The Working Class

[Kubehiz]

Hey guys, it's been awhile since my last posting. Something recently come up in discussion with a friend. I am curious as to the boundaries and definitions of what makes someone Working Class in modern society. Is it something that can be clearly segmented, or is it blurred, and are there disputes among different tendencies?

For example, would there be distinctions in white collars and blue collars, salary or wage, how about managerial positions? Or does being bourgeois simply translate into private ownership of the means of production. What are your thoughts?

[Red Star Rising]

Hey guys, it's been awhile since my last posting. Something recently come up in discussion with a friend. I am curious as to the boundaries and definitions of what makes someone Working Class in modern society. Is it something that can be clearly segmented, or is it blurred, and are there disputes among different tendencies?

For example, would there be distinctions in white collars and blue collars, salary or wage, how about managerial positions? Or does being bourgeois simply translate into private ownership of the means of production. What are your thoughts?

Well, the definition of proletarian is someone whose livelihood is based around the sale of their own labour, usually for private gain as in a factory production line but I don't see why this wouldn't apply to any form of bureaucratic work for some greater authority, if that is the state or the bourgeoisie (the two often go hand in hand). The "blurred lines" or "middle classes" are pretty meaningless - you can't really quantify social status even if it is based on wealth. All that Communists are interested in is the qualitative difference between proletarian and bourgeoisie, that is, the seller of their labour and the owner of that labour's produce.

[Kubehiz]

Aye, I agree with that sentiment entirely. Others I have debated with argue that being in a managerial position, particularly in office spaces, are bourgeois in nature, purely serving the interests of the ruling class in work environments.

[Red Star Rising]

Aye, I agree with that sentiment entirely. Others I have debated with argue that being in a managerial position, particularly in office spaces, are bourgeois in nature, purely serving the interests of the ruling class in work environments.

Yes, there is an increasingly bureaucratic and managerial atmosphere in office spaces, but this is a direct result of the social hierarchy of society of which the bourgeoisie are the center. Whether the 5000 "project managers, supervisors etc." per worker are bourgeoisie or not - the way that the working environment is organised is usually a mirror of society as a whole. Like when Marx and Engels were writing in England, many proletarians worked in large factories of the industrial revolution. Such places were highly oppressive, difficult and demeaning as was life for all proletarians at the time.

[The Modern Prometheus]

The working class are simply those that have to sell their labour to survive. As for the lower middle class they are descending more and more into the working class due to the widening income gap. That will have to be addressed at some point though unless you are actually working class and have struggled you can't attain true class consciousness. In my opinion that can only be obtained through experience.

[Slavic]

The working class are simply those that have to sell their labour to survive. As for the lower middle class they are descending more and more into the working class due to the widening income gap. That will have to be addressed at some point though unless you are actually working class and have struggled you can't attain true class consciousness. In my opinion that can only be obtained through experience.

Middle class is a liberal understanding of society that bases entirely on how much money you have. Your mixing this liberal view with Marxism when you state someone from the middle class can turn into working class by stale wages.

There is no middle class in the Marxist view of society. There are those who work to live and those who live off of others work. Differences in pay is only reflective of the job's profitability to a capitalist. I make enough money to be considered lower middle class, but tmy income does not change my relationship to the means of production. Everyday I have to get up and.put my 8hours in or else I can not survive.

[Sinister Intents]

I'm petit-bourgeois and make enough off of this business to be on poverty and scrape by. I exploit workers for their labor, they sell their labor to me, and I attempt to pay them an adequate wage, while paying business costs, which there are numerous costs. I live off of other people's labor, and this is what makes me bourgeois. The people who work under me are proletarian. Slavic is very much correct in what he says.

[Црвена]

Income really has nothing to do with the working class, and that's what frustrates me so much about Occupy and all their "the 1% are evil, 99% unite!" crap. They're not attacking people who force others into wage slavery and alienation, they're getting jealous of people who have more money than them because it's, like, just so totally unfair, and consequently giving people this impression of leftists as wacko idealists who want equality because "all people are just...equal!" My parents earn pretty decent wages in jobs that would typically be called middle class, but they still have to sell their labour, sign a contract that says they won't be paid what they're worth and have very little autonomy, so I would still consider them proletarians.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

As others indicated, it has to do with one's relations to the MoP and not one's income. OF course, this means for strict Marxists, you could be a wealthy proletarian in theory, for instance if your labor is in some incredibly rare skill.



There is no middle class in the Marxist view of society. There are those who work to live and those who live off of others work. Differences in pay is only reflective of the job's profitability to a capitalist. I make enough money to be considered lower middle class, but tmy income does not change my relationship to the means of production. Everyday I have to get up and.put my 8hours in or else I can not survive.

It depends on what you mean by "middle class". Marx uses such language, but in the traditional way of referring to the poorer echelons of the bourgeoisie. Incidentally, the bourgeoisie represented the "middle class" between the aristocracy and peasantry, back before industrial society.


Income really has nothing to do with the working class, and that's what frustrates me so much about Occupy and all their "the 1% are evil, 99% unite!" crap. They're not attacking people who force others into wage slavery and alienation, they're getting jealous of people who have more money than them because it's, like, just so totally unfair, and consequently giving people this impression of leftists as wacko idealists who want equality because "all people are just...equal!" My parents earn pretty decent wages in jobs that would typically be called middle class, but they still have to sell their labour, sign a contract that says they won't be paid what they're worth and have very little autonomy, so I would still consider them proletarians.

the 1%/99% was just a slogan, and IMO a bigger problem is that a huge swath of the bourgeoisie is included in the "99%" - that rhetoric made for great sloganeering but terrible analysis. Frankly I think your concerns of jealousy are silly and unfounded. I don't think Occupiers were about to go steal your pa's house because he is slightly more well off than average. Of course Occupy represented a fairly limited level of consciousness, but your complaints regarding the slogans seems a little histrionic and unreasonable.

[Црвена]

the 1%/99% was just a slogan, and IMO a bigger problem is that a huge swath of the bourgeoisie is included in the "99%" - that rhetoric made for great sloganeering but terrible analysis. Frankly I think your concerns of jealousy are silly and unfounded. I don't think Occupiers were about to go steal your pa's house because he is slightly more well off than average. Of course Occupy represented a fairly limited level of consciousness, but your complaints regarding the slogans seems a little histrionic and unreasonable.

The slogan reflects the whole outlook of the Occupy movement, though. One of their key demands was for income to be more evenly distributed, when the problem is of course that the means of production are in the hands of a small elite who live off and make profit from the exploitation of others. I agree with Occupy in several respects and particularly admire their use of participatory democracy, I just think that this is, as you said, a terrible analysis that results in a waste of energy in trying to solve a much smaller problem than the one that should be solved and may be contributing to the popular misconception of leftism as idealistic and "bleeding heart."