Class demographics

[UnknownPerson]

Does anybody have the US, world and other country demographics of classes (based on the Marxist definitions)? That is, how many bourgeoisie, proletarians, lumpen-proletarians, etc. there are.

[thefinalmarch]

I don't think anyone has ever even attempted to collect demographic data for Marxist classes. This does bring to mind the commonly-quoted figure of the number of bourgeois being the "top one percent" of "the population", which seems to be derived from pure speculation.

[UnknownPerson]

I don't think anyone has ever even attempted to collect demographic data for Marxist classes. This does bring to mind the commonly-quoted figure of the number of bourgeois being the "top one percent" of "the population", which seems to be derived from pure speculation.

Then why does the vast majority obviously vote against it's interest? How big is the proletarian class (based on speculation in case if you don't have any stats)?

[jake williams]

It's not that realistic to collect those numbers other than in a very broad sense because there are blurrier lines than commonly assumed. Generally speaking someone who owns means of production is bourgeois, and someone who works (and does not own means of production) is part of the proletariat. But there are several problems with this. Classically those who do both are regarded as "petty bourgeois" - the small capitalists who also do work in the firms they own. This is problematic though too. There are small capitalists who don't really work, and there are very, very large capitalists who do a lot of work. There are plenty of billionaires paid regular salaries by their various businesses, in addition to their investment income.

There's also the fact that lots of people who mostly work, and don't really see themselves at all as capitalists or business owners, have some small share in the means of production in the form of savings - for a "rainy day", for retirement, for education, and so on. This might be a small part of their income, and virtually always is - in fact, in some periods, workers actually lose money on these forms of savings - but nonetheless they are in some technical sense "small capitalists". One could try to exclude all those not involved in the management of capital, ie. they might "own" it but they don't control it, but this is also true of lots of idle big capitalists who own large investments managed by other people.

So the world is complicated and coming up with sturdy demographic numbers is difficult. Nonetheless we can clearly distinguish, if not down to the individual, groups of people whose interests lie with those of labour, and whose interests lie with those of capital. And the former are clearly in the majority, and the latter in the minority.


Then why does the vast majority obviously vote against it's interest?
That's a whole other question. Partly because it's not always "obvious"; partly because workers often, for example, vote for the Democrats believing that it's more in their interests than not voting, or voting for other parties. Partly because of low class consciousness, people not thinking of themselves as workers, not understanding their interests as workers, and so on.

[thefinalmarch]

How big is the proletarian class (based on speculation in case if you don't have any stats)?
Speculation: definitely in the majority. Excluding classless people (like children [for the most part], and some professions which are occasionally lumped in here [such as many of those commonly counted as the "intelligentsia"]), I would guess upwards of 75% of the population in developed societies.

[MaciejRozga]

It can be helpful: mltranslations.org/US/Rpo/classes/classes.htm ; I know it's old, but I've never seen better analisys