Are actors working class?

[Nox]

Are actors working class?

Technically they are exploited, but they are still filthy rich and often employ people themselves.

Is there a solid answer to this question?

[OhYesIdid]

I don't think so. Actors are commodities, I think, and can become quite valuable. Sure, bohemians are cool as all living anal fuck, but as creative and talented as they might be I don't think they're truly exploited (which isn't to say non-proletarians aren't valuable or useful). Writers (stage and screenwrights) might be petit-bourgois or even craftsmen, since they're specialized makers of specific goods.

[jake williams]

Well, let's first make clear that we're talking about a very small minority of actors who have any money. Most either make no money and do it as a hobby, or make very little money and have to take other jobs.

There's maybe a few hundred, or a few thousand at most, very rich actors in the US (people actually sitting on several million dollars). Their actual class position is mixed, and they don't themselves belong to one class or another. Many are explicitly bourgeois: they use the money they accumulate as capitalists, investing in other movies or sometimes even other industries altogether.

But many others, perhaps most, do not. They are, as actors, something like professionals or skilled workers, who make a particularly large amount of money. They're union members. And many are important progressives. Yes, they have a lot of money, and because of it they might happen to back reactionary politics; but their interests are not fundamentally in contradiction with those of workers, they don't have any employees they need to repress, and frankly, half the time they don't even mind paying their taxes because they actually enjoy their jobs.

So, it's complex. Some are big capitalists. Many are incredibly reactionary, but the same is true of the most oppressed workers. In general they basically are a strata of skilled workers, whose sometimes (rarely) exceptionally high incomes allow them to occasionally become petty capitalists or sometimes, even big capitalists.

[Parvati]

In reality, the fact that an actor has a lot of money or not does not determine social class. This can had more influence on his actions and his class positions, which can be secured to the masses or not, but do not influence its relation to production.

The determining factor of social class is the relation of an individual to the means of production, not his salary. In this sense the proletariat is composed of those who directly produce the capital gain (workers, stevedores, shipping, but also the person who cooked donuts, making coffee, etc..), those who sell goods, those that allow the sale (maintenance, construction, repair, etc.). and many small jobs to support public services (which generally comes within the reproduction of labor force). It may also include other categories, but we must remain in the report to production. It also includes retirees who previously held those jobs, the children of those who occupy them, spouses caring for children at home of those who occupy them, and those who usually occupy them but who are unemployed or disabled because of illness or disability.

However, actors do not maintain this kind of relation with production. (A few exceptions in my opinion, like those who play the mascot in the theme parks). They clearly belong to the petty bourgeoisie, in that they have control over their own force of production. Even if a actor (or almost any other artist) is very poor, he/she still manages to generate enough excess to ensure their living conditions (which may be small) in this way - if he/she holds no other employment . If s/he holds another small job at the same time, then s/he can be at the intersection of two social classes, or more clearly belong to the proletariat with the aspirations / dreams to change.

Much like the entire petty bourgeoisie class right now, they generally tend to support either the bourgeoisie, or at least the current system (with a critical perspective, but rarely revolutionary). Those in odd jobs at the same time will generally be closer to the proletariat, while the millionaires who run financial empires find themselves closer to the bourgeoisie.

In the end, it's not a defect to belong to the petty bourgeoisie. It is an objective fact in connection with the means of production. We can take class positions in solidarity of the proletariat or revolutionary ones (as at one time Shirley Douglas, Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda and probably many others) The most important thing to consider is that the proletariat is the only revolutionary class at all costs.

[tbasherizer]

Judging anyone's class position based on how much money they make will lead you down the road of calling office workers bourgeois. Mechanistically, actors work to produce the films that the bourgeois film producers sell, just like an ironworker would produce the ingots that his company would sell. Sure, people like Tom Cruise make ridonk amounts of money and can be pretty bad people, but they're only the anomalous few amongst a subclass just as exploited as your everyday janitor, teacher, or mailroom clerk.

[Rooster]

Originally posted by Marx

This also establishes absolutely what unproductive labour is. It is labour which is not exchanged with capital, but directly with revenue, that is, with wages or profit (including of course the various categories of those who share as co-partners in the capitalist’s profit, such as interest and rent). Where all labour in part still pays itself (like for example the agricultural labour of the serfs) and in part is directly exchanged for revenue (like the manufacturing labour in the cities of Asia), no capital and no wage-labour exists in the sense of bourgeois political economy. These definitions are therefore not derived from the material characteristics of labour (neither from the nature of its product nor from the particular character of the labour as concrete labour), but from the definite social form, the social relations of production, within which the labour is realised. An actor, for example, or even a clown, according to this definition, is a productive labourer if he works in the service of a capitalist (an entrepreneur) to whom he returns more labour than he receives from him in the form of wages; while a jobbing tailor who comes to the capitalist’s house and patches his trousers for him, producing a mere use-value for him, is an unproductive labourer. The former’s labour is exchanged with capital, the latter’s with revenue. The former’s labour produces a surplus-value; in the latter’s, revenue is consumed.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htm

Also this


Originally posted by Marx

A singer who sings like a bird is an unproductive worker. If she sells her singing for money, she is to that extent a wage labourer or a commodity dealer. But the same singer, when engaged by an entrepreneur who has her sing in order to make money, is a productive worker, for she directly produces capital.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm

[Jimmie Higgins]

So, it's complex. Some are big capitalists. Many are incredibly reactionary, but the same is true of the most oppressed workers. In general they basically are a strata of skilled workers, whose sometimes (rarely) exceptionally high incomes allow them to occasionally become petty capitalists or sometimes, even big capitalists.Yeah a lot of the major stars are given production companies as part of deals to do multiple movies for a studio or whatnot. From the actor's POV they get more power and freedom this way, they also often get a cut of the sales (for the very elite in the profession) and these things and this clearly has class consequences then if there is a strike of technicians or writers or whatnot. I doesn't mean they will automatically go with the interests of their new class position, but makes it more likely.

But in general, actors are wage-earners and overall it is one of the lowest paid jobs in California since, as you stated, most make no money or work a "day-job".