protect their rights too." Probably why left-communism never went far, you know, considering the petty bourgeoisie to be proletarians and all. All those poor people at the Department of Commerce. :(

Also, weapons have utility, so I don't know what the hell you're talking about. :blink:

[Robespierre Richard]

Wait, so, when I moved a box of onions from the warehouse to the shelf, I am in fact engaged in "coordination"? Hm. The standard issue bright-green shirt and name-tag don't exactly make me feel middle class, but I guess I'll take your word for it... :rolleyes:

No, you engaged in distribution as I said previously.

Meanwhile the oppressed proletariat of the Washington, D.C. area left their $2 million homes on their $75000 BMW SUV's after dropping their kids off at a $30,000 a year private school, to go be exploited by the capitalists in various corporate offices, lobbying firms, and political groups. Another sad day.

[Rakhmetov]

I'm a college graduate (it took me long time to go through school, I graduated at nearly 28) and working class. But I agree with the gist of the gripe of the OP. Most kids in college are not lower class but middle class. Several of my professors when addressing the class would say in passing, "We're all Middle Class, right?"---- which would infuriate me to distraction. Even in the junior colleges most are middle class. :mad:

[Dimmu]

This may be a case in USA where you need money to study. But here in Northern Europe where education is free of charge, as it should be.

[Adil3tr]

Wasn't marx a student militant?

[gestalt]

A veritable fire hazard with all of these straw men.

Class is a relationship to the means of production, as Inform Candidate and others have successfully demonstrated. Furthermore, as the financial capitalism of the first world in the 21st century is different from that of the industrial of the 19th, any modern definition of the proletariat has to be heterogeneous. Distinctions between physical and mental labor are arbitrary and between productive and unproductive are semantic. What is more, they are tedious, boring and a blatant obstacle to worker solidarity. We exist under an economic system which contains inherent contradictions, for example: even what could be termed "unproductive labor" contributes to capital accumulation. Ultimately, what matters is property relations.

The term "middle class" fulfills multiple roles, such as a set blinders perpetuating false consciousness among some and, here, as a useful effigy for those with static perceptions of a dynamic world.

As to the original topic, the average undergraduate student debt at the public land grant university in Appalachia which I attended was $15,000~ and upwards of 60% borrowed some amount to cover tuition costs. While not a true indicator of class, it does provide some measure of insight into the socioeconomic background of the student body.

[Wanted Man]

Where did you get those stats?

I would like to answer this question, but I don't think it's allowed to post a picture of an anus on this forum.

[Tablo]

I'm a college graduate (it took me long time to go through school, I graduated at nearly 28) and working class. But I agree with the gist of the gripe of the OP. Most kids in college are not lower class but middle class. Several of my professors when addressing the class would say in passing, "We're all Middle Class, right?"---- which would infuriate me to distraction. Even in the junior colleges most are middle class. :mad:
What is this middle class? What is their relation to production? I have yet to see a concrete description of this middle class people love talking about. Historically the term middle class referred to the bourgeoisie, but now that they are on top I don't see who this term refers to.

[Robespierre Richard]

What is this middle class? What is their relation to production? I have yet to see a concrete description of this middle class people love talking about. Historically the term middle class referred to the bourgeoisie, but now that they are on top I don't see who this term refers to.

Coordination of production, distribution, and exchange while not taking part physically in any of those. The middle class is marked by the fact that they can advance up the corporate ladder or in the case of some, like lawyers, become masters in their field and earn millions a year. The working class really can't. Along with that are the various signifiers of privilege that have been degraded in recent years: college education, homeownership, etc.

Also just so you guys know, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and even Mao were not proletarians but it never really mattered to them.

[Decommissioner]

I am going to have to disagree with both the OP and the case that office workders are not proletarian.

For one, they way I see it, college students as a category aren't working class however they can become working class or are in a position to aid the working class. However, I also think the left seems to forget the value of appealing to the actual working class of the here and now (young and old, educated or not).

And, as an office worker myself, the assertion that office workers are not proletarian is quite bullshit. I see strawmen of "poor lawyers in their SUVs dropping off private school children." This is nonsense and it is divisive. I make about as much or less than grocery store workers (having just come from a grocery store workplace). Office workers perform real work. My parents are both office workers and have been laid off many times, they hardly made enough to support me and my siblings. My current job has issued mandatory overtime for over a year, because our work does create surplus value and keeping us longer is profitable. A union would do wonders for us, but it doesn't seem common for office workers to form unions because of the whole "unions are for workers and workers = factory, manual labor" stigma that everyone seems to subscribe to.

Utimately, for me, it is simple. If you do not own private property and require a wage from your employer for all of your income, there is no way you cannot be working class, as your work is providing the backbone for the capitalists profit.

[Jose Gracchus]

Got to love the constant appeals to "middle class" and "income" and other liberal sociological re-definitions of class that have jack all to do with leftism. I suppose we should be opposing the Wisconsin workers, because they're not really workers, MSNBC is right - its an attack on the "middle class". Also you're clueless if you don't think any black workers own homes. Homeownership in the United States is subsidized by the tax system, and was done so deliberately in the 1930s with the rationale that "mortgage holding workers won't go on strike."

Such hardcore Marxism-Leninism has led you right to the doorstep of MSNBC. Why don't you just apply for a job and stop wasting your time here? :rolleyes:

[Robespierre Richard]

I am going to have to disagree with both the OP and the case that office workders are not proletarian.

For one, they way I see it, college students as a category aren't working class however they can become working class or are in a position to aid the working class. However, I also think the left seems to forget the value of appealing to the actual working class of the here and now (young and old, educated or not).

And, as an office worker myself, the assertion that office workers are not proletarian is quite bullshit. I see strawmen of "poor lawyers in their SUVs dropping off private school children." This is nonsense and it is divisive. I make about as much or less than grocery store workers (having just come from a grocery store workplace). Office workers perform real work. My parents are both office workers and have been laid off many times, they hardly made enough to support me and my siblings. My current job has issued mandatory overtime for over a year, because our work does create surplus value and keeping us longer is profitable. A union would do wonders for us, but it doesn't seem common for office workers to form unions because of the whole "unions are for workers and workers = factory, manual labor" stigma that everyone seems to subscribe to.

Utimately, for me, it is simple. If you do not own private property and require a wage from your employer for all of your income, there is no way you cannot be working class, as your work is providing the backbone for the capitalists profit.

Sounds like you have a pretty shitty job and nobody cares about you. Still doesn't produce any value though. There were bureaucrats in the USSR who pulled 80 hour weeks trying to balance budgets and rationalize economic planning. Their class interests were still against everyone else's though.


Got to love the constant appeals to "middle class" and "income" and other liberal sociological re-definitions of class that have jack all to do with leftism. I suppose we should be opposing the Wisconsin workers, because they're not really workers, MSNBC is right - its an attack on the "middle class". Also you're clueless if you don't think any black workers own homes. Homeownership in the United States is subsidized by the tax system, and was done so deliberately in the 1930s with the rationale that "mortgage holding workers won't go on strike."

Such hardcore Marxism-Leninism has led you right to the doorstep of MSNBC. Why don't you just apply for a job and stop wasting your time here?

Not everyone who works for the state is middle class. Someone's got to mop the floors after all. But yeah, you're sorta right, I don't see any perspective for the middle class in the class struggle that persists in capitalism, only the struggle against imperialism, as certain aspects of it do degrade their standard of living and political power. In that sense they can definitely be part of the popular front, but the working class? Not for a while after the initial revolution...

[IndependentCitizen]

So.....



Right, I've got it! Let's not get an education comrades! Let's not get into the Bourgeois's and expose it from the inside!


I don't suppose I'm middle class, my mother's a nurse and my father works as a council employed trash-collector. I want to study medicine at university. Am I not working-class, or should I perhaps give up on becoming a doctor because that's for the bourgeoisie, and I should stick to what is expected by the ruling class of me.

[Robespierre Richard]

So.....



Right, I've got it! Let's not get an education comrades! Let's not get into the Bourgeois's and expose it from the inside!


I don't suppose I'm middle class, my mother's a nurse and my father works as a council employed trash-collector. I want to study medicine at university. Am I not working-class, or should I perhaps give up on becoming a doctor because that's for the bourgeoisie, and I should stick to what is expected by the ruling class of me.

You don't have to be working class to be a communist as I said. I guess if you want to accomplish something by "working within the system" then you can go ahead, but it's already pretty exposed to the rest of us. And yes when you become a doctor you will be middle class. If it's an insult to you that you shouldn't patronize working class people by pretending to be like them and circulating populist rhetoric then so be it.

and "getting into the Bourgeois's [sic]," seriously? You claim to be working class but want to get into the bourgeoisie?

[Jose Gracchus]

Locate this "middle class" in terms of Marxian economics, please.

[Lucretia]

College students are technically not part of capitalist or any kind of relations of production insofar as they are students. As students, they are consumers of the university system, for the purpose of being trained for their future careers. If they are supported by family, their class position is loosely connected to those connections (so that the son of a capitalist tends to have capitalist values and interests, whereas the son of a wage worker will tend to share those interests, etc.). Some students may very well have an actual job to support themselves and live on their own, in which case they are part of the working class. Some may have some combination of both, placing them in a contradictory class location. Because many students do have only indirect class interests, are concentrated geographically, and tend to have more spare time than the average wage worker, they are often much quicker to radicalize than workers. But the drawback is that they are students only briefly. It makes sense that groups recruiting among students will tend to have a high turnover, as the student moves on to assume a direct class position within the economy, one potentially in conflict with the interests of the working classes.

[jake williams]

The OP is wrong from about 3 different directions, even ignoring the politics.

First, the numbers are iffy. At any rate, even if 75% of the population is "working class", that doesn't make the rest ultra-rich. The rest are almost entirely either "small business people" (many of whom make a lot less money than higher-paid, or even average-paid, owrkers), or alienated from the white economy altogether (a pretty large group of people). These people aren't the middle class as such.

Also, educational standards rise as the economy becomes more complex. It's true that only around a third of the population of Western industrialized countries have a university degree, but those populations are also old - a huge part of the population was "college-aged" when it wasn't exactly standard to get a high school diploma. Younger people - including those in colleges and universities right now - are much more likely to get post-secondary education, both because of a changing economy and because of working class victories. Definitely a majority of people in the general demographic over their lifetimes (a lot of statistics only include people who go to university straight out of high school, missing people who work for a year or two first).

I know lots of people who have university degrees and who work full-time in industrial manufacturing. In the 80s there was a Taco Bell a few blocks from my house that only hired people with bachelor degrees. But just looking at the numbers, most students are part of the working class, and will be for their whole lives - and this is increasingly so.

All that said, there is a can be problems associated with campus-focused activism. The reason the working class as such is able to achieve what it does is because the social organization and economic power that work entails makes political activity more effective. Students live in a pretty flakey world, and universities are buzzing hives of propaganda against class consciousness (except for the bourgeoisie). The problem really has more to do with students thinking that they're not a part of the working class, and that they have interests opposed to the ignorant many without diplomas, than that students, and that in the long run especially, they aren't dependent on the sale of their labour power to the monopoly owners of the economy. Encouraging this false consciousness on the left doesn't help - but pro-working-class agitation within educational institutions can.

[RATM-Eubie]

Uhh im just screaming bullshit right now

[gorillafuck]

Yet only 29 percent of the population of America has a diploma.no.

[Tim Finnegan]

No, you engaged in distribution as I said previously.
Yeah, I realised that was kinda stupid after I posted, so I deleted it, but apparently before you finished posting, so that post is now missing... Whoops. :blushing:


This may be a case in USA where you need money to study. But here in Northern Europe where education is free of charge, as it should be.
Does that make Scotland an honorary Nordic country, then? We'd much rather be in with you than the prole-kicking Sassenachs... ;)

[The Red Next Door]

For your Information, I am on welfare and i go to college, which is a community college. which is ripe with poor people and i have been spending my vacation job hunting.

[IndependentCitizen]

You don't have to be working class to be a communist as I said. I guess if you want to accomplish something by "working within the system" then you can go ahead, but it's already pretty exposed to the rest of us. And yes when you become a doctor you will be middle class. If it's an insult to you that you shouldn't patronize working class people by pretending to be like them and circulating populist rhetoric then so be it.

and "getting into the Bourgeois's [sic]," seriously? You claim to be working class but want to get into the bourgeoisie?



System, I meant by their system - but commenting from a mobile phone, it's pretty difficult. How else do you rip it apart? You radicalise workers, surely that's working from within. If I'm misintepretating, I apologise, barely got any sleep this week.

[twenty percent tip]

if your a college kid and your posting here in defense of it you arent helping. come on comrades. you want to liberate the workers? were not caged animals you can set free because you feel bad.

[Ocean Seal]

Most members of socialist organizations in America is college students. Socialist organizations recruit on campuses. Its a yearly ritual. Yet only 29 percent of the population of America has a diploma. The working class is about 75 percent of the population according to labor statistics. We can assume that nearly all capitalists and petit-bourgeois graduated college. It's expected of them and even required for alot of their positions. So we can see that at most about 4 percent of college graduates are working class. And those are the most well off minority. How did the labor movement end up in this predicament and how can we get out of it?
College is a transition stage. Most college students are working class albeit many of them are more well off than the more revolutionary stratas of the working class. Also the working class is 89% of the population so the colleges would be pretty much vacant if it weren't for working class people in college. I'm working class and I'll be in college next year. I'll probably have to work pretty damn hard to help my parents pay it and I'll probably emerge with a shitload of debt, but I'm going to improve myself, pursue my passion, and have the credentials I need to find a job.

[twenty percent tip]

comrade,

the working class is 70-79 percent. where you getting this 89 percent shit? there are whole cities full of petit-bourgeois.

only 29 percent got college degrees. bourgeois and petit-bourgeois kids all go to college. so that means workers are like 4 or 5 percent of college kids. those are the best off workers too. if you work at mcdonalds and youre a single dad your kids aint going to fucking harvard boss. theyre going to sell weed and work at the texaco station filling gas tanks 3 days a week on 2 hour shifts. thats real life.

the majority of the population works in services like retail and restaraunts. you dont need a diploma to work at walmart. they dont have degrees. they dont need them. professionals managers people who fuck workers for a living get degrees so they can prove there certified to ruin our lives. sorry if this hurts your feelings. its the real deal

[twenty percent tip]

College is a transition stage. Most college students are working class albeit many of them are more well off than the more revolutionary stratas of the working class. Also the working class is 89% of the population so the colleges would be pretty much vacant if it weren't for working class people in college. I'm working class and I'll be in college next year. I'll probably have to work pretty damn hard to help my parents pay it and I'll probably emerge with a shitload of debt, but I'm going to improve myself, pursue my passion, and have the credentials I need to find a job.

its a transition to fucking workers.

who cares if they are in debt? so what? stock brokers lost it all in the big crash and jumped out of windows . did it make em workers? fuck no. whats the relation to the means of production?? thats what makes class. not cuz you had a bad hair day or your investments didnt work out. doctors go into debt and come out 10 years later driving a benz. should i feel bad cuz they dipped fries at mcdonalds for a year during school??? fuck

the working class is 75 percent in america. only 29 percent of americans have a diploma. all petit-bourgeois and bourgeois gows to college. so that means 4 percent of workers go. its all mathematics. theres your class comrade

[twenty percent tip]

you feel bad about being in college. its like white liberal guilt. but theres no americorps to come volunteer for the working class for a year like you would do for africa so you can sleep the rest of your life. so you become a left winger during your college years. i know how it gose. i been around it

your hearts in the right place but the workers arent in the parties so the parties arent the right place or somethings fucked. i wish i knew what

[Magón]

So since I'm prol, does that mean I have to give up my scholarship to my university, since Prol's don't deserve to try and make it in a higher education setting?

[StalinFanboy]

Apparently the OP is unaware of community colleges.

[twenty percent tip]

you have a college degree. thats your means of production. you can make money selling your knowledge and education

[twenty percent tip]

Post-secondary education is valued very highly by American society and is one of the main determinants of class and status. As with income, levels differ by race, age, household configuration and geography.[1] Overall the households and demographics featuring the highest educational attainment in the United States are also among those with the highest household income and wealth. Thus, while the population as a whole is proceeding further in formal educational programs, income and educational attainment remain highly correlated.

Educational attainment is strongly related to income in the United States. Although the incomes of both men and women are associated with higher educational attainment (higher incomes for higher educational attainment), the income gap between races and genders remained at each educational level. In 2003 average incomes ranged from $13,459 for a male high-school dropout to $90,761 for a male with an advanced degree.

The professional/managerial fields were the only two occupational fields where college graduates with a Bachelor's degree or higher represented the majority. Among professional occupations, 99.1% of the population graduated from high school, 90.2% had some college education or an Associates degree and over two thirds, 68.2% had a Bachelor's degree or higher. Business and managerial occupations were second with 97.8% having graduated from high school, 79.5% having some college or an associates degree and just over half, 53.4% having a Bachelor's degree or higher.

Educational attainment is one of the primary indicators of social class in the United States.[8]


from the encylopedia !!

and from business week:

How did the U.S. become the world's largest economy? A key part of the answer is education. Some 85% of adult Americans have at least a high school degree today, up from just 25% in 1940. Similarly, 28% have a college degree

yea i must be wrong and i dont know what im talking about??? read it and weap into your Psych 101 text book.

[Magón]

OP, have you ever been to a college or university? And by that, I mean, have you actually looked at the type of people, spoke with the people, and see where they stand on the economic/social ladder?

[twenty percent tip]

i just gave you the stats kid.

you want annecdotes or facts?

i went to colleges to meet girls when i was in my 20s. they were twice as gullible as the regular girls in my neighborhood whos parents has real jobs. thats the subjective truth since you dont like the objective one. i used to find hippy protesters to score free weed

[twenty percent tip]

99% of capitalists and petty bourgeois goes to college. 75% of the population are working class. 28% of total population has a degree.

read it. the only jobs where everyone has a diploma? managers and business men. the highest income earners? all have degrees. you dont want to admit it fine. dont matter

do the math. you dont like it? drop out or go bury your head in the sand in cancun on spring break

[Libertatis et Rationis]

So if technological advancement renders that all factory work can be done by machines, and as a result, all former workers have to take service sector jobs...does this mean by Marxian standards an end to the class struggle?

I call for some redefinition of who we call working class. Students like me take on degrading jobs, long and inconvenient hours to make ends meet. When a student is relying on his paycheck from office work to eat, does that make him a member of the middle class? How does this student have more in common with his rich boss then their factory worker counterparts?

[Magón]

I didn't go anywhere for Spring Break, I worked and sat at home. So am I not allowed to get and education so I can do what I always wanted to do, and travel the world as a job?

[Amphictyonis]

Where else will the uber intelligentsia vanguard be trained if not in those Marxist Universities!

vUsNMsrGycY

Glen Beck is right! Those Universities exist to make the Marxism happen!

(I'm trolling this thread)



On a more serious note: Students can be both working class and bourgeois pieces of shit as was the case when Bush Junior was attending Yale. The average college student isn't George Bush attending Yale though. Education shouldn't be looked down upon but I do agree with at least one small part of the OP's world view. All too often I've seen my fellow college educated friends turn to "pragmatism" as the years go by- they focus more on career/making money and begin to see revolutionary struggle as almost childish. I'm in my 30's now and have had friends in the struggle drop out and it's usually because of the obvious positions of privilege they've come to enjoy (economically). I think more effort needs to be made at the actual work place but I'm also not willing to criticize efforts to radicalize students @ University. It would be better to somehow get into highschools where every person has equal access to information. Socialist curriculum in highschool. That'll be the day :(. In the end the more people exposed to actual socialist ideas the better. It can be very hard to do this at the work place. I've been doing it for about a decade now and find it troubling at times.

[Pretty Flaco]

Being a student is separate from class. Someone can be both working and attending college.

just sayin

[black magick hustla]

i just gave you the stats kid.

you want annecdotes or facts?

i went to colleges to meet girls when i was in my 20s. they were twice as gullible as the regular girls in my neighborhood whos parents has real jobs. thats the subjective truth since you dont like the objective one. i used to find hippy protesters to score free weed
fuckkkkkkk

[Ostrinski]

Actually, most college students are getting degrees in worthlessness. They'll have the degrees but won't be able to actually launch a career due to the economic state. Most of the billionaires are the ones who said "fuck this," skipped college, and started businesses.

[twenty percent tip]

I didn't go anywhere for Spring Break, I worked and sat at home.

boo hoo.
:crying:

So am I not allowed to get and education so I can do what I always wanted to do, and travel the world as a job?

you can do whatever the fuck you please. you have that option cause you are privileged. but your not working class and you cant overthrow capitalism. sorry

you prove it anyway. 4 years of "suffering" (which means getting a part time job for beer money probably and not going to spring break) followed by a lifetime of traveling the world as "work." meanwhile the auto workers kid is high on crack because theres no factory job for him and hes miserable about spending the next 40 years living in dads attic and working 11 hours a week at kmart.

[twenty percent tip]

All too often I've seen my fellow college educated friends turn to "pragmatism" as the years go by- they focus more on career/making money and begin to see revolutionary struggle as almost childish.

because they can. its a choice for them. its not a choice for workers. thats the point comrade

[Magón]

boo hoo.
:crying:


you can do whatever the fuck you please. you have that option cause you are privileged. but your not working class and you cant overthrow capitalism. sorry

you prove it anyway. 4 years of "suffering" (which means getting a part time job for beer money probably and not going to spring break) followed by a lifetime of traveling the world as "work." meanwhile the auto workers kid is high on crack because theres no factory job for him and hes miserable about spending the next 40 years living in dads attic and working 11 hours a week at kmart.

What are you talking about? You don't even know my history, or where I'm from, or what I did to get to where I am. As a matter of fact, I'm a full time student and work a full time job, at a mechanic shop by the way.

And why can't traveling the world be work?

[The Vegan Marxist]

you have a college degree. thats your means of production. you can make money selling your knowledge and education

That's the most ignorant, anti-Marxist b.s. I've ever heard. By no means does a college degree count as your "means of production". You can have a degree all you want, but it doesn't help you make whatever commodity you're producing. What of those who don't have degrees? Are they then left unattainable of the means of production?

You seriously need to re-read Capital or something, because you haven't got a clue of what you're talking about.

[twenty percent tip]

Actually, most college students are getting degrees in worthlessness. They'll have the degrees but won't be able to actually launch a career due to the economic state. Most of the billionaires are the ones who said "fuck this," skipped college, and started businesses.

most billionaires were born to billionaire families.

go read my stats boss. people cried about stats and i put em and they changed the argument. the ONLY fields with majority having degrees are management and businessmen. what does that tell you? the top income people have 98% degrees. what do you think? stop denying the truth to make yourself feel better. its not a class contest. but if you wanna overthrow capitallism the working class is the only one who can do it. if you dont even know whose in that class how you gonna do it?

[hatzel]

you can do whatever the fuck you please. you have that option cause you are privileged. but your not working class and you cant overthrow capitalism. sorry

This alone sums up the huge amount of fail in this thread, all coming from a certain blatantly trollish user who should probably be at least infracted for his behaviour...

[twenty percent tip]

That's the most ignorant, anti-Marxist b.s. I've ever heard. By no means does a college degree count as your "means of production". You can have a degree all you want, but it doesn't help you make whatever commodity you're producing.


oh yea? so whats a doctors means of production that allows him to go in business for himself? is it the waiting room? get the fuck out of here.

the self-employed carpenters means of production is his skill. its not his hammer. anyone can buy a hammer for $5. not anyone can make a living as a carpenter by doing so. come on man be for real



What of those who don't have degrees? Are they then left unattainable of the means of production?

they have no means of production. thats why they have to get real jobs


You seriously need to re-read Capital or something, because you haven't got a clue of what you're talking about.yea that must be it. meanwhile your talking about Mao and a peasant rebellion and passing that off as marxism? if thats marxism no thanks for me shitstain

[Amphictyonis]

boo hoo.
:crying:


you can do whatever the fuck you please. you have that option cause you are privileged. but your not working class and you cant overthrow capitalism. sorry

you prove it anyway. 4 years of "suffering" (which means getting a part time job for beer money probably and not going to spring break) followed by a lifetime of traveling the world as "work." meanwhile the auto workers kid is high on crack because theres no factory job for him and hes miserable about spending the next 40 years living in dads attic and working 11 hours a week at kmart.

Prolier than thou? The "aristocracy of labor" theory was advocated by Lenin at one point- not one of my favorite contributions of his. In a sense there are some good points to be found in it though, such as; a socialist revolution in America would be hard because there is almost no more industry here- China seems it would be easier to make the transition to socialism seeing most of the actual productive forces are in China.

We can all talk about these things without being silly though, you're being a tad silly in my opinion. Try this:


http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/128

[twenty percent tip]

This alone sums up the huge amount of fail in this thread, all coming from a certain blatantly trollish user who should probably be at least infracted for his behaviour...

ah the stalin school. if you cant debate the question, cancel the debate and jail the debater

[The Vegan Marxist]

the ONLY fields with majority having degrees are management and businessmen.

Bullshit! I'm majoring in Psychology. Once I get my bachelor's degree in Psychology, I'm telling you now, never will I become a "billionaire" from this, nor will I start "owning the means of production", thus accumulate surplus value off of someone else's labor force.

Seriously, it looks like someone needs to first finish high school before they start talking about college.

[hatzel]

ah the stalin school. if you cant debate the question, cancel the debate and jail the debater

If you consider yourself a debater, then I'm sorry, but you're using the word quite wrongly. 'Debater' is not a synonymous with 'rambling idiot' :)

[The Vegan Marxist]

oh yea? so whats a doctors means of production that allows him to go in business for himself? is it the waiting room? get the fuck out of here.

All the equipment they have to use to run tests on patients. DUH!


the self-employed carpenters means of production is his skill. its not his hammer. anyone can buy a hammer for $5. not anyone can make a living as a carpenter by doing so. come on man be for real

Not everyone who attains a degree becomes self-employed though. In fact, you can become self-employed without a degree in some areas. So what does this have anything to do with those who contain a college degree?


yea that must be it. meanwhile your talking about Mao and a peasant rebellion and passing that off as marxism? if thats marxism no thanks for me shitstain

Oh boy, you're one of those people. :rolleyes:

[twenty percent tip]

so answer the question about doctors and carpenters marxist master.

and of course your in college. all the defenders of the "poor proletarian student" in this are. whats that tell you? just admit what you are. stop being guilty about it. its not a crime. capitalism needs middle class people too.

not one person has addressed the stats that everyone was begging for by the way :thumbup1:


Bullshit!

uh oh here comes some facts for yaaaaaa

'The professional/managerial fields were the only two occupational fields where college graduates with a Bachelor's degree or higher represented the majority.' - encyclopedia :blushing:

[twenty percent tip]

All the equipment they have to use to run tests on patients. DUH!

so all i need is a stethascope and a gurney and i can open my own practice??? holy fuck i'm on it.

sorry man you took the moron train on this trip. either that or youll do anything to get around admitting the truth. both are fucked up

[Magón]

Who's guilty? And what for?

[twenty percent tip]

Not everyone who attains a degree becomes self-employed though. In fact, you can become self-employed without a degree in some areas. So what does this have anything to do with those who contain a college degree?

not everyone in the petit-bourgeois is self-employed. it has to do with training and knowledge and skills being means of production in themselves. what do you think youre paying $50,000 for? a hat and a sheet of paper to fill a frame with?

[Jose Gracchus]

I think a big trouble is the difference generationally. Of the Baby Boomer generation, the universities were predominantly bourgeois, petty bourgeois, coordinator factories. However, more recently, a larger and larger fraction of the population will attend at the very least community college and vocational and other post-HS educational programs, as opposed to entering the factory as was once the case. Furthermore, even the skilled worker and white collar/office/intellectual labor jobs which were a particularly de-classed, skilled, privileged worker stratum, are having their jobs sent overseas and are being re-proletarianized, sapping off their parents increasingly through young adulthood (a la Japan's parasite singles, a similar social phenomena) and that can only last so long. In the long view the exceptional expansion of white collar make-work and a declassed skilled/intellectual worker fraction, produced through the universities, will be looked at a historical transient phenomena. This upcoming generation will be increasingly de-skilled and increasingly deprived of consistent and reliable employment, while paradoxically having much more widespread post-HS education. The continuing de-industrialization domestically and the internationalization of productive and non-productive real production continues to have really complex effects.

[twenty percent tip]

Who's guilty? And what for?

because theyre not workers and they feel terrible about the workers plight. so they become left wingers for four years so they can sleep the rest of their lives and say they did something. its like middle class white kids going to kenya to volunteer for 3 weeks so they can tell their kids about in 23 years later while sailing on their yaught off the coast of boston wearing a polo visor and eating 75 dollar lobsters.

[Amphictyonis]

and of course your in college.

You're setting yourself up for the grammar police. Detective Amphictyonis at your service :)

[The Vegan Marxist]

so answer the question about doctors and carpenters marxist master.

and of course your in college. all the defenders of the "poor proletarian student" in this are. whats that tell you? just admit what you are. stop being guilty about it. its not a crime. capitalism needs middle class people too.

I'm going to college through Federal loans you ignorant liberal. By no means can I afford college, and having to put myself in a massive debt just to acquire a degree. So no, I'm by no means what you consider "middle class". Been working class all my life.


uh oh here comes some facts for yaaaaaa

'The professional/managerial fields were the only two occupational fields where college graduates with a Bachelor's degree or higher represented the majority.' - encyclopedia :blushing:

Here's what you said:


the ONLY fields with majority having degrees are management and businessmen.

You only stated those who have degrees - in other words, all those who go to college. You never specified which type of degrees. Nice try though.

[hatzel]

it has to do with training and knowledge and skills being means of production in themselves

And the lowest factory workers also have training and knowledge and skills (they no how to use the machines, for example), thus there is no proletariat...:confused:

Seriously, if you're actually a revolutionary leftist, then you're an idiot. In fact, I don't think you are a leftist. I do, however, think you're an idiot :)

[twenty percent tip]

I think a big trouble is the difference generationally. Of the Baby Boomer generation, the universities were predominantly bourgeois, petty bourgeois, coordinator factories. However, more recently, a larger and larger fraction of the population will attend at the very least community college and vocational and other post-HS educational programs, as opposed to entering the factory as was once the case.

fine can you prove that with stats? can you refute my state while your at it? and you explain why they would need to highly train more workers when the trend is toward less skilled work and a huge boom in mindless service jobs while manufacturing and the like gets pissed down the sewer? thanks comrade

[Magón]

I don't think a lot of people on here, make Marxist or Anarchist thought/theory, just a phase like finding entertainment in something at one moment, and then are done with it in another. I think most people on here are pretty serious about it, and have done their share of work with Leftist groups or just the average social organized event.

[twenty percent tip]

I'm going to college through Federal loans you ignorant liberal. By no means can I afford college, and having to put myself in a massive debt just to acquire a degree.

which youll pay back when you graduate which means you absolutely can afford it. if you couldnt afford it they wouldnt give you the loan. who the fuck gives a loan that wont be paid back?

and debt doesnt make you working class. there are business owners with huge debt. why you think blockbuster went bankrupt? because adam sandlers movies suck?


You only stated those who have degrees - in other words, all those who go to college. You never specified which type of degrees. Nice try though.

guess theyre not teaching you to read in college. the only two fields where the majority of people have degrees are managers and business men . try it again slower this time

get some rest

[twenty percent tip]

I don't think a lot of people on here, make Marxist or Anarchist thought/theory, just a phase like finding entertainment in something at one moment, and then are done with it in another. I think most people on here are pretty serious about it, and have done their share of work with Leftist groups or just the average social organized event.

so why are the majority of party members college STUDENTS (not even graduates, which means theyre leaving when they graduate.

how many people with jobs, spouses, families are in left wing parties?

how many ex communists are now neo cons. how many??

[hatzel]

how many people with jobs, spouses, families are in left wing parties?

how many ex communists are now neo cons. how many??

I thought you were the man with the stats, why don't you tell us? :rolleyes:

[The Vegan Marxist]

Clearly this guy/girl has no idea what the hell s/he's talking about. This was published just a few months ago:


This recession has hit young adults particularly hard [...] So hard that a whopping 85% of college seniors planned to move back home with their parents after graduation last May [...] That rate has steadily risen from 67% in 2006.

Boomerang kids: 85% of college grads move home
By Jessica Dickler, staff writerNovember 15, 2010

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Getting a degree used to be a stepping stone to limitless career opportunities. Now it's more of a hiatus from living under your parents' roof.

Stubbornly high unemployment -- nearly 15% for those ages 20-24 -- has made finding a job nearly impossible. And without a job, there's nowhere for these young adults to go but back to their old bedrooms, curfews and chore charts. Meet the boomerangers.

"This recession has hit young adults particularly hard," according to Rich Morin, senior editor at the Pew Research Center in DC.

So hard that a whopping 85% of college seniors planned to move back home with their parents after graduation last May, according to a poll by Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm based in Philadelphia. That rate has steadily risen from 67% in 2006.

"It's peaking at levels we have not seen before," said David Morrison, managing director and founder of Twentysomething.

Mallory Jaroski, 22 graduated from Penn State University in May but has been living at home with her mother while looking for a job in press relations. "It's not bad living with my mom, but I feel like a little kid. I have a little bed, a little room," she says.

Jaroski thought she would stay for summer. But like many others, she's found her stay becoming significantly longer.

"There's almost an expectation that kids will move back home, there is no stigma attached," Morrison said. "The thought now is to move home for 6-12 months but in reality those young adults will be home for a year and a half or longer. Even if they have jobs, they are living at home."

Jessie Sawyer, 23, graduated in May of last year and moved back home with her parents while she looked for a job. She has since been hired as a local editor for Patch.com, a news site, but has yet to move out of her parents' home.

"I'm trying to save up to move out," she said. But "the new job is 10 minutes from where I live so it's convenient."

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/14/pf/boomerang_kids_move_home/index.htm

[twenty percent tip]

And the lowest factory workers also have training and knowledge and skills (they no how to use the machines, for example), thus there is no proletariat...

those are entry level jobs. your trained on the job. they hire anyone off the street. your not sold the skills like you are with a medical degree. you cant take your training and open "jims private how to pull a fucking lever office. come here and make me rich cause i have specialized training on how to check candy bars for damage on a production line."

and answer the doctor and carpenter question "idiot".

[Magón]

so why are the majority of party members college STUDENTS (not even graduates, which means theyre leaving when they graduate.

how many people with jobs, spouses, families are in left wing parties?

how many ex communists are now neo cons. how many??

Lots of people coming out of college or university, don't have families to look after, because if they did, they'd be in even more debt than they already are. There's a reason why students in the world, are fighting the government on the matter of them trying to increase the tuition rate.

[twenty percent tip]

because only workers live at home during college and only working class can be ruined by capitalist crisis which is why all those stock investers who jumped to their deaths from buildings during the great depression were workers :laugh:


You're setting yourself up for the grammar police. Detective Amphictyonis at your service :)

sorry mom i had to leave school as a teen and get a job because no one bought me food or gave me a place to stay. i was one of them dummy workers you hear so much about

[twenty percent tip]

this thread is all defensive. WHAT ABOUT ME???? :crying: IM IN COLLEGE AND IM A PROLETARIAT REVOLUTIONARY! ILL NEVER GIVE UP OR EXPLOIT ANYONE!!!!!

not one person has tried to answer why left parties are full of college students

what a fucking waste :bored:

[Magón]

this thread is all defensive. WHAT ABOUT ME???? :crying: IM IN COLLEGE AND IM A PROLETARIAT REVOLUTIONARY! ILL NEVER GIVE UP OR EXPLOIT ANYONE!!!!!

not one person has tried to answer why left parties are full of college students

what a fucking waste :bored:

Because they're interested in the politics and where they stand on say students and tuition fees, etc. Maybe that could be it?

[hatzel]

what a fucking waste :bored:

This will surely change your mind. A good proletarian song:

XAJ_qwuhVdU

Not such a waste anymore, this thread :)

[Die Rote Fahne]

That's like saying little Timmy Peters, the 3rd grade student, isn't working class.

[The Vegan Marxist]

which youll pay back when you graduate which means you absolutely can afford it. if you couldnt afford it they wouldnt give you the loan. who the fuck gives a loan that wont be paid back?

Bullshit again! Most college graduates are unable to pay off their loans until many years after said graduation, and others aren't able to pay it off at all

http://www.alliancebernstein.com/CSC/StoryPage.aspx?cid=40400&pid=3


and debt doesnt make you working class. there are business owners with huge debt. why you think blockbuster went bankrupt? because adam sandlers movies suck?

But neither me, nor my family are business owners. My mother is a house wife because she has seizures and is unable to acquire work from such. And my step-father works for AT&T, climbing phone poles, getting paid shitty wages with no union help.


guess theyre not teaching you to read in college. the only two fields where the majority of people have degrees are managers and business men . try it again slower this time

Except for the fact that the majority of college student graduates are Associate degree holders. Which doesn't qualify to your statistic of them being "managers and/or business men".

You're seriously making yourself look ignorant here. It's best if you just stopped now.

[Geiseric]

this thread is fucking retarded. Trotsky, Lenin, Che, Castro, Mao, Marx, and Engels all went to college, and even LED revolutions. A college education has nothing to do with ones class allegiances, the individual's political beliefs and experiances decide that. I mean it's just about getting a job you want so your parents will end their seiceless *****ing for me, I don't even want a familly or anything.

[black magick hustla]

so why are the majority of party members college STUDENTS (not even graduates, which means theyre leaving when they graduate.

how many people with jobs, spouses, families are in left wing parties?

how many ex communists are now neo cons. how many??
idk the orgs ive hung out around were made of middle aged chain smokers

[Invader Zim]

Most of the billionaires are the ones who said "fuck this," skipped college, and started businesses.

An interesting claim, and one I took upon myself to investigate. An examination of the USA's top 25 richest individuals (exclusing the Walton's, Anne Cox Chamber's, and others who inhereted their wealth or at least a considerable headstart) suggests a different story - that every single one has at least a partial college education.

1. Bill Gates - Harvard (dropped out)
2. Warren Buffett - Columbia
3. Larry Eillison - University of Chicago (dropped out)
4. Charles Koch - MIT
5. Michael Bloomberg - Harvard
6. Larry Page - Stanford
7. Sergey Brin - Stanford
8. Sheldon Adelson - CCNY (dropped out)
9. George Soros - London School of Economics
10.Michael Dell - UT Austin (dropped out)
11. Steve Ballmer - Harvard
12. Paul Allen - Washington State (dropped out)
13. Jeff Bezos - Princeton
14. John Paulson - Harvard
15. Donald Bren - University of Washington
16. Phil Knight - Stanford
17. Carl Icahn - Princeton
18. James Simons - MIT
19. Len Blavatnik - Harvard
20. Steve Cohen - Pennsylvania
21. Edward Johnson - Harvard
22. Philip Anschutz - University of Kansas
23. Mark Zuckerberg - Harvard (dropped out)
24. James Goodnight - NC State
25. Jack Taylor - WUSTL

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

this thread is fucking retarded. Trotsky, Lenin, Che, Castro, Mao, Marx, and Engels all went to college, and even LED revolutions.

Leaving aside Marx and Engels (who didn't lead any revolutions), how did those others turn out?

[727Goon]

Let's be real though, even if a lot of college kids came from the working class, how many working class jobs require a college education? I can only think of two, teaching and nursing. College educated people will generally become the bourgeois even if they dont come from the bourgeois.

[727Goon]

[QUOTE=Syd Barrett;2067882]Trotsky, Lenin, Che, Castro, Mao, Marx, and Engels all went to college, QUOTE]

Trotsky, Lenin, Che, Castro, Mao and Marx all came from bourgeois families and became part of the ruling class under state capitalism (obviously with the exception of Marx).

[black magick hustla]

Let's be real though, even if a lot of college kids came from the working class, how many working class jobs require a college education? I can only think of two, teaching and nursing. College educated people will generally become the bourgeois even if they dont come from the bourgeois.
serving coffee
flipping burguers
etc etc

you would be surprised how many of them end up with bachelor degrees.

computer monkey job, anything requiring number crunching

[black magick hustla]

anyway im not gonna get all defensive yo i hate college and i conned the government into giving me free money so i win

[727Goon]

serving coffee
flipping burguers
etc etc

you would be surprised how many of them end up with bachelor degrees.

computer monkey job, anything requiring number crunching

I guess man but thats probably a small percent. I mean most college grads probably are making that bread.

[The Vegan Marxist]

I guess man but thats probably a small percent. I mean most college grads probably are making that bread.

Getting rich doesn't mean you're not working class though. Marx never specified class position under definition of how much money you acquired, but rather how that money was acquired.

[727Goon]

Yeah and thats why Marx wasnt infallible. What do a lawyer employed by a law firm and a mccdonalds worker have in common besides the fact that Marx thinks they're both working class? I think Marx should have taken material wealth into account and not just relationship to the means of production.

[black magick hustla]

I guess man but thats probably a small percent. I mean most college grads probably are making that bread.
yea but idk whats making bread. the only ones that i know that are banking are like engineering and finance majors

[727Goon]

yea but idk whats making bread. the only ones that i know that are banking are like engineering and finance majors

Fair enough since you go to college you would know. Where I'm from you've made it if you go to college pretty much.

[black magick hustla]

is making 30k banking?

[black magick hustla]

Fair enough since you go to college you would know. Where I'm from you've made it if you go to college pretty much.

dude im from a fucking place were my neighbors get murdered for a gram of coke don't pull off that hood ass shit on me.

[727Goon]

Nah but thats not the average salary for college graduates its 46 gs which is doin pretty good.

[727Goon]

dude im from a fucking place were my neighbors get murdered for a gram of coke don't pull off that hood ass shit on me.

Nigga calm your ass haha its not even like that tbh my hood aint shit I'm just sayin if your going to college your doin ok and people think youre doing well for yourself.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Nigga calm your ass haha its not even like that tbh my hood aint shit I'm just sayin if your going to college your doin ok and people think youre doing well for yourself.

People can think all they want. But until they experience it themselves, they'll always attain an idealist perception over it. It's certainly not easy going through college, and having a degree most certainly doesn't grant you a good future. More and more college grads today are working jobs that pay minimum wage. I don't expect that I'll be a professional Psychologist when I get out of college. I'll try, but even then, it doesn't grant me a luxury.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The struggles of grad students put tears in my eyes.

[black magick hustla]

The struggles of grad students put tears in my eyes.

me 2 because i will be one

[Summerspeaker]

How about this: Law/business students are bourgeois or petty bourgeois, science/medical students are proletarian, and humanities students are lumpen. :lol:

[Bardo]

Yet only 29 percent of the population of America has a diploma.

Source please. According to the US Census Bureau 86.65% of persons over 25 in America had a high school diploma or equivilant in 2009. Plus 38.54% had an associates and/or bachelor's degree and 55.6% had some college level education.

You can't count 10 year olds in these statistics. :rolleyes:




We can assume that nearly all capitalists and petit-bourgeois graduated college.

We can also assume that many more people graduated college only to earn $40,000 a year. Are school teachers capitalists or petty bourgeois?



So we can see that at most about 4 percent of college graduates are working class. And those are the most well off minority.

Where are you finding these numbers? How would you even properly define working class in order to constuct such a survey? You're presenting an imaginary argument.

[Jose Gracchus]

I'm glad everyone is stooping to liberal sociological graphs to "prove" working class. Often, the peasantry was, in pure material terms, actually raised by being expropriated and proletarianized in the UK and early United States. I suppose Marx was wrong to observe this, to observe that people still resisted it, and to call them proletarians. I also did not know Marx made moralistic appeals to pure suffering the basis of class analysis. I also did not know that lumpenproles are more legitimately revolutionary, since they are "lower".

I agree the most well-paid salary-makers are corporate executives and corporate lawyers and doctors, and most of these people, rather than some guy in the city who directly owns 10 factories, are the modern bourgeoisie (and permanently allied capitalistic coordinators). I agree that at high enough salaries, the material conditions vis-a-vis subsistence and thus social relations in society dramatically change, the commodity character of labor substantially subsides, and the like. But let us not take this to absurdity. I know people who graduated from fancy Jesuit-run liberal arts schools, work in education, and have classmates from high school who became electricians who make more money than them. Is college education a privilege? Sure. But no one ever said some proletarians are not better privileged (are white proles, male proles, not proles?), better skilled, higher access to social opportunities. Sure, we should account for the way relative material and social privilege and remuneration affects social relations, and update class analysis for the contemporary era. But we should not abandon it to go down the rabbit hole of sympathy for only the most 'deserving'. Down that path lies the AFL-CIO pigeonholing current workers' struggles as "attacks" on the "middle class" and "American Dream" and a continued sequestration of the class struggle. Productive labor at the point of real production, for obvious reasons, remains a backbone of the working-class. Those workers who are deprived of many social and material privileges, and are sequestered with the most mindless, de-skilled, and disempowering job roles, are those who are most in need of intensified struggles. This is all true. The New Left, in my mind, and I think many others, ran aground basing itself way too much solely in questions of identity, and in class terms, among (at the time, especially), very privileged predominantly white, often coordinator or petty bourgeois, student strata. However, the student population has been progressively proletarianized, especially as community colleges and small four-year state colleges, massive scholarship programs for the land-grant universities, and the total destruction of livable labor opportunities for those with only a HS education. We live in a complicated time, and should adjust our class analysis to reflect it. Not abandon it in the pursuit of the truly virtuous and authentic worker. We do need to make sure future struggles keep the working people in the drivers' seat, with fellow traveler, intellectual, and student elements firmly in a supportive role. But I see no virtue in alienating them deliberately.

As for why the sects are composed of students, well, I should think that is obvious: they are dysfunctional and in fact isolated from the class and the class struggle. But people are working to bridge and close the gap, and to move us forward. I don't think those efforts are fruitless, or to be disdained and mocked. I don't think throwing up one's hands and calling them fruitless is any help.

EDIT: The formerly privileged, often educated and skilled, middle strata of the working class, and the lower fractions of the coordinator class and petty bourgeoisie, are currently being stripped of their privileges and class position everywhere by ubiquitous austerity. I think the Left would do well to openly welcome the newly proletarianized former coordinators and former petty bourgeois and the formerly-privileged proletarians within their ranks, rather than leave them to the new fascists that will surely crawl out from under their rocks to proselytize them.

[black magick hustla]

fucking college moonbats and their hemp sandals and their veganism and their maldorors

[RedScare]

* Slight Defensiveness *


I don't think college students are really by definition part of any class, in the traditional sense, they're not fully integrated into the economy, still dependent on their parents. We may come from all sorts of classes, but simply being college students doesn't make us one class or another. It's what we do when we leave college and enter the economy that defines the class we belong to.

[black magick hustla]

i dont think twenty percent tip is old he sounds like a hipster slamming a forty and trolling leftists which im fine with btw

[black magick hustla]

bulletpoints to troll revleft

1) kronstadt

2) anything that makes boring generalizations about men

3) calling college students petit bourgeois

[StalinFanboy]

bulletpoints to troll revleft

1) kronstadt



You got somethin to say blud?

[RedScare]

bulletpoints to troll revleft

1) kronstadt

2) anything that makes boring generalizations about men

3) calling college students petit bourgeois

I'd add making a new Stalin vs. Trotsky thread. Or setting Red Dave and the Maoists off against each other.

[bcbm]

* Slight Defensiveness *


I don't think college students are really by definition part of any class, in the traditional sense, they're not fully integrated into the economy, still dependent on their parents. We may come from all sorts of classes, but simply being college students doesn't make us one class or another. It's what we do when we leave college and enter the economy that defines the class we belong to.

the university doesn't exist outside of the economy, it is a huge, profitable industry

[Franz Fanonipants]

this is a boring thread.

but thankfully, it is the thread where i learned that ngnm finally got restricted so that's cool.

but basically this is a boring thread.

[Franz Fanonipants]

me 2 because i will be one
real talk i've been on foodstamps the entire time

[RED DAVE]

I'd add making a new Stalin vs. Trotsky thread. Or setting Red Dave and the Maoists off against each other.Did someone call me, or was it some kronstadt-loving male chauvenist petit-bourgeois student?

RED DAVE

[ChrisK]

Did someone call me, or was it some kronstadt-loving male chauvenist petit-bourgeois student?

RED DAVE

We called. We need some entertainment. Go annihilate some Maoists!

[Robocommie]

We called. We need some entertainment. Go annihilate some Maoists!

This feels like dog-fighting... :(

Place your bets!

[Hammilton]

There's a large section of the working class that highly values education and forces their children to go to college (or forces as much as anyone can force a semi-adult).

[Arilou Lalee'lay]

I agree the most well-paid salary-makers are corporate executives and corporate lawyers and doctors, and most of these people, rather than some guy in the city who directly owns 10 factories, are the modern bourgeoisie (and permanently allied capitalistic coordinators)...


I'll argue that it's still most useful to define the bourgeoisie as the ~1% who make enough from what they own that they don't have to work. Doctors may make more than other workers, but more is stolen from them as well. Nor do they have any decision making power over what happens in their work place.

A proletarian is someone who does not own the means of production. This is the accepted usage. The terms blue collar and white collar are closer to what you're talking about, so use those if you want everyone to understand your meaning.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There's a large section of the working class that highly values education and forces their children to go to college (or forces as much as anyone can force a semi-adult).

I think a lot of workers push college hard because they want their decades of labor to at least enable their kids to not have to do the same thing. I know a lot of mill workers and miners who pushed their kids to become professionals or self-employed.

[nuisance]

who cares whether students are working class or not, they certainly do not own any capital, if their selling their labour or not.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Doctors may make more than other workers, but more is stolen from them as well. Nor do they have any decision making power over what happens in their work place.

Really? Leaving aside private practices, a lot of doctors have a major impact on the way things are run in clinics and hospitals. They sit on boards, make policies, etc. They have the skills and training to be able to do that, and to go somewhere else when they please.


A proletarian is someone who does not own the means of production. This is the accepted usage.

Accepted by who? That definition is too limited. It would include police, politicians, CIA agents, foreman, managers, hell even the president of the USA.

[Jose Gracchus]

I'll argue that it's still most useful to define the bourgeoisie as the ~1% who make enough from what they own that they don't have to work. Doctors may make more than other workers, but more is stolen from them as well. Nor do they have any decision making power over what happens in their work place.

Post-resident medical doctors are certainly coordinators. They supervise and have managerial authority over the nurses and physicians assistants and technicians who serve under their specialization. Medical doctors who are full-fledged partners in owning their own clinic or practice - even if the practice merely contracts their labor and those of their employees to a hospital or other purchaser - are petty bourgeois or small capitalists, by definition. Recall that artisans and individual farmers were considered petty bourgeois in the Marxist model: they own their own means of production, or capital, even if it they labor it themselves. I do agree there is still a finer distinction to be made between those petty bourgeois or self-employed who also do not exploit others labor, versus those that do. The difference was observed in various revolutionary programs throughout history. The CNT-FAI and the Kronstadters, for example, drew a distinction between peasants who possessed and worked their own land, and those that possessed land and also hired labor.

Resident doctors are skilled workers, but since they expect to become coordinators or exploiting petty bourgeois in short order, they do not exhibit much in the way of class consciousness. In practice they're much like guild artisan apprentices slaving under a master they intend to replace someday in the old scheme, rather than true workers.


A proletarian is someone who does not own the means of production. This is the accepted usage. The terms blue collar and white collar are closer to what you're talking about, so use those if you want everyone to understand your meaning.

The Bolsheviks actually considered white collar employees [sluzhashchie] to be non-proletarian. Not that I am accepting their use as the legitimate one, they tended to absorb the Kautskyite "only factory proles are real ones" prejudice. Just pointing out some historical context. Subsequent historical scholarship [D. Orlovsky's "The Hidden Class: White Collar Workers in the Soviet 1920s", Simon Pirani's The Russian Revolution in Retreat, p. 23] has tended to reappraise these strata from Bolshevik prejudices, and has identified them as part of or closely allied to the factory proletariat, despite communist and industrial prejudices.

[Gorilla]

I'll argue that it's still most useful to define the bourgeoisie as the ~1% who make enough from what they own that they don't have to work.

What about retirees?


Doctors may make more than other workers, but more is stolen from them as well. Nor do they have any decision making power over what happens in their work place.

A proletarian is someone who must work for a wage to live. A doctor or other high-wage worker with his house paid down, a substantial chunk of 401K, big life insurance policy whatever, might be able to stop working tomorrow and live at some sort of minimal subsistence level. That would not be proletarian.

[Jose Gracchus]

Gorilla: Couldn't that also apply to the heyday of American unionized workers? At what point do white collars become plausibly a strange-kind of potentially idle petty bourgeoisie [possessing only a distant investment vehicle relation to the MOP]?

The modern bourgeoisie are tricky. There are the idle rich and heirs, there are the semi-functioning capitalist families who function as major institutional investors in modern industry and finance, coalescing in such entities a private equity firms and the like, and then there are high-functioning capitalists who not only own considerable interests but participate directly in a managerial capacity in a firm [or many]. Then there are the rising managerial strata which may manage capitalist firms as executives and may aspire to become true bourgeois, but for whom their remuneration in their capacity as a hired manager is their core means of enrichment.

[Arilou Lalee'lay]

Good point about doctors who own their practice, and thanks for the history.

I fail to see the usefulness of distinguishing a coordinator class from the rest of the proletarians. My manager at work has a set of tasks to do that her boss has set out, some of those involve giving us orders. But it's still work, and she still has no real power. I agree that it's useful in many situations to treat the rich CEOs like the feudal aristocracy. They're given the biggest bribe, a bribe so big they're almost indistinguishable from their masters, (and thus have nothing to gain by overthrowing them) in order to create trusted servants.

Where did you get the idea of a coordinator class? Is it a recent invention?

[Gorilla]

The modern bourgeoisie are tricky. There are the idle rich and heirs, there are the semi-functioning capitalist families who function as major institutional investors in modern industry and finance, coalescing in such entities a private equity firms and the like, and then there are high-functioning capitalists who not only own considerable interests but participate directly in a managerial capacity in a firm [or many]. Then there are the rising managerial strata which may manage capitalist firms as executives and may aspire to become true bourgeois, but for whom their remuneration in their capacity as a hired manager is their core means of enrichment.

Sometimes I think it's more rewarding not to get too caught up in dividing the middle strata. There are proletarians, there is capital. There are a number of unstable formations in between; the general tendency of capital will be to raise a few of those up into the bourgeoisie and grind the rest down into the proletariat.

That instability is why there's no good, consistent way to name and divide them - the names are inconsistent because the social formations themselves are inconsistent.

That instability is also why the middle strata are so (http://www.grannyd.com/) fucking (http://www.larouchepub.com/) stupid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck) and (http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-06-06/entertainment/17120245_1_obama-s-presence-new-age-black-president) crazy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-consumerism).

[Tim Finnegan]

A proletarian is someone who must work for a wage to live. A doctor or other high-wage worker with his house paid down, a substantial chunk of 401K, big life insurance policy whatever, might be able to stop working tomorrow and live at some sort of minimal subsistence level. That would not be proletarian.
I'm not sure I understand this- how does a greater level of financial security indicate a fundamentally different relationship to the means of production? Wouldn't that, by extension, suggest that any waged worker with enough in the way of savings to live off for even a day would be a non-proletarian until the point at which his savings ran out? :confused:

[Arilou Lalee'lay]

@Nothing Human and Gorilla:
Fine, my definition was incomplete. They have to not control the means of production and sell their labor. I thought it was implied that people who don't participate in production (retirees, politicians) aren't included. Though I could see someone arguing that retirees are no longer proletarians, and I'd argue that a politician isn't bourgeois qua politician.


lot of doctors have a major impact on the way things are run in clinics and hospitals.

And I, as a fast food worker, have a say in how much bread we pan each night and how much pastrami we thaw. The owner (a government controlled by the bourgeoisie, if not the bourgeoisie themselves, in the case of doctors) can override these at any point and fire the doctor if they don't comply (even if there's some abstraction in the chain of command). An analogy is the duma under the Tsar as compared to the soviets under the provisional government.

[Gorilla]

I'm not sure I understand this- how does a greater level of financial security indicate a fundamentally different relationship to the means of production?

Aren't financial instruments legal claims on means of production?


Wouldn't that, by extension, suggest that any waged worker with enough in the way of savings to live off for even a day would be a non-proletarian until the point at which his savings ran out? :confused:

I dunno. Maybe an heiress would be a proletarian for a couple days if she overspent her allowance for the month? :confused:

[Tim Finnegan]

Aren't financial instruments legal claims on means of production?
What are you referring to? (I certainly wouldn't say that either a 401k or an insurance plan constitute a legal claim on the means of production.)


I dunno. Maybe an heiress would be a proletarian for a couple days if she overspent her allowance for the month? :confused:
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

[Gorilla]

What are you referring to? (I certainly wouldn't say that either a 401k or an insurance plan constitute a legal claim on the means of production.)

At one remove or another, that's exactly what they are. I mean, you can't take your Fidelity prospectus down to the local auto plant and say here I'd like to take this lathe home with me, but Henry Ford VI can't either and he certainly wouldn't be a proletarian. So if a person has a 650K house paid down, plus a combined pension, 401K and life insurance policy that would add up to 400K after taxes and early withdrawal penalties etc. if cashed out now, you've no doubt got plenty of economic anxieties but the choice you're faced with is not exactly "work or starve".

[Tim Finnegan]

At one remove or another, that's exactly what they are.
How so? In neither case is one offered access to capital in the sense that the bourgeoisie have access to capital, nor are either a particularly elite privilege.


I mean, you can't take your Fidelity prospectus down to the local auto plant and say here I'd like to take this lathe home with me, but Henry Ford VI can't either and he certainly wouldn't be a proletarian.Aren't the "idle rich" understood to constitute a sort of lumpenbourgeoisie? That hardly offers an effective analogy to a financially secure salaried employee.


So if a person has a 650K house paid down, plus a combined pension, 401K and life insurance policy that would add up to 400K after taxes and early withdrawal penalties etc. if cashed out now, you've no doubt got plenty of economic anxieties but the choice you're faced with is not exactly "work or starve".Why is "work or starve" necessary to be proletarian? It sounds to me like your fetishising insecurity rather than commenting on objective economic relationships.

[Gorilla]

How so? In neither case is one offered access to capital in the sense that the bourgeoisie have access to capital, nor are either a particularly elite privilege.

Hardly anyone has the direct access to capital where they can just walk down to the shop floor and rip out a machine lathe to take home with them. That's the nature of financialization and Late Capitalism generally.


Why is "work or starve" necessary to be proletarian? It sounds to me like your fetishising insecurity rather than commenting on objective economic relationships.

"Work or starve" might be an exaggeration but "work for a wage or be deprived of the socially necessary means for reproduction" would capture it better. I'm not being some kind of Third Worldist here; that's actually how Marx and Engels define it.

The Communist Manifesto says the proletariat is "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." Engels in Principles of Communism says it 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."

When there is a conflict between capital and labor, wage workers who also hold capital assets will find themselves in a conflicted position. "Hm. Stronger unions may drive my wages up, but they may also tank my retirement fund." In this respect they will waver much like independent tradesmen and other middle strata.

[Jose Gracchus]

Good point about doctors who own their practice, and thanks for the history.

No problem.


I fail to see the usefulness of distinguishing a coordinator class from the rest of the proletarians. My manager at work has a set of tasks to do that her boss has set out, some of those involve giving us orders. But it's still work, and she still has no real power. I agree that it's useful in many situations to treat the rich CEOs like the feudal aristocracy. They're given the biggest bribe, a bribe so big they're almost indistinguishable from their masters, (and thus have nothing to gain by overthrowing them) in order to create trusted servants.

Where did you get the idea of a coordinator class? Is it a recent invention?

The coordinator class is a thesis of Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert of Parecon: Life After Capitalism fame. The idea is that the industrial division of labor and the separation between managerial and policy-making tasks vested in intellectual labor on one hand and menial labor or labor without substantial bargaining power on the other. The idea is that with the transition between 19th C. capitalism and the various incarnations of state capitalism, the massive finance establishment, modern mass media, the government bureaucracy involved the creation of the modern class of educated specialists. Hahnel and Albert contend that the bureaucratic and party apparatchik ruling class of the USSR and other states on that model were composed of coordinators. Following from this realization, Albert and Hahnel propose that the division of labor must be reconstructed on an egalitarian basis before classes can be fully abolished. They proposed that orthodox Marxism does not contend with the division of labor and modern intellectual labor, and with an exclusive focus on 19th C. property relations.

In a sense, this has something in common with conceptions which look at the coordinators as "petty proprietors of intellectual property", where a small caste of society has access to the specialized skills, education, and work roles which offer them relative power and privilege over the productive process and the political superstructure.

[Tim Finnegan]

Hardly anyone has the direct access to capital where they can just walk down to the shop floor and rip out a machine lathe to take home with them. That's the nature of financialization and Late Capitalism generally.
Obviously, but that's not what I meant. In the case of 401ks and retirement plans, the financial return would have to be greater than the level of their own exploitation, which I really doubt is ever the case for those outside of upper management, and by definition can not be the case for the majority. In the case of insurance, it assumes the removal from the proletariat based on a potential entitlement that most policy-holders will, by necessity, never be able to make, and so can again not be said to constitute access to capital. In neither case is the individual worker assured access to an extracted surplus value, but, rather, given the opportunity to have their own exploitation negated slightly. The only exception is in the case of major insurance claims, but that's not something which generally corresponds to class status before the entitlement became available.


"Work or starve" might be an exaggeration but "work for a wage or be deprived of the socially necessary means for reproduction" would capture it better. I'm not being some kind of Third Worldist here; that's actually how Marx and Engels define it.

The Communist Manifesto says the proletariat is "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." Engels in Principles of Communism defines it as "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."

When there is a conflict between capital and labor, wage workers who also hold capital assets will find themselves in a conflicted position. "Hm. Stronger unions may drive my wages up, but they may also tank my retirement fund." In this respect they will waver much like independent tradesmen and other middle strata.That's an (entirely reasonable) suggestion that individual workers are divided between their class interests and their individual interests, but not that a new class interest is generated, which is what you seemed to suggest by arguing that financially secure workers were not proletarian.