"You're not a worker"

[ReVoLuTiOnArYbUtGaNgStEr]

I work two small hour jobs, one as a cleaner and another cleaning, mopping serving in a kitchen. I always thought of myself and anyone who works and recieves a wage as a worker and thus proletarian.

Last night however I had a debate with a supposed Maoist, who claimed that I do not produce anything therfore I am not proletarian and that I recieve more money than the actual value of my labour. This he claims is true of the entire western population, that we are somehow spoilt brats and exploit the third world workers and mantain imperialism.

1. When did maoism become synonymous with reformism and abandonment of class analysis and why is it that every student who has read capital and bought a waterstones hardback of the red book feels they can get away with shitting on actual workers.

2. what happened to someones class being related to the means of production, their economic relation to those who control capital and the wether they work for a wage or not? It seems that some kind of wierd hippy lifestylism has infested the left and supposed communists say things like "Workers pay taxes that fund wars, if it were not for the ignorant and racist workers we wouldnt have wars in Iraq and Afghanistan"

3. How many students can the left absorb before were no longer a workers movement but a lifestylist fad club with ignorant little fucks who have never worked a day in their life condescending and telling me I am not a working class person?

4. ARGHHH I am so mad writing this:cursing:

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Fools like that don't understand things like false consciousness, surplus value and ownership over the means of production. In other words, he's probably not very Marxist.

Basically he is correct to point out that people in developed countries in general live better off than people in the 3rd world at least in part because of technological and material domination, but tbh he's an idiot for thinking that means that there are no proletarians in the USA or that American proletarians are somehow directly to blame for the whole situation. Your surplus labor is still being exploited regardless of the mercantile differences between various states, so you are still a worker. Americans are dominated by a media, education system and culture which is deeply jingoistic and thus is very effective at maintaining a level of false consciousness, so his moralizing attitude to the working class in the US is equally unfair. Don't worry, be happy, nobody will listen to him when the revolution comes because everyone will see how you worked through school.

Just out of curiosity, what were his living standards? He sounds like a hypocrite of massive proportions if he was moralizing in those circumstances.

[agnixie]

Factory fetish - it's annoyingly common with MLM. Except by that obsession, well, most people on earth today aren't actually workers, and you have to wonder what's the point of a workers' revolution if they're only a minority. Certainly, replacing a minority on top with another would just instate a new class system.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

1. When did maoism become synonymous with reformism and abandonment of class analysis and why is it that every student who has read capital and bought a waterstones hardback of the red book feels they can get away with shitting on actual workers.


It always was. Bloc of Four Classes, New Democracy, etcetera, all convenient strategies in the struggle but nonetheless quite counter-revolutionary and un-Marxist. Mao had never read Capital, either.

[Octavian]

The guy you were speaking to is a zealous pseudo-marxist. He's trying to criticize you on the basis of Marx's writing. If he was actually a marxist he would realize that Karl Marx was writing in the late 19th century. This means that at the time the only working class he saw were the workers in the factories or on farms with the focus being on the ones in the factories. The main working job today, clerks would have then been a middle class job and a rare one. Now that major corporations have exported the work to poorer countries where wage slaves can be easily bought to produce cheap products to export back to us. Of course that leaves us with management and clerk jobs so that we have just enough money to buy the things produced by the wage slaves on the other side of the world. All in all you should of told the guy to grow up and fuck off, it's the 21st century.

[ReVoLuTiOnArYbUtGaNgStEr]

Fools like that don't understand things like false consciousness, surplus value and ownership over the means of production. In other words, he's probably not very Marxist.

Basically he is correct to point out that people in developed countries in general live better off than people in the 3rd world at least in part because of technological and material domination, but tbh he's an idiot for thinking that means that there are no proletarians in the USA or that American proletarians are somehow directly to blame for the whole situation. Your surplus labor is still being exploited regardless of the mercantile differences between various states, so you are still a worker. Americans are dominated by a media, education system and culture which is deeply jingoistic and thus is very effective at maintaining a level of false consciousness, so his moralizing attitude to the working class in the US is equally unfair. Don't worry, be happy, nobody will listen to him when the revolution comes because everyone will see how you worked through school.

Just out of curiosity, what were his living standards? He sounds like a hypocrite of massive proportions if he was moralizing in those circumstances.

He is a student LOL

Also, see how I worked through school?, I am a worker, I am not in education comrade???

[Ocean Seal]

I work two small hour jobs, one as a cleaner and another cleaning, mopping serving in a kitchen. I always thought of myself and anyone who works and recieves a wage as a worker and thus proletarian.
You are correct in thinking so.


Last night however I had a debate with a supposed Maoist (from the sound of this Maoist-Third Worldist is more accurate), who claimed that I do not produce anything therfore I am not proletarian and that I recieve more money than the actual value of my labour. This he claims is true of the entire western population, that we are somehow spoilt brats and exploit the third world workers and mantain imperialism.

Well here's the thing. You do produce, you enable commerce for the bourgeoisie by cleaning, so you produce something of value (the service). Any notion of a "labor aristocrat bourgeoisified worker" is silly. Don't get mad, Maoists Third Worldists are an unfortunate symptom of a failed workers movement in many of the advanced nations and the belief that such a task isn't feasible in the advanced nations.

[thesadmafioso]

You have been made subject to the commodification of your labor and you are a subject of wage slavery, how are you not a worker?

[Hebrew Hammer]

Sounds like you talked to a LinBiaoist/TWist.

Factory fetishism? Neat.

[Agent Ducky]

What a stupid argument.Service workers are still workers..... Saying they're not is basically discounting a huge part of the American working class (which has shifted to service jobs...) People like this make leftism look bad. Let's alienate the workers we want to liberate by telling them they're not real workers >_<

[syndicat]

you aren't paid more than the value of your labor. if that were so, your employer wouldn't hire you.

anyway, workers are those who are hired for a wage, are subordinate to bosses, and don't manage other workers. class is a relation between people in social production based on the institutional arrangement, capitalism in this case.

there is a certain type of extremist Third Worldist Maoism that holds that the entire working class of the "first world" isn't "really" working class because they supposedly participate in the exploitation of the third world. it's a highly distorted form of the "labor aristocracy" theory.

the problem with this line of argument:

1. most profits of capitalists in first world countries aren't made in the third world but thru the exploitation of workers in the first world.

2. capitalists don't voluntarily share their profits with workers. they give us only what they must. and if what they gave us was less than our productivity, they'd be losing money when they hire us. but in fact profits in the USA are at record highs.

3. wages in the USA have fallen for over 30 years...more than at any previous time in the history of the USA. meanwhile our productivity has gone up by around 75 percent. that's why the American capitalists are raking in record profits.

4. third world countries are also capitalist countries which usually have extreme forms of inequality. the local elite in those countries dominate and exploit the working class there. thus the exploitation of the third world by first world capitalists isn't exploitation of the country but exploitation of the working class there, in which the local elite are partners...as in the case of China for example. the struggle isn't nation against nation but class against class....world wide.

[A Marxist Historian]

The guy you were speaking to is a zealous pseudo-marxist. He's trying to criticize you on the basis of Marx's writing. If he was actually a marxist he would realize that Karl Marx was writing in the late 19th century. This means that at the time the only working class he saw were the workers in the factories or on farms with the focus being on the ones in the factories. The main working job today, clerks would have then been a middle class job and a rare one. Now that major corporations have exported the work to poorer countries where wage slaves can be easily bought to produce cheap products to export back to us. Of course that leaves us with management and clerk jobs so that we have just enough money to buy the things produced by the wage slaves on the other side of the world. All in all you should of told the guy to grow up and fuck off, it's the 21st century.

In fact, the guy isn't even a 19th century Marxist. Marx spent a lot of time analyzing the service sector, especially in vol. 2 of capital, and came to the conclusion that whatever sector of the economy you are in, if you work for a capitalist and a capitalist is profiting off your labor, you are a member of the working class, even if both you and the capitalist are providing a service and the surplus value generated elsewhere in the economy is what you and he get paid out of.

In fact, he argued that as capitalism advances, even the petty bourgeoisie gets proletarianized. The example he used being schoolteachers, who originally were like doctors and lawyers but were getting proletarianized even in his day.

So in short, the guy's an idiot not a Marxist of any kind.

-M.H.-

[#FF0000]

Holy shit you met a Third Worldist irl.

[Kuppo Shakur]

Haha "your"? They said "your" instead of "you're"? Thus is the poverty of third-worldism.

[human strike]

The proletariat isn't smaller than ever, it's bigger than ever.

[Tim Cornelis]

In fact, the guy isn't even a 19th century Marxist. Marx spent a lot of time analyzing the service sector, especially in vol. 2 of capital, and came to the conclusion that whatever sector of the economy you are in, if you work for a capitalist and a capitalist is profiting off your labor, you are a member of the working class, even if both you and the capitalist are providing a service and the surplus value generated elsewhere in the economy is what you and he get paid out of.

In fact, he argued that as capitalism advances, even the petty bourgeoisie gets proletarianized. The example he used being schoolteachers, who originally were like doctors and lawyers but were getting proletarianized even in his day.

So in short, the guy's an idiot not a Marxist of any kind.

-M.H.-

Doesn't that mean that most CEOs are proletarians as well as they are wage workers for a capitalist?

[Dacaru]

Doesn't that mean that most CEOs are proletarians as well as they are wage workers for a capitalist?
No, because a CEO's compensation package almost always includes equity. Thus they are managers and owners to various degrees, who are responsible for maintaining and increasing profitability for stakeholders. Now IF there is a ceo who has increased the profitability/rate of exploitation of a company and never received equity and/ a huge salary then they have been exploited but I do not think that makes them a proletarian. It is safe say they have received their exploitation in turn.

[Boris Krinkle]

MTW is counterculture fetishism, not ideology.

[Robocommie]

Holy shit you met a Third Worldist irl.

I guess they DO exist. This guy should carry around a camera in case he bumps into a unicorn.

[Blackburn]

This kind of douchebag is the kind of ranting lameo, that abandons his Leftism when his father scores him a graduate position at Goldman Sachs.

In fact this sort of 'you are not a worker' rhetoric sounds very much like the backbone to some future Capitalist Apologetics he will indulge in. :laugh:

[Jimmie Higgins]

3. wages in the USA have fallen for over 30 years...more than at any previous time in the history of the USA. meanwhile our productivity has gone up by around 75 percent. that's why the American capitalists are raking in record profits.100% spot on answers, but just to add a little to this point: real wages have fallen while the US has gained greater control over other parts of the world in the last 30 years. This makes the argument about 1st world workers gaining from imperialism just blatantly false.

[Blackburn]

Can a mod please correct the spelling in the thread title?? This will drive me nuts otherwise!

[La Comédie Noire]

Karl Marx was pretty clear on unproductive labor, even in volume 1 of Capital:


Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern industry, accompanied as it is by both a more extensive and a more intense exploitation of labour-power in all other spheres of production, allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working-class, and the consequent reproduction, on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, &c.

The capitalist uses machinery to lower the amount of socially necessary required for our reproduction as workers IE: it makes commodities cheaper. Thus allows the working class to engage in projects such as building roads, staffing hospitals, cleaning, providing entertainment, and researching science. It is a feature of a fully developed working class and a capitalist society.

[A Marxist Historian]

Doesn't that mean that most CEOs are proletarians as well as they are wage workers for a capitalist?

Nope. They get stock options and stuff like that. What's a stock? It's a membership ticket in the capitalist class.

And besides, they're never paid by the hour, they are on salary.

They run the companies more than the stockholders do most of the time, and they get to *decide* what they get paid!

I suppose if capitalism develops long enough, the middle managers even get proletarianized, locked in little cubicles and banging away at their keyboards on the clock, never even meeting who they are supervising face to face but just following the Company Plan.

But not the CEOs.

-M.H.-

[Hebrew Hammer]

Can a mod please correct the spelling in the thread title?? This will drive me nuts otherwise!

Correct spellling is reactionary.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Karl Marx was pretty clear on unproductive labor, even in volume 1 of Capital:



The capitalist uses machinery to lower the amount of socially necessary required for our reproduction as workers IE: it makes commodities cheaper. Thus allows the working class to engage in projects such as building roads, staffing hospitals, cleaning, providing entertainment, and researching science. It is a feature of a fully developed working class and a capitalist society.



you basically answered a burning question i have had for a while.

[o well this is ok I guess]

Though if it were true, I'd take it less as an insult and more of a rallying point.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Extract from a longer article (http://theorangepress.com/woid/woid20/woidxx01.html):


Players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. - Adam Smith.
Remember the little pencil in Economics 101? The wittle pencil that wanders through the world to selflessly help out wherever there's a need for pencils? Culture's like that pencil from the capitalist point of view, minus the pencil and the demand: it's all about circulation, and the control of circulation, and that control in all its forms applies as much to the audience for art as to the buyers for pencils......

[Martin Blank]

In fact, he argued that as capitalism advances, even the petty bourgeoisie gets proletarianized. The example he used being schoolteachers, who originally were like doctors and lawyers but were getting proletarianized even in his day.

This is a vast oversimplification. It is not so much that the petty bourgeoisie itself is being proletarianized, but that the development of the capitalist mode of production cycles various jobs out of the petty bourgeoisie and replaces them with others. In the 20th century, many of these jobs were proletarianized, such as teachers, clerks/secretaries and autoworkers (the latter's predecessor being the artisans and craftsmen who created horse-drawn carriages). However, within a generation of these occupations being proletarianized, their composition had changed. Most of those whose parents or grandparents had been in these professional positions had graduated up into the "new" petty-bourgeois occupations, while these newly-proletarianized jobs were filled by those who were born into the working class. Sure, a few from the petty bourgeoisie went down with the ship, so to speak, but their numbers were quickly replaced, keeping the class stable enough to continue to fulfill their role as the organizers and administrators of exploitation -- the "overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen".

[Jimmie Higgins]

Nope. They get stock options and stuff like that. What's a stock? It's a membership ticket in the capitalist class.I agree with what you're saying in general, but a lot of unionized workers in the US had benefits and wage increases taken away and exchanged for stock options in the 1990s. Still I think worker's total ownership of stocks are something like 8% of stocks so even if all working class people put all their stocks together they don't have any real control or decision-making power.

But, yeah, I agree that the important distinction as you said is that CEOs can actually have influence over production and are not exploited like the proletariat even if they are a low-paid CEO of a small company (relatively in terms of CEOs because low paid is still probably 10x the average worker's wage). I just wanted to add the point above because it used to be a common argument that because so many large employers we offering stock-options that class no longer really exists. Rand Paul still makes this argument but since the stock collapse and recession it is a much less common argument.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

And besides, they're never paid by the hour, they are on salary.


In some places quite a lot of industrial jobs for common workers are also on salary, though; and all public service personnel also get salaries.

So how does that factor into your distinction?

[Coach Trotsky]

I guess they DO exist. This guy should carry around a camera in case he bumps into a unicorn.

I've met these types running around on the Ann Arbor campus at the University of Michigan.

[Tim Finnegan]

In some places quite a lot of industrial jobs for common workers are also on salary, though; and all public service personnel also get salaries.

So how does that factor into your distinction?
And, in fact, salaried labour, imprecise as the exchange is, can often lead to a great deal of hidden exploitation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/unpaid-overtime-free-labour-flexible).

If there's one thing that the left needs to overcome, it's the conflation of the essential characteristics of the working class with particular characteristics of low-to-mid strata employment. The rapid proletarianisation of the so-called "middle classes" is one of the most significant social trends of this era, and if we ignore, then we're only fooling ourselves.

[danyboy27]

a worker is someone who use, create or maintain a mean of production.

If you mop the floor of a mean of production, you are a worker.

and if you are a studient, you are a worker undergoing an intensive training.

[Principia Ethica]

I get this a lot. . .and I hate it. It's almost as if I don't work in some sort of factory and get smut all over my face, and wear boots. . .I'm not a "worker." Funny how I feel like I work my ass off. . .and funny the only folks I get to "boss around" here are my 2 dogs. (They get a treat each time though.)

[A Marxist Historian]

I agree with what you're saying in general, but a lot of unionized workers in the US had benefits and wage increases taken away and exchanged for stock options in the 1990s. Still I think worker's total ownership of stocks are something like 8% of stocks so even if all working class people put all their stocks together they don't have any real control or decision-making power.

But, yeah, I agree that the important distinction as you said is that CEOs can actually have influence over production and are not exploited like the proletariat even if they are a low-paid CEO of a small company (relatively in terms of CEOs because low paid is still probably 10x the average worker's wage). I just wanted to add the point above because it used to be a common argument that because so many large employers we offering stock-options that class no longer really exists. Rand Paul still makes this argument but since the stock collapse and recession it is a much less common argument.

Giving workers stocks instead of money is a deliberate effort at getting them to think like capitalists instead of workers. This is especially true in the labor aristocracy, which I used to be on the fringe of. My unionized fellow labor aristocrats would literally spend their break time talking obsessively about how their stocks were doing, and no this did definitely not help their union consciousness.

And another reason for getting workers involved in the stock market is the obvious one. When they lose their shirts, the stock sharks profit. As recently.

Hilferding put it real well in Finanzkapital, when he explained how the stock market was an important mechanism for capital concentration and monopoly, transferring wealth out of the hands of the middle classes into that of monopoly capital.

So every time some Silicon Valley computer jockey loses his shirt in the market and finds himself selling Apples on street corners, capitalism has been furthered so he should be proud, if he is an Ayn Randite which he probably is.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

And, in fact, salaried labour, imprecise as the exchange is, can often lead to a great deal of hidden exploitation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/unpaid-overtime-free-labour-flexible).

If there's one thing that the left needs to overcome, it's the conflation of the essential characteristics of the working class with particular characteristics of low-to-mid strata employment. The rapid proletarianisation of the so-called "middle classes" is one of the most significant social trends of this era, and if we ignore, then we're only fooling ourselves.

Indeed, they is they is and we are fools if we don't see it. This gets hidden all sorts of ways. Put 'em on salary and you don't have to pay 'em overtime. And best of all if you make 'em "subcontractors," then they have no rights at all basically.

CEOs really are salaried. A lot of so-called "salaried professions" are just shams to hide reality.

Marx BTW *predicted* the proletarianization of the middle strata very explicitly. Though it is quite true that new middle strata are regularly created to replace them.

It's pretty obvious though that the middle strata are declining now, despite this. All the talk of "the decline of the middle class" is not simply and only a disguised way of talking about the impoverization of the American workers. Those college tuition rates skyrocketing are a very significant social phenomenon.

This is a fairly recent development in the USA, because even as late as the '90s this was hidden by the fact that the US position as sole superpower after the Soviet collapse ramped up imperial exploitation, misnomered as "globalization." So the proletarianization of much of the Third World required a growth in the service sector in the belly of the beast.

-M.H.-

[Black Sheep]

If he was actually a marxist he would realize that Karl Marx was writing in the late 19th century. This means that at the time the only working class he saw were the workers in the factories or on farms with the focus being on the ones in the factories. The main working job today, clerks would have then been a middle class job and a rare one.

God damn, fucking THIS.
It's infuriating to see people holding classical texts as their holy book, picking up phrases and one liners, and reaching stupid conclusions without checking whether those conclusions relate to today's reality.
It's those kind of people that give a bad name to leftism and making it look like a religion. :cursing:

Marx said it, that does it!
durrr

[bcbm]

and if you are a studient, you are a worker undergoing an intensive training.

nah students a re scum

[Tim Finnegan]

nah students a re scum
In the UK, most students are also workers, in that they are obliged to work part-time to maintain themselves and continue their studies. So that strikes me as rather unfair.

[chegitz guevara]

And besides, they're never paid by the hour, they are on salary.

Yes, because the unit of time by which you are paid determines your class. :rolleyes:

So, workers who have to keep track of their minutes are even more proletarian!

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes, because the unit of time by which you are paid determines your class. :rolleyes:

So, workers who have to keep track of their minutes are even more proletarian!

Well, it doesn't determine your class. But yes, if you have to keep track of your minutes that does indeed make you more proletarian. Having been there and done that, I can assure you that that is true. It's no fun, believe me.

What determines class membership? Your relationship to the means of production. What a CEO's relationship to the means of production is is a no-brainer.

-M.H.-

[chegitz guevara]

:rolleyes:

If I'm paid by the minute, the quarter hour, the hour, the week, the month, my relationship to the means of production does not change. I still sell my labor-power for a wage/salary. A McDonald's burger flipper is not more proletarian than I am. We're both SOL if we get fired.

The salary of CEOs and other chief officers is insignificant when compared to their real payment, which is shares of ownership. Gates isn't the richest man in the world (on and off) because he gets paid, but because he owns.

[myaku]

So going by what everyone is suggesting -

Would an Accountant at KPMG be a worker, even though some of them are compensated well over $150,000? How about an entry-level investment banker, a 22 year old fresh out of college who landed that JPMorgan position or whatever and starts off making $120,000/year but has a 100-hour work week to contend with?

Would a lawyer working for a law firm be considered a "worker?" How is this different from a lawyer who sets up his own practice and does pretty much the exact same thing? How is an Engineer working for a Factory different from an Accountant working for an Accounting corporation?

Assume in all cases that no one receives equity-based compensation or benefit, just pure salary.

[chegitz guevara]

And besides, they're never paid by the hour, they are on salary.

This is meaningless. The unit of time for which your labor-power is purchased has nothing to do with your social relations.

CEOs are members of the bourgeoisie not because of how they are paid, nor how much, but because they control capital.

Edit: Whoops, already replied to this post previously. :o

[Catma]

So going by what everyone is suggesting -

Would an Accountant at KPMG be a worker, even though some of them are compensated well over $150,000? How about an entry-level investment banker, a 22 year old fresh out of college who landed that JPMorgan position or whatever and starts off making $120,000/year but has a 100-hour work week to contend with?

Would a lawyer working for a law firm be considered a "worker?" How is this different from a lawyer who sets up his own practice and does pretty much the exact same thing? How is an Engineer working for a Factory different from an Accountant working for an Accounting corporation?

Assume in all cases that no one receives equity-based compensation or benefit, just pure salary.

My impression is that these must all be viewed as workers (I am unclear on the situation with lawyers - where exactly is their means of production? If I knew more about how lawyers worked it would probably be more obvious. The lawyer with a private practice is probably not a worker, though I'm not sure exactly what means of production he controls.)

Are there other meaningful criteria than relation to the means of production, ie; whether you have decision making power in regards to the MoP?

[chegitz guevara]

Professionals are not proletarians. What professionals sell is not their labor-power, but a skill a service.

It's a bit fuzzy, but I would consider professionals to be part of the middle classes.

[CommieTroll]

Forget about him, even if you aren't what he considers as a ''worker'' at least you have class consciousness and that's what really matters

[Catma]

Professionals are not proletarians. What professionals sell is not their labor-power, but a skill a service.

It's a bit fuzzy, but I would consider professionals to be part of the middle classes.

Notwithstanding the fact that you acknowledged that the issue is fuzzy, can you define a professional? How much training is needed, for example. What about someone who provides a professional skill in the context of an enterprise that uses means of production - let's say an engineer for a military contractor? You would call them part of the bourgeois?

The only real difference I can see between professionals and workers is that professionals have more individual bargaining power in the market for their labor. They may or may not have any decision making power in terms of production.

[Conscript]

Skilled labor is still labor. A service is labor, and you don't need to be skilled or trainer to perform a service.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Professionals are not proletarians. What professionals sell is not their labor-power, but a skill a service.

It's a bit fuzzy, but I would consider professionals to be part of the middle classes.

Depends on the professional, but I do think there are lots of professional workers.

[Le Rouge]

Oh my god this is totally a "Thanks !" thread :laugh:

Leftism is in decline. My friends tell themselves communists, but they are hard racists. They are like : Yay Communism, Anarchism AND Nazism and fuck you arab terrorists. Pathetic...:sneaky:

[Tim Finnegan]

Leftism is in decline. My friends tell themselves communists, but they are hard racists. They are like : Yay Communism, Anarchism AND Nazism and fuck you arab terrorists. Pathetic...:sneaky:
That just sounds like you're friends with fuckwits, to be honest. Don't think it says anything about the left as a whole.

[chegitz guevara]

Notwithstanding the fact that you acknowledged that the issue is fuzzy, can you define a professional? How much training is needed, for example. What about someone who provides a professional skill in the context of an enterprise that uses means of production - let's say an engineer for a military contractor? You would call them part of the bourgeois?

The only real difference I can see between professionals and workers is that professionals have more individual bargaining power in the market for their labor. They may or may not have any decision making power in terms of production.

I think it has more to do with the social relationships than the specific training. Class isn't some absolute category. It's more like a plate of hazy spaghettie, where it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, and things are all looped together, especially when it comes to the middle classes.

That said, in general any job that requires a specialized degree is unlikely to be a proletarian job. I think you're on to something when you point out professionals have individual bargaining power. Proles don't. They only have collective bargaining power. Their individual bargaining power is take it or leave it, but you can't leave it because you live pay check to pay check. Clearly professionals have something else besides their labor-power to sell.

That said, any job can be proletarianized. We've seen it happen to teachers, and I've heard about banks of lawyers who've just graduated who are stuck doing shit work for no pay. Even doctors are becoming proletarianized in some situations.

It's just not something you can nail down.

Course, I guess this means I'm middle class. Once I learned I could negotiate my rental, I started doing so.

[Tim Finnegan]

That said, in general any job that requires a specialized degree is unlikely to be a proletarian job. I think you're on to something when you point out professionals have individual bargaining power. Proles don't. They only have collective bargaining power. Their individual bargaining power is take it or leave it, but you can't leave it because you live pay check to pay check. Clearly professionals have something else besides their labor-power to sell.
Isn't that just a product of the fact that their skills are, in most situations, in higher demand than supply? The same can happen with workers, in certain situations, it's just rarer because of the type of skills involved. It seems to me that what you're identifying here is a stratum within the proletariat, rather than a class outside of it.

[deLarge]

That just sounds like you're friends with fuckwits, to be honest. Don't think it says anything about the left as a whole.

That kind of thinking is rather endemic, however. Many people of working-class households don't have ready access to real leftism, and as they lack proper outlets for their economic and social angst, in their confusion they turn to a mix of ideologies. They have a vague notion that capitalism isn't working, but without real education on the matter, they sort of grasp at straws, picking up a handful that has some communism, some fascism, etc.

If I go on to Youtube and load up a video of Bragg's The Internationale, or the USSR National Anthem, the recommended videos will probably include the Nazi anthem, imbred Soviet/Nazi/Chinese military pornography, a NazBol interpretation of The Internationale, etc.