So is most of the global north petit bourgeois at this point?

[Sidagma]

Since most of the global industrial production happens in africa, asia, and south america, and since most employment in the "first world" that has anything to do with industrial production (save for like, the US prison population, who are really more accurately described as slaves than proletarians) is concerned mostly with its administrative, distributive, or managerial aspects?

What I'm understanding at this point is that Marx understands proletarians in relation to the means of production, which they can seize through organization and force. It seems like not many people in the global north are really capable of doing that? Just like, logistically speaking, considering they're not really on the continent(s) at all?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Perhaps, though it's not the end of the world. Russia had a proletarian minority. China had only 3 million proletarians out of 400 million peasants. They still had revolutions. Sure I do think that Labor Aristocracy needs to be taken in account for our organizational forms and praxis, but I don't think that we should adopt a pessimistic attitude because of it.

And in the western countries, poverty is gradually increasing. So we will see openings for revolutionary movements soon.

[Sidagma]

Oh yeah, I am not advocating any sort of pessimistic defeatism or whatever at all at all at all.

Just like, if revolutionary praxis involves seizing the means of production, we should perhaps take a more nuanced view of what exactly revolution entails rather than just waiting for the global south to throw off the yoke of oppression at our hands.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Perhaps, though it's not the end of the world. Russia had a proletarian minority. China had only 3 million proletarians out of 400 million peasants. They still had revolutions.

Yeah, and became capitalist. You need a proletariat to have a revolutionary proletariat.

Maybe you disagree, but assuming for the moment that this is true, where would it leave socialists/communists in the global north?
EDIT: Okay you sort of answered this. The same "problem that the middle class is shrinking" my parents go on about does suggest an opening. Greater gap between the rich and poor, and all that.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Generally speaking, it's affects the way we see and interact with the working class. In the west there can't be a party of the "whole working class" because the working class does not exist as a coherent whole. The black proletarians that rebelled in the 1968 uprising represent a different catogory of people than the hardhats who beat up peace demonstrators and acted as Nixon's SA, despite having a similar relationship to the means of production. So with this in mind we ought to look at proletarians who suffer intersecting layers of oppression and exploitation as the subject of revolutionary theory rather the entire proletariat. We need to stop trying to think of technicalities to say that the police are proletarian and we need to side with the lumpen against the police in their every struggle. We need to think that the next public union strike will be different when we all know that reformist unions are just the way for the democrats to funnel government money into their party and will never be revolutionary, and we need to reject reformism and electoralism for a direct action serve the people approach because reforms don't benefit the hardcore proletariat.

When Lenin spoke of the vanguard he was talking about the section of the proletariat that were best equipt to lead the struggle, not some enlightened petty bourgeois college kids who stumbled on the right branch of theory, or labor aristocrats like those in the British Trotskyist movement that are known for their, less than savory activities. It is this vanguard that is needed to drag the rest of the class to revolution, and it is this vanguard that we ought to fight for.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Yeah, and became capitalist. You need a proletariat to have a revolutionary proletariat.

As opposed to the proletarian majority countries, who never had the chance to fail. I have more faith in proletarian minorities than majorities, since proletarian majorities have never been able to chanenge capital to the degree as proletarian minorities.

[The Intransigent Faction]

As opposed to the proletarian majority countries, who never had the chance to fail. I have more faith in proletarian minorities than majorities, since proletarian majorities have never been able to chanenge capital to the degree as proletarian minorities.

Yeah! All power to the peasantry! Power to the agrarian socialist revolution!

After all, proletarian majority countries haven't destroyed capitalism yet, so that's probably less likely to work. :rolleyes:
It's all about "faith", after all.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Yeah! All power to the peasantry! Power to the agrarian socialist revolution!

After all, proletarian majority countries haven't destroyed capitalism yet, so that's probably less likely to work. :rolleyes:

Proletarian majority countries, that is the centers of imperialism, haven't challenge capitalism since 1918 and even then they didn't even achieve state power. Sure the other revolutions failed but at least they happened.

Now that class dynamics have changed, a "proletarian majority" means a petty bourgeois/labor aristocrat majority. But now they are finding their position of privileged weakened. Even though they will still be proletarian minority countries I'd still say that there is a better chance now then back in the 80's

[Sidagma]

Can we please chill out on the tendency wars. PLE A S EEEEEEEE. How about no more talking about historical revolutions until we decide to resign the entire left to utter irrelevence? There's a time and space for that shit and it's in the history forum.

YABM, yeah, that's what I'm sayin'! There's totally people here who are downtrodden as all get-out but like, what does a revolutionary program here even look like? Is it an American-led withdrawl from the global South? Are we rebuilding American industry and re-evaluating our lifestyle to sustainable levels? That's gonna be a pretty hard sell on the American proletariat. We're straight up not gonna get a majority to go for it without some mass education and even then it's gonna be a hard sell because it's asking Americans to make hard choices. And even those have been co-opted with white middle class movements like veganism or whatever.

[Geiseric]

Unless you're assuming more than half of the U.S. owns small capital, you're wrong. Petit bourgeois means they are professional intelligencia (not teachers & researchers, but management and bureaucracy) or own a "small business" are or a small farm, at least in the U.s. also revolutions are LESS likely to happen when poverty is higher, so that "we can step in at the right moment" substitutionalist attitude is in itself Petit Bourgeois, and harmful to spread around.

"Communists have no goals and policies opposed to those of the proletariat" (Communist Manifesto) means that communists have to lead things before people get to the point of starvation. The only way to build up for revolution is to build consciouness by leading in and winning organic struggles that the rest of the working class will support.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Simple, Mass Line, take the actions and needs of the proletariat and turn them into a coherent political program.

For example, in many western countries voter turn out is going down. Go out to the working class neighborhoods and talk to people. Ask them about their feelings on life, how they're doing. Soon you'll get a sense of their needs and desires. If they don't see participating in elections as within their interests then turn that into a political program and political action. Turn that refusal and organize it into a boycott, explain why this system does not and can not represent them.

Evictions you say? Go to the people, explain them why they happen, the contriction between extange and use value, the abundance of wasted wealth. If a proletariat is evicted, then join him in occupying his house and support him with force. Many working class neighborhoods have a problem with crime, and fear the police. Explain them the Marxist theory of the state and organize self-defense militias. Woman statistically don't go out as late or alone as often as men because patriarchy instills a defacto martall law in the inner city areas for woman. Explain how patriarchy is linked to capitalism, and educate our female comrades how to struggle for their liberation separate from men and to link this liberation to the liberation of the class.

"Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from practice"~ Mao. Class politics comes from the class and the class alone. From the people to the people.


The masses have a potentially inexhaustible enthusiasm for socialism. Those who can only follow the old routine in a revolutionary period are utterly incapable of seeing this enthusiasm. They are blind and all is dark ahead of them. At times they go so far as to confound right and wrong and turn things upside down. Haven't we come across enough persons of this type? Those who simply follow the old routine invariably underestimate the people's enthusiasm. Let something new appear and they always disapprove and rush to oppose it. Afterwards, they have to admit defeat and do a little self-criticism. But the next time something new appears, they go through the same process all over again. This is their pattern of behavior in regard to anything and everything new. Such people are always passive, always fail to move forward at the critical moment, and always have to be given a shove in the back before they move a step.

~Mao Zedong

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

"Communists have no goals and policies opposed to those of the proletariat" (Communist Manifesto) means that communists have to lead things before people get to the point of starvation. The only way to build up for revolution is to build consciouness by leading in and winning organic struggles that the rest of the working class will support.

What happens when a white proletarian lynches a black proletarian? When a male proletarian rapes a female proletarian? Or a straight protlarian harasses a queer proltarian. Who do we oppose and who do we support? "Neither" doesn't exist.

Class-centric politics aren't enough. There's more to capitalism then that and we need to move on from this framework. Class isn't the only manifestation of capitalism you know

[Sidagma]

Simple, Mass Line, take the actions and needs of the proletariat and turn them into a coherent political program.

For example, in many western countries voter turn out is going down. Go out to the working class neighborhoods and talk to people. Ask them about their feelings on life, how they're doing. Soon you'll get a sense of their needs and desires. If they don't see participating in elections as within their interests then turn that into a political program and political action. Turn that refusal and organize it into a boycott, explain why this system does not and can not represent them.

Evictions you say? Go to the people, explain them why they happen, the contriction between extange and use value, the abundance of wasted wealth. If a proletariat is evicted, then join him in occupying his house and support him with force. Many working class neighborhoods have a problem with crime, and fear the police. Explain them the Marxist theory of the state and organize self-defense militias. Woman statistically don't go out as late or alone as often as men because patriarchy instills a defacto martall law in the inner city areas for woman. Explain how patriarchy is linked to capitalism, and educate our female comrades how to struggle for their liberation separate from men and to link this liberation to the liberation of the class.

Good politics doesn't come from just anywhere. It doesn't come from debates or theory or the halls of the university. Class politics comes from the class and the class alone. From the people to the people.

Man yeah no doubt. Something I've been advocating for a long time is that the left needs to learn when to sit the fuck down and listen and when they actually have something to contribute to a discussion. 'Specially now that the internet exists and people are only excluded from discussions really by overt and subtle bigotry.

The things you've mentioned (eviction struggles and stuff) are things roughly similar to stuff I've actually been involved in, so like, right, but I can't help but feel that like, that isn't a revolutionary platform? Situation in Greece, for example, there's struggle over food distribution, prisoner stuff, education stuff, housing stuff, great! But that's not a revolutionary alternative to capitalism, it's just a means of tempering it. Which I don't want to deny the importance of, at all. But like. As downtrodden Americans go I'm pretty low on the ladder and I have no idea how to go about building a revolutionary alternative.

[Rurkel]

What happens when a white proletarian lynches a black proletarian? When a male proletarian rapes a female proletarian? Or a straight protlarian harasses a queer proltarian.Do we proclaim the lyncher, the rapist and the harasser to be "not true proletarians", though? Or did I misunderstand you?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

The things you've mentioned (eviction struggles and stuff) are things roughly similar to stuff I've actually been involved in, so like, right, but I can't help but feel that like, that isn't a revolutionary platform? Situation in Greece, for example, there's struggle over food distribution, prisoner stuff, education stuff, housing stuff, great! But that's not a revolutionary alternative to capitalism, it's just a means of tempering it. Which I don't want to deny the importance of, at all. But like. As downtrodden Americans go I'm pretty low on the ladder and I have no idea how to go about building a revolutionary alternative.

Put politics in front of action and revolution in front of politics. Unfortunately there isn't a neat little formula for it, but the orthdox marxists have a saying, agitate, educate, organize. Direct action is the best sort of action, but to just act for the class while failing to turn that act into a political act by linking it up to anti-capitalism is "tailism". Likewise you need to orginze, an action should go towards building the duel power of the class, an action for an action's sake doesn't have inherent worth.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Do we proclaim the lyncher, the rapist and the harasser to be "not true proletarians", though? Or did I misunderstand you?

In each scenario, a privileged section of the proletariat was pitched against an underprivileged section of the proletariat. Bourgeois cultural hegemony has infected the proletariat at all levels, so to struggle against bourgeois ideas in the proletariat is to struggle against the bourgeois as a class. Besides, the proletariat isn't a coherent whole, it's layered and some layers oppress other layers and profit off of the expense of other layers. So as Communist, we need to fight for the oppressed against the oppressor, even when that means the class has to go against the class. Because wishing away the contradictions in the proletariat will only make them worse.

[Sidagma]

Put politics in front of action and revolution in front of politics. Unfortunately there isn't a neat little formula for it, but the orthdox marxists have a saying, agitate, educate, organize. Direct action is the best sort of action, but to just act for the class while failing to turn that act into a political act by linking it up to anti-capitalism is "tailism". Likewise you need to orginze, an action should go towards building the duel power of the class, an action for an action's sake doesn't have inherent worth.

Right, like, I get that though. So groups like Homes Not Jails SF which fight small fights, but which are sure to maintain a class analysis and revolutionary politics exist. But let's say the year is 2020 (being optimistic here) and we've educated the whole underclass (I don't know if it's wholly accurate to call it a proletariat) on why revolution needs to happen and we've all reached a baseline understanding that capitalism = harmful.

Now what? Is it even possible to do that without overthrowing the State, considering how much money they can pour into counter-revolutionary shit like Fox News and the Tea Party? Should we focus on shutting down avenues of hate speech like these? Even if we do, what are we actually going to doooooooo once an educated populace exists? Can we be sure that the enfranchisement of the working class won't just result in its most racist elements being given free reign over the rest of the world, given the geopolitical significance of the global north?

[Rusty Shackleford]

A quick interjecting question.


What do people think of the 'middle class is shrinking' fear among moderate to high income earning workers? Im of half a mind to believe that many of them feel closer to small business owners rather than wage workers and thus the threat of 'proletarianization' could result in some heavily reactionary sentiment. Its no secret that some union workers in the US for example supported tea party movements.

I would say then if this were the case, that it can lead to reaction, then union and high-income workers, like small capitalists, can move very quickly from one camp to the other in periods of struggle. So then i would go on to assume that the approach to these workers would have to be a bit more nuanced than 'fuck you labor aristocrats.'

[MarxArchist]

The USA has a huge amount of agriculture and industry. More so than any Southern Nation. Jobs in the service sector, after a socialist/communist revolution, would not exist on the scale they do now and people would be switched to working in agriculture and industry with a lot less hours. The US represents 1/5th of global manufacturing. Plenty of oil/natural resources and production facilities. There would have to be a state managed period in the US, workers couldn't, in an anarchist fashion, just take over the means of production. There would be a lot of restructuring to do. Most of the exploitative trade agreements would end and China's economy would also have to stop producing useless junk- who's going to buy it? The entire world would change if the USA had a socialist revolution. In fact, the US is the most important nation if communism is to be achieved (mostly because of it's military apparatus but also economically). Both militarily and economically the EU, China, Russia and India would be the secondary nations.

What we need to realize is we wouldn't be manufacturing in the same way we are now in the US, China, India, South America etc. We already have the manufacturing infrastructure in the US to provide what we need what we don't have is the capability to provide as mush useless shit that the market system depends on. Materialism, as in constantly attaining new stuff/nick knacks, would take a huge blow.

What's not going to happen is communism arising from small South American nations or small East Asian nations or small whichever industrial nation. Post cold war NATO and the current US Department of Defense would squash any attempt to build socialism 'from without' which actually challenges the capitalist order.

[Sidagma]

Yo, the moment people start talking about the "middle class" as anything but a disparaging term is the moment my eyes glaze the fuck over and I stop paying attention. As far as I'm concerned, the middle class is an oppressor group that does nothing that fucks me over and I'm frankly glad they're getting their comeuppance.

I literally don't give a shit about the middle class except insofar as their financial interest runs contrary to my own, which it absolutely does so fuck them. They view me and whatever racist-ass thing they think I am with nothing but contempt and degradation. If anything good comes out of their "disenfranchisement"* it's that now that they're poor as shit now maybe they'll start to interact with poor people as something other than some sort of prop to keep labor prices low.

*And I really think this disenfranchisement needs to be seriously analyzed. This analysis is getting more USA-centric, but definitely in the USA there is a significant amount to be said for having a middle class background in terms of cultural knowledge, name recognition, stuff like that. Getting into colleges because your daddy went there, for example, or being able to afford colleges in the first damn place because your parents are paying (which they still do.)

Temporary disenfranchisement for people with middle class backgrounds means being respecialized or retrained so they can move their careers into a different field. It's not the same thing as actually being poor.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

The 'middle class' doesn't exist. It is not an actual class that performs a particular function in production - just a denomination for how much money somebody has.


most employment in the "first world" that has anything to do with industrial production (save for like, the US prison population, who are really more accurately described as slaves than proletarians) is concerned mostly with its administrative, distributive, or managerial aspects?

Could you expand on this please? It sounds as if you just labelled over one billion people as managers of a company.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Since most of the global industrial production happens in africa, asia, and south america, and since most employment in the "first world" that has anything to do with industrial production (save for like, the US prison population, who are really more accurately described as slaves than proletarians) is concerned mostly with its administrative, distributive, or managerial aspects?


But that isn't so. Although employment in manufacturing has dwindled, the actual production remains quite high. Except for China, most of the places you mentioned are not entirely significant in terms of global manufacturing, though their share has risen. Total value, as well, of industrial production, and the productivity per worker, remains highest in the most industrialised countries (unsurprisingly).

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Likewise, it seems to me that not everyone in the service sector can be assigned to the middle strata. Shop assistants, "lower" clerks and secretaries and so on are, after all, compelled to sell their labour power; it seems to me that they are as proletarian as the most stereotypical miner, if not perhaps more so, since these overwhelmingly female professions suffer double discrimination.

As for class-centric politics and the reactionary layers of the proletariat, smashing social oppression, patriarchy, heteronormativity and so on, is in the interest of the proletariat. Basing ourselves on one class does not mean condoning everything the members of that class do, far from it.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

So is most of the global north petit bourgeois at this point?

In terms of class? No. In terms of ideology? Yes.

But, as Marx pointed out, "the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control over the means of mental production, hence it rules also as producers of ideas, and regulates the production and distribution of the ideas of their age."

Workers are still workers even when they've been thoroughly indoctrinated by the bourgeosie.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Since most of the global industrial production happens in africa, asia, and south america, and since most employment in the "first world" that has anything to do with industrial production (save for like, the US prison population, who are really more accurately described as slaves than proletarians) is concerned mostly with its administrative, distributive, or managerial aspects?

What I'm understanding at this point is that Marx understands proletarians in relation to the means of production, which they can seize through organization and force. It seems like not many people in the global north are really capable of doing that? Just like, logistically speaking, considering they're not really on the continent(s) at all?

No. First capitalism is always circulating and changing - neoliberalism has made this even more rapid as capital has concentrated in financial sectors on the one hand allowing for production to become more decentralized and dispursed on the other. The petty-bourgoise specifically is also a constantly expanding and contracting group in society. On the whole, the US petty-bourgoise is smaller than the recent past and smaller than past periods of industrial struggle in the US (however this is less to do with your specific question of the managerial/professional p. bourgies because that class in the past times I'm talking about was larger percentages of small farmers and shopowners and artisan-types).

Where the p. bourgoise is dominant is not in numbers but in ideological influence. This is in part because their ideologies tend to complement capitalist aims and are otherwise no serious threat to ruling class dominance. But it's also because this class has more influence in culture (since writers and taste/opinion-makers come from those kinds of professions). But most importantly for us because of the demoralization of the working class and a generation of ruling class attacks. This means that though workers easily outnumber US p. bourgies, there is no working class counter-weight to bougois and p. bourgoise ideas which gives them a distorted appearance in society.

Finally, on industrial production. Again, this is more due to shifts in capital investments and the disfavoring of keynsian methods for neoliberal ones where smaller production firms compete, regions and national states compete to offer lower-cost production, and financial capital is increasingly centralized so that all these competators keep lowering wages to "attract investment" from the big sources of capital. Production in the US still happens and I think maybe only China actually produces more than the US, although it could still be the US but followed by China. Some of this has been restructured with more skilled or technical parts of production happening in the US whereas more assembly production and resource extraction happens elsewhere. But often US manufacturing just switched to non-union regions of the US or since the 1970s labor-saving technology was implemented which reduced workforces. Also large-scale production was largely replaced and so big manufacturers will just contract out to smaller manufacturing which gives a "post-fordist" impression about society, when really just the methods of the same sorts of production have been rearranged. Rather than production happening in one large factory, assembly will happen in one location, parts somewhere else, macining done by a contract company, etc.

But these are just shifts of capital, new methods developed to try and overcome and reaccumulate after the postwar economic boom ended. They present new obsticles for any new worker's movement that emerges, but it's not a qualatative change in the basic terms of class struggle. While breaking up of concentrated production has increased a sense of isolation and atomiation, there are also changes which make certain workers more powerful. The labor-saving technologies mean that in some places a few workers can have a huge impact. It would take a small amount of organized dockworkers today to do what it took a lot more coordination to do and involved a ton more people back before the 1970s. The breakup of production to the lowest labor markets and all the scattering of production internationally means that transportation workers have a lot more power than they did in the past (though this has always been an important artary for capital). If parts are made in one place and assembled somewhere else, this means that international solidarity among workers becomes a more practical need and so if there is a new upsurge, there is less of a chance of militant workers being diverted by nationalism, for example. Nothing is automatic, but I think in the absense of movements, people tend to overemphasize changes in capitlism as being somehow some qualitativly new "capitalism" which means the basics of Marxist analysis no longer apply.

[Geiseric]

Man yeah no doubt. Something I've been advocating for a long time is that the left needs to learn when to sit the fuck down and listen and when they actually have something to contribute to a discussion. 'Specially now that the internet exists and people are only excluded from discussions really by overt and subtle bigotry.

The things you've mentioned (eviction struggles and stuff) are things roughly similar to stuff I've actually been involved in, so like, right, but I can't help but feel that like, that isn't a revolutionary platform? Situation in Greece, for example, there's struggle over food distribution, prisoner stuff, education stuff, housing stuff, great! But that's not a revolutionary alternative to capitalism, it's just a means of tempering it. Which I don't want to deny the importance of, at all. But like. As downtrodden Americans go I'm pretty low on the ladder and I have no idea how to go about building a revolutionary alternative.

Well you answered your own question! Before people are willing to fight for revolution, they need to understand that struggling for something as rudimentary as food and education is possible. And for those struggles to succeed, communists need to be in the forefront of organizing. It isn't reformism at all, it's simply raising consciousness through not being a sectarian.

There's nothing wrong with not being an alienating moron who tries to make people feel guilty about living in the U.S. You can't work with the negative of people starving, I can't believe that leftists have the misconception that "Desperation leads to revolution." Desperation leads to fascism historically. The bolsheviks were capable of teaching the proletariat that winning bread before they overthrew the provisional government was impossible. Thus we must do the same with Healthcare, education, the Wars, and every other demand you call "reformist" in the completely wrong context. Reformism is a long term, bonapartist idea, and reformists usually will not support demands for free healthcare and education, even in the slightest. Papandreau and Hollande are the true reformists, not the people trying to stop austerity from happening while people like you type on this website.

[Geiseric]

In terms of class? No. In terms of ideology? Yes.

But, as Marx pointed out, "the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control over the means of mental production, hence it rules also as producers of ideas, and regulates the production and distribution of the ideas of their age."

Workers are still workers even when they've been thoroughly indoctrinated by the bourgeosie.

This! Thanks for this post!