A question on birth

[Drowzy_Shooter]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?

[Robespierre Richard]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?

It really doesn't matter, though your origins might lead to revisionism and right-wing deviationism, something you should strongly watch out for. However, seeing that you call yourself an 'anarcho-communist,' it may be too late for that.

[Kitty_Paine]

You should never just lie back and be who your think you're "supposed" to be. You're in control of who you are and what you become. Why you would want to say "fuck it" and just conform to you economic status is beyond me. It makes me feel as if your leftist tendencies are misplaced or underthought. How devoted are you to your leftist stance?

If I were you I'd use my resources to get involved in leftist organizations and causes and help support people who cannot do so for themselves. Use your resources to unify yourself with the lower class and eliminate the "class guilt" you feel.

To start you can get me a case of spray-paint (assorted colors), bolt cutters, a black balaclava, pepper spray, some running shoes and a pair of kevlar gloves. :thumbup:

[Comrade Samuel]

To start you can get me a case of spray-paint (assorted colors), bolt cutters, a black balaclava, pepper spray, some running shoes and a pair of kevlar gloves. :thumbup:

he wanted help not a criminal record lol... You shouldent think because you born into fortunate circumstances that you should feel guilt about it, most anyone can align with marxist economics and in your case I would wouldn't considerate it hypotcracy. So what if other posters arent as good off as you it doesn't change the fact we are all united against capitalism and oppression.

[Drowzy_Shooter]

You should never just lie back and be who your think you're "supposed" to be. You're in control of who you are and what you become. Why you would want to say "fuck it" and just conform to you economic status is beyond me. It makes me feel as if your leftist tendencies are misplaced or underthought. How devoted are you to your leftist stance?


Im sensing that this is one of the reasons I need to work on my writing (I've noticed I often have a hard time getting my point across).

I love communism to death, and would never want to give it up. The only reason I wrote this topic is to see if I am going to be hated by a community due to my economic conditions, luckily it seems as though I am not. Please do not feel that I have under thought my beliefs, as that was the last thing I ment to get across.

[Kitty_Paine]

he wanted help not a criminal record lol...

I'm just trying to help him reduce his cognitive dissonance by getting him involved with the lower class :rolleyes:

[Jimmie Higgins]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?Don't worry about it at all. First of all upper-middle class is just a layoff away from working class these days and there's downward mobility anyway - so there's hope yet:laugh:! But seriously, Marxism isn't about individual identity and while it may go against the class and personal interests of an actual member of the capitalist class, socialism is in human interests and so there's no reason that someone from a petty-bourgeois background to see that a society run by workers for human needs not profits would prevent WW3 or environmental destruction not to mention just the irrational and chaotic life in a society with inequality and daily violence.

But even if you're a red dentist or something, who cares. If you are sincere and convinced, then be a "class traitor" - lord knows there's plenty of people from working class backgrounds who do the opposite and become police or just loyal defenders of the ideologies of capital.

And this is coming from someone who's parents were union members and who lives paycheck to paycheck - any rational and serious radical will not bite your head off if your parents were managers or professionals of some kind. Customer service work taught me to loath people slightly better off than me - radical politics taught me to have some perspective and understanding and to save my hate for the system.

[dodger]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?

Don't take crap from anyone Shooter...we are all on the Titanic....lucky bugger...maybe you are gonna get to the lifeboat before me or others. Don't count on it though, it don't always work like that. In last recession my brother in law, a plonker, was wined dined feted as salesman of the year at a top London Hotel. A week later he was clearing his desk into a cardboard box, escorted by a security guard who at the exit took the keys to "his!" top of the range BMW and politely ejected him. At the tube stn his company credit card refused him the price of a ticket....they had been cancelled. I got a call, went down to rescue him, at work myself I couldn't buy us a drink. Though judging by his white colour a transfusion of some sort was needed. Not even the fare home!

As Jimmie says we are all a wage packet from destitution or perhaps a monthly cheque and generous expenses. In short we are all in the same boat one way or another.

[Firebrand]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?

Hey it doesn't matter where you came from, as long as we all end up in the same place and no-one turns into a reformist at the full moon. :lol:I mean it's not like Marx or Engles were proles either and you don't catch people giving them a hard time because of their background.

[Lanky Wanker]

Your parents aren't you, so as long as you're not waving a piece of bread in a dirty coal miner's face while he sells himself to you (...hey hey), your household 100k income doesn't mean anything. Also, just because you make a lot of money yourself, that doesn't necessarily make you a hypocrite; the world needs doctors and such, right? What you spend all that income on is a different matter though. As they say: it's not where you're from that matters, it's where you're going.

[danyboy27]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?
You dont have to be guilty to be born in a family that have the ressources to give you an education and a good job, just be aware that not many people in the world could really offord what you have, keep on studying marxism and get an education.

[El Chuncho]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?

No one should be a right-winger, comrade. And your social status doesn't matter. My background can be, traditionally, described as ''peasant'', but it would not matter if my family was royalty, I'd still follow the ideology I believe is right and fight for the freedom of my fellow man from the harsh capitalist environment.

[Renegade Saint]

I was born into an upper middle class family (100k +). My working parent isn't a bourgeois (as in he owns no means of production), but I am curious if being born into a family like this makes it hypocritical to align with Marxist economics. I almost feel a "class guilt" when I see other posters talking about having so little or being very poor, when I haven't had to go through those things. Should I just be thankful of what I have, or should I just be the typical right winger like everyone else in my tax bracket?
Most leading socialist revolutionaries of the last 150 years were from the middle class, so you're in pretty good company.

You'll just be a class traitor, that's all.

[Drowzy_Shooter]

Most leading socialist revolutionaries of the last 150 years were from the middle class, so you're in pretty good company.

You'll just be a class traitor, that's all.

Screw my class. Go communism!

[Sixiang]

Consensus seems to say that it doesn't matter. And that's because it doesn't. Here's a brief history lesson:

Karl Marx's father was a lawyer who was well off financially enough to pay for his son's education. He also owned a large piece of land and several vineyards and was a proponent of the bourgeois enlightenment philosophers and social theorists. Marx's mother's family were wealthy capitalists, too.

Friedrich Engels' father was a capitalist and Engels spent some time as a capitalist himself, taking over his father's ropes and using his wealth to pay for his poor, starving friend, Karl Marx.

Vladimir Lenin's father was a wealthy government bureaucrat for the Czarist regime.

Mao Zedong's father achieved some financial success within his position as a farmer in the Chinese countryside.

And those are just a few examples. Also, you can use any sort of wealth to pay generous dues to a party or union. :P There are many leftist intellectuals who, I'm sure, make plenty of money. University professors usually make a nice chunk of change. Remember, your class is determined by your relation to the means of production, not necessarily by any specific amount of money you have. Many union workers make a decent amount of money because they and their ancestors fought and fought for decades to win victories for the unions to cut into the capitalists' profits and have a decent living standard. Union auto workers are known for having decent incomes and the meat packing industry used to be one of the most lucrative industries to work in in the American Midwest because of the victories that that industry's workers achieved in pay raises.

[pax et aequalitas]

I too am born into what I guess can be called upper middle-class. And I too feel this kinda "class guilt" sometimes. However, I realize I had zero influence on all this and that I should just try to make sure to make my privileged background useful when possible and besides that: I am not my parents (who I respect though I disagree with them).

[Le Rouge]

Because you own land means you're a bourgeois? That also means that farmers are bourgeois. :confused: Even if they are poor?

I guess i'm a son of bourgeois then...my father is a farmer and makes less than 40 000 cad i'd say. Poor bourgeois.

[Sputnik_1]

Hmmm, wait, I'm confused.. Doesn't middle class=petit bourgeois? Which means that you do own means of production, just on smaller scale?

[Sixiang]

Because you own land means you're a bourgeois? That also means that farmers are bourgeois. :confused: Even if they are poor?

I guess i'm a son of bourgeois then...my father is a farmer and makes less than 40 000 cad i'd say. Poor bourgeois.

No, that makes you a landowner if you own land. Bourgeoisie are people who own the means of production that the workers they pay wages to use to create, build, and produce commodities. Which the bourgeoisie then have sold so as to extract a profit, to get more money than they originally invested in. Most farmers in first world countries are petty bourgeois (they own the means of production but either don't employ anyone or only employ a few immediate people). As for more agricultural, rural countries, the people who usually work on the land are more like peasants and the people they work for are landlords. Of course, many farmers in the U.S. also employ large numbers of migrant laborers.