Defining classes

[TC]

This thread was inspired by the "Definition of worker" thread...but i wanted to start a new one because, i think to define what workers are you need to define what the other classes are as well, in a manner where the definitions are materialist rather than arbitrary or culturally influenced.


Really, i think this question would be addressed if you recognize five (or six) classes based on their relationship to production. In decending order of how well they tend to be compensated:

-bourgeois are those who invest in the production of capital and produce nothing, earning the capital of others.

-intelligentsia are those who sell their creative work but produce no tangible capital,

-petty bourgeois invest capital in their own prouction of capital

-proletariat produce tangible capital through labor.

-lumpen proletariat do not produce or invest, they have no relationship to the means of production.

There was also an aristocracy which, like bourgeois owned the means of production, in their case agriculture, and so made profit off of the labor of their tennants, but unlike the bourgeois, they did not reinvest that capital they simply horded it, so their income never increased which is why they don't effectively exist as a class anymore, except perhaps in Latin America.



In a Marxist sense, a worker is someone who produces through labor capital,

The most obvious examples are factory workers, farmers, and miners, in that, their labor is all used to produce things of material value. People responsible for transporting material physically, like truck drivers, trian conductors, pilots (who are very well compensated workers) and so on, are also workers, since their labor adds material value (different materials are more valuable when moved to different places). All of them are proletariat.

Petty Bourgeois are people who invest in their own buisnesses but do not have employees, so they have both the functions of Bourgeois and Proletariat. In common practice though, small buisness owners are not actually Petty Bourgeois as they don't own their own investment, rather they take out loans from the Bourgeois, and in paying back their investors, they are effectively their employees.

Capitalists are defined through investment, they are not waged, rather they recieve a portion of the profits that their workers genorate off of their investment. The classic example of bourgeoisie is the factory owner, as they own the means of production directly, they pay workers to produce capital with their machines, and then they take the excess profit and reinvest it using it to buy more machines and employ more workers. However, there are other, more common types of bourgeoisie as well, the very most common being investment bankers who, rather than owning their own factories, invest money in other companies and own a portion of them, the profits they earn on that investment are then divided between the bankers at the firm in the form of bonuses, so their relationship to production is the same as the industrial tycoons but they are imply one step removed further and have a smaller personal investment. Venture capitalists are another more common example of bourgeoisie; they operate the same way as investment bankers except that they invest in developing new companies rather than in established ones, so they typically have a larger investment and therefore can exercise more control over their investment. People whose personal stock portfolio produces the majority of their income so that they live off of their investments are also bourgeoisie.


Intelligentsia are a large class thats frequently overlooked (and, often misunderstood by Anarchists). Unlike proletariat, intelligentsia produce no tangible capital. Unlike the bourgeois, intelligentsia sell their effort rather than reaping profit off of investment. They don't produce anything, nor do they add additional tangible value, rather they perform services that have intangible value, most of their services fit into catagories of either organizing, advising, educating, entertaining, or producing creative works considered culturally significant. The classic examples are academics and artists, but educators, administrators, psychologists, lawyers, managers, marketers, engineers, designers, journalists, politicians, and anyone else who works for a living but doesn't make anything material, are all intelligentsia. Intelligentsia, like lumpen proletariat, have only an indirect relationship the means of production so they are neither exploited nor are they exploiters, they have no class interests of their own apart from maintaining their non-exploitive employment with whatever the most powerful class is, which in a way makes them the most unpredictable in that they will be loyal to power rather capable of acting as a self-interested class themselves.


Lumpenproletariat are like Intelligentsia in that they neither invest or own capital, and they don't produce anything material. Unlike intelligentsia though they don't provide any non-tangible but useful services, they don't do anything very useful. As such, it doesn't take any skills or training to be lupenrpoletariat, they support themselves through a totally parasitic relationship with the rest of the economy. Criminals are the classic examples of considered lumpenproletariat, full-time police and soldiers are lumpenproletariat, as are unemployed people.


There isn't an exact coorelation between class and income. A teacher is a member of the intelligentsia, but will often earn a fraction of what highly skilled proletariat earn like car mechanics, or commercial pilots, and a corporate lawyer and a banker belong to different classes but will often have similar income...most celebrities are members of the intelligentsia and can have far more personal wealth than most bourgeois, but clearly the bourgeois as a class is by far the most wealthy and its members are on average the richest.

The type of work done by different occupations is also not nessessarily an indicator of the class. Stock brokers and investment capitalists might have very similar jobs in that they both assess investment possibilities. A truck driver could hypothetically be either a member of the proletariat or lumpenproletariat depending on what they were driving (they'd be a prole if it contributed to the economy and lumpen if it did not). For that matter, a lot of lumpenproletariat and a lot of bourgeoiese do pretty much the same thing: nothing.


About the ruling class:

The ruling class is often defined as the class that controls the means of production. This is always true, but i think a more essential definition in a way is that the ruling class is the class that has sufficent capital to employ the non-productive classes, the intelligentsia and the lumpen proletariat, because whatever class employes them has state power...the intelligentsia and lumpen proletariat however can never be ruling classes themselves, because they neither take profits nor do they produce anything directly, so they must be employed by someone. This is a big mistake that anarchists make in thinking that the intelligentsia of socialist states is actually a ruling class, they're not, they serve the proletariat in the same manner that they served the bourgeois and the aristocrats. Petty bourgeois can hypothetically become a ruling class, but since they have a very limited ability to control capital since they only control what they can make themselves, they can only rule in the absense of any of the other productive classes; republican city states are probably the only example of instances where the petty bourgeois can act as a ruling class.

[ComradeRed]

Really, i think this question would be addressed if you recognize five (or six) classes based on their relationship to production. In decending order of how well they tend to be compensated:

-bourgeois are those who invest in the production of capital and produce nothing, earning the capital of others.

-intelligentsia are those who sell their creative work but produce no tangible capital,

-petty bourgeois invest capital in their own prouction of capital

-proletariat produce tangible capital through labor.

-lumpen proletariat do not produce or invest, they have no relationship to the means of production. Why only five or six classes?

Your model, by the by, has several factors which is odd: Quantity output produced
Income
Quantity capital produced
and this becomes a simple check list...hmm...rather interesting; ironic that it becomes so linear, so booleanistic from the definitions.

Did you intend these to be the only factors or would you consider others?

[TC]

no i'm disregarding income for catagorizing class, i think the relevent factors are whether you invest or produce or both, sell your labor or buy other people's labor. I think combinations of those things include all of the relationships to the economy classes of people can have, and your relationship to the economy is what class in the marxist sense is all about.

[ComradeRed]

Well, by "income" I mean "amount received per work given", so for the bourgeoisie giving no work has an infinite amount of income (well, an "undefined" amount because one divides by 0). The petit bourgeoisie have a real slope, and the workers have nearly 0. Neat things like that ;) not "Well, X made $20000 annum, thus he's automatically a prole".

[apathy maybe]

While I disagree with your analysis, I do find it interesting.

(For this bit I'll being using your analysis.)

Originally posted by TragicClown
Intelligentsia, like lumpen proletariat, have only an indirect relationship the means of production so they are neither exploited nor are they exploiters, they have no class interests of their own apart from maintaining their non-exploitive employment with whatever the most powerful class is, which in a way makes them the most unpredictable in that they will be loyal to power rather capable of acting as a self-interested class themselves.
I disagree that Intelligentsia are not exploited. They sell their labour, capitalists then sell what their labour has made for a profit (music, books or even learning). As such I think that lower income earners in this "class" (teachers perhaps) would support the proletariat.

I also wonder where different groups of people would fit in your analysis; students, and hair dressers and doctors (including GPs and specialists).
Also, how would you fit people who own their own farms or small scale production, but do not owe money to the capitalists?


(And now for some disagreement on this analysis.)
I find it interesting that you do not include income and social status in your analysis. Do you feel that movie stars have the same interests as teachers and lawyers?
Do you think that class is more important then wealth in the higher levels of society (where all the scum goes)?

[Amusing Scrotum]

I must admit, I was unaware of "the intelligentsia" being a class of their own; I've always thought they were a sub-section of the petty-bourgeois. And I've certainly not come across anything in Marxist economics that would suggest that they are a class of their own.

Is the "intelligentsia class" a Gramsci invention? Or does it date back to Kautsky and his "consciousness scientists"?

Plus, your definition of intelligentsia, seems a little to subjective....and in places, flat out wrong.

There's little significant difference in the way a teacher and a truck driver operate, though you make one intelligentsia and one working class, which puzzles me. Neither produce an object of material value, but I think it's easily argued that both produce a product via their labour power.

This....


Originally posted by TC
They don't produce anything, nor do they add additional tangible value, rather they perform services that have intangible value....

....really baffled me.

I mean, "intangible value" is a kinda' weird phrase to use, because the value of the work done by people in your "intelligentsia class" can be "realized or defined"....how else would we have a wage system?

There's obviously some way that their pay-masters are able to "realize or define" their value, otherwise we would see some really strange things going on in these professions....one teacher would be getting paid £20,000 and another £500,000.

Additionally, people like Engineers and Journalists will add "tangible value" to something and do produce something material. An Engineer (depending on which field), will produce something, say building plans, and these are certainly tangible products.

In a way, someone who produces a set of plans, under your definition anyway, are "more proletarian" than say a truck driver....because they, unlike the truck driver, are using their labour power to produce a real material object.

And the "intangible" bit still strikes me as odd; because really, it is possible to "realize and define" the labour done by these people....it's not "incapable of being realized or defined" as the word "intangible" would suggest.

Not only that, something your definitions seem to be are a-historical; they don't take into account the "proletarianisation" of certain professions under the epoch of capital....teaching being an obvious example.

And saying that teachers are neither "exploited nor are they exploiters" just seems fucking wacko to me. If this was the case, then we wouldn't expect to see Teachers Unions organising.

Certainly, in my opinion, a good way to quickly ascertain whether a job is working class or not, is whether that job tends to be Unionised or not....some of the professions today, remain in a Guild type of status; the Architects Guild for instance.

This suggests, that this job is not yet "proletarianised"....where as a teaching, which has a Union form of organisation, is "proletarianised" in my opinion.

The last bit of your description -- "This is a big mistake that anarchists make in thinking that the intelligentsia of socialist states is actually a ruling class, they're not, they serve the proletariat in the same manner that they served the bourgeois and the aristocrats"" -- makes it seem that your definitions are more politically motivated than objectively motivated.

You wish to create definitions which would make the former USSR a "workers' state" rather than definitions that are really of any use....hence this definition could also be a thorn in the side of the State-Capitalist adherents.

Plus, I don't think putting the unemployed and criminals in the same category is really useful; in terms of it being a theoretical analysis that should help us in action, I don't think it's very useful.

Really, it identifies both groups as potential class enemies; and I wouldn't consider unemployed workers potential class enemies though your local bank robber likely is a class enemy.

Another thread on class people may find interesting. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=48635&hl=Plumber)

[The Grey Blur]

I quite liked this article, interesting for a younger, less-knowledgable Marxist such as myself :blush:

[TC]

apathy maybe writes


I disagree that Intelligentsia are not exploited. They sell their labour, capitalists then sell what their labour has made for a profit (music, books or even learning). As such I think that lower income earners in this "class" (teachers perhaps) would support the proletariat.


Its true that the intelligentsia are used in that they sell their time and effort, so you might say they're exploited in the common usage sense of the word, however, they are not exploited in the more technical marxist sense because as they produce no capital, their employers do not take any surplus value from their production them. They are therefore not alienated from the product of their work, and they are not enriching an owner at their own loss. This is a huge difference with the exploitation of proletariat labor who do produce capital.

(Likewise, petty bourgeois are not exploited because they own their own surplus profits and thus recieve the product of their labor).


The intelligentsia and the lumpenproletariat, as i tried to imply, are not primary vehicals for class struggle as they do not possess specific interests in relation to the means of production (since they have no direct relation to it as the other classes do), so they can potentially side with any other class (except the lumpenproletariat) depending on what their individual interests are (which is usually determined by whose paying them or who could get them a better deal).


I also wonder where different groups of people would fit in your analysis; students, and hair dressers and doctors (including GPs and specialists).
Also, how would you fit people who own their own farms or small scale production, but do not owe money to the capitalists?

Doctors are highly skilled workers because they add material value (a worker with broken legs produces less capital than a worker with functioning legs, this is a real material difference, just as people who repair machines are workers)...their work produces tangible value.

Students are defacto lumpenproletariat, in that they're unemployed people who can be drawn into the work force as the need arises but are not currently part of the mainstream economy. Like the rest of the lumpenproletariat, they're part of the "reserve army of the unemployed" as Marx and Engels put it, and they're among the first to be used as such when the state requires it, and they live off of the support of people active in the economy (such as their parents, government and university assistance). This means that, their relationship with the economy and funciton in society is lumpenproletarian, they are simply more privileged and better supported than other sectors of it.

Whether hairdressers are intelligentsia or proletariat or petty bourgeois has to do with whether they can be said to add material value to their clients (if not, they're intelligentsia and only have creative labor rather than actual production), and whether or not they own their own salon or they work for someone else (the later obviously being proletariat, the former being petty bourgeois)

Really, again, Lumpenproletariat and Intelligentsia are not classes in the traditional sense that the three other industrial classes are, in that they don't have collective class interests. Their status in a way has less to do with how they interact with the economy as it does with how they survive without interacting with the economy directly.


(And now for some disagreement on this analysis.)
I find it interesting that you do not include income and social status in your analysis. Do you feel that movie stars have the same interests as teachers and lawyers?
Do you think that class is more important then wealth in the higher levels of society (where all the scum goes)?

No, intelligentsia and lumpenproles do not have unified class interests because they depend on different sectors of the economy for support (whereas, the relations of bourgeois and proletariat are basically uniform, and petty bourgeois are self supporting).

Additionally anyone with sufficent money buys their way into the bourgeois when they invest. Oprah Winfrey might have started her working life as a member of the intelligentsia but she is now bourgeoises as she earns bulk of her income off of capital investment.


I would also point out, that very wealthy capitalists outnumber very wealthy entertainers by a great deal, but there are far more very wealthy entertainers using their status against the interests of the ruling capitalist class then there are wealthy capitalists doing the same...

Ultimately class interests are determined not by how much money you have but how you make your money. The 17th century bourgeoises and aristocracy were both roughly equal in personal wealth but they made their money in very different ways and experianced class conflict where their interests differed, ultimately leading to bourgeois revolution. Clearly this is a life and death example of relation to the economy rather than personal wealth determining class interests.


Armchair Socialism writes

I must admit, I was unaware of "the intelligentsia" being a class of their own; I've always thought they were a sub-section of the petty-bourgeois. And I've certainly not come across anything in Marxist economics that would suggest that they are a class of their own.


No the petty-bourgeois is totally different. Intelligentsia are employees, petty-bourgeois work for themselves, intelligentsia earn wages or salaries, petty-bourgeois earn their own excess profit, petty bourgeois frequently produce tangible goods, intelligentsia do not.

Both Marx and Lenin saw them as being assistants or 'lackeys' for the benefit of ruling class bourgeois, not a section of the petty bourgeois.


Is the "intelligentsia class" a Gramsci invention? Or does it date back to Kautsky and his "consciousness scientists"?


Gramsci wrote extensively about the intelligentsia and argued for a different understanding of it, but both the word and the concept significantly predate both Gramsci and Kautsky. The word and concept were used in Russia in the early 19th century and Marx, Engels, and Lenin all wrote about them.

The term didn't become universial for the class until the 20th century though since Lenin and Trotsky used that word. Marx and Engels (obviously not writing in Russian) called the same class the Ideological Class, which included exactly the same set of occupations and their analsysis of it as a class serving the bourgeoises was the same as Lenin's (obviously the people who first used the term though were not Marxists though).



There's little significant difference in the way a teacher and a truck driver operate, though you make one intelligentsia and one working class, which puzzles me. Neither produce an object of material value, but I think it's easily argued that both produce a product via their labour power.


This isn't true, theres a huge difference.

Imagine if all of the teachers in the country went on strike. It would certaintly disrupt the personal lives of a lot of people, but it would not have an immediate impact on the economy. Now imagine if all of the transport workers went on strike. The economy would be utterly shut down. Factories and farms wouldn't be able to get their goods to stores, workers wouldn't be able to take the bus to factories, or to buy things, the capitalists wouldn't even be able to refill their cars at the petrol stations as they'd not be restocked.

Transport workers add value because products have vastly more material value in stores than they do in warehouses, and more value in warehouses in cities than in factory yards in the middle of nowhere. This is part of Marxian labor theory of value, simply put it requires labor to get things from where they start to where you want them to be, where you can use them, and that labor amounts to added material value.

Likewise, coal miners don't create coal through labor, rather their labor amounts to taking coal from a place where it has no value (in the ground) to a place where it has a great deal of value (in a power plant or furnace).


I mean, "intangible value" is a kinda' weird phrase to use, because the value of the work done by people in your "intelligentsia class" can be "realized or defined"....how else would we have a wage system?

The difference is that of productive and unproductive labor to use a more classically marxian phrase, the former being proletarian and the later being of the intelligentsia. By intangible i simply meant non-material.

The proletariat's productive labor adds material value to the economy, the intelligentsias unproductive labor does not, anything it adds is non-material.


Additionally, people like Engineers and Journalists will add "tangible value" to something and do produce something material. An Engineer (depending on which field), will produce something, say building plans, and these are certainly tangible products.

Engineers who actually build the things they design do, i suppose, but if other people are doing the material construction then while their non-material services may be clearly 'useful', they are not actually 'productive.' Building plans are not tangible products, they don't have material existance, buildings are.

Put it this way:

A bunch of construction workers and an engineer can build a house better than a bunch of construction workers without an engineer, but a bunch of construction workers can still build something alone, whereas an engineer alone can't build anything. It should be obvious were the material production is coming from, the engineer simply assists the construction workers without producing anything themselves.


Not only that, something your definitions seem to be are a-historical; they don't take into account the "proletarianisation" of certain professions under the epoch of capital....teaching being an obvious example.

This isn't a change in the marxian economic class of teachers, its simply a decline in the social prestige of the class (the same way other classes have declined or increased in social prestige).

And in any case, certain educators have always had a low social status.


And saying that teachers are neither "exploited nor are they exploiters" just seems fucking wacko to me. If this was the case, then we wouldn't expect to see Teachers Unions organising.

Again i was using the word exploitation in the marxian economic sense not in the common usage. And in any case, exploitation in either sense is hardly a requirement for collective organization so i don't know what your example proves.


Certainly, in my opinion, a good way to quickly ascertain whether a job is working class or not, is whether that job tends to be Unionised or not....some of the professions today, remain in a Guild type of status; the Architects Guild for instance.

lol thats absurd. Lawyers have a National Lawyers Guild and a bar association and some of the wealthiest americans are members of the Screen Actors Guild or the Directors Guild of America. How about the Guild of International Bankers based in London, is that indicative of Banker's working class status?

You're using quite arbitrary, ahistorical and unmarxian ways to look at these i think.



This suggests, that this job is not yet "proletarianised"....where as a teaching, which has a Union form of organisation, is "proletarianised" in my opinion.

Again you're talking about social status/prestige in their culturally defined class, i'm talking about marxian economic class.

Marxian economic classes do not coorespond to liberal lower, middle, upper-middle and upper class social statuses. Certaintly teachers are falling in the liberal cultural conception of class, but not in the Marxist sense.



Plus, I don't think putting the unemployed and criminals in the same category is really useful; in terms of it being a theoretical analysis that should help us in action, I don't think it's very useful.

Perhaps i should clarify that by criminals i meant people earning money outside of the legal economy (drug dealers, prostitutes, mobsters, theives, etc.) who do so percisely because they're unemployed, not people commiting crimes for non-economic reasons.

In any case, Marx classifies both criminal elements and unemployed non-criminals as lumpenproletariat, and i'm talking about marxian classes here i'm not trying to redefine something new.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by TragicClown+--> (TragicClown)No the petty-bourgeois is totally different. Intelligentsia are employees, petty-bourgeois work for themselves, intelligentsia earn wages or salaries, petty-bourgeois earn their own excess profit, petty bourgeois frequently produce tangible goods, intelligentsia do not.[/b]

Not neccessarily....


Originally posted by Marxists Internet Archive+--> (Marxists Internet Archive)2) Also refers to the growing group of workers whose function is management of the bourgeois apparatus. These workers do not produce commodities, but instead manage the production, distribution, and/or exchange of commodities and/or services owned by their bourgeois employers.

While these workers are a part of the working class because they receive a wage and their livelihood is dependent on that wage, they are separated from working class consciousness because they have day-to-day control, but not ownership, over the means of production, distribution, and exchange.[/b]

http://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/e.htm#petty-bourgeois

Emphasis added....


Originally posted by Wikipedia
Starting from the mid-19th century, the term was used by Karl Marx and Marxist theorists to refer to a social class that included shop-keepers and professionals. Though distinct from the ordinary working class and the lumpenproletariat, who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival, the petty bourgeois remain members of the proletariat rather than the haute bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, who own the means of production and buy the labor-power of others to work it. Though the petty bourgeois do buy the labor power of others, in contrast to the bourgeoisie they typically work alongside their own employees; and although they generally own their own businesses, they do not own a controlling share of the means of production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petty_bourgeois

Additionally, all Marxist works regarding Marx that I've read, have referred to Marx as coming from a petty-bourgeois family; and Marx's father, was a lawyer.

Under your definition, the average lawyer would be part of the intelligentsia class (?) rather than the petty-bourgeois....which seems out of sync to me.

I'd say the petty-bourgeois, was mainly compromised of three different sub-sections: (1) petty-capitalists and the self-employed; (2) managers; and (3) the people you term "intelligentsia", servants of the bourgeois like lawyers and other professionals....Marx referred to lawyers as "ideologues of private property", so basically, they're a profession that relies on the capitalist social order and they're also petty-bourgeois.

In my view, in modern-capitalist economies, there are only three (maybe four) major classes and then there are sub-sections of these classes....like the "intelligentsia", the labour aristocracy and so on.


Originally posted by TragicClown
Both Marx and Lenin saw them as being assistants or 'lackeys' for the benefit of ruling class bourgeois, not a section of the petty bourgeois.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx refers to them as servants of the ruling class; but he doesn't say whether this makes them petty-bourgeois or not....he leaves it up in the air.

From memory, I seem to recall Marx describing the German (?) democrats who had quite a few lawyers in their leadership as petty-bourgeois democrats....but other than that, I don't know of him explicitly saying that professionals were not petty-bourgeois.

Perhaps you could point to where either Marx or Engels make this distinction?


Originally posted by TragicClown
Marx and Engels (obviously not writing in Russian) called the same class the Ideological Class....

Never heard that term myself; and neither has MIA....


Originally posted by Marxists Internet Archive
Your search - allintext: "Ideological Class" site:www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ - did not match any documents.

http://www.google.com/search?as_sitesearch...oq=&select1=%23 (http://www.google.com/search?as_sitesearch=www.marxists.org%2Farchive%2F marx%2F&hl=en&ie=8859-1&oe=8859-1&as_occt=body&num=30&btnG=Google+Search%21&as_epq=Ideological+Class&as_oq=&select1=%23)

The phrase I have heard Marx and Engels use, is bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intelligentsia....but like with the term Industrial Worker, I always figured that the bourgeois part denoted class.

Though, if you can point to somewhere where either Marx or Engels say that the Intelligentsia/Ideological Class are a separate class and not a sub-section of the petty-bourgeois, then I'd be very pleased.

Cause really, I'd prefer to hear it from the horses mouth rather than from Lenin's mouth....cause Kautsky's assumptions really do permeate Lenin's work and virtually all "Marxism" post-Marx and Engels.


Originally posted by TragicClown
Imagine if all of the teachers in the country went on strike. It would certaintly disrupt the personal lives of a lot of people, but it would not have an immediate impact on the economy. Now imagine if all of the transport workers went on strike. The economy would be utterly shut down.

So does the impact have to be "immediate"?

Cause "immediate" is pretty subjective....how long is "immediate"? And why "immediate"?

All the clothes factories in the world could completely stop production; but the impact wouldn't be "immediate"....indeed the impact may not be, significantly, noticed for years, maybe even decades!

Yet the people who make clothes, are working class are they not? So I don't think "immediate impact" is really an objective category you can use to say whether a teacher is working class or not.

Additionally, one could make the case that a huge strike in teaching would have an "immediate impact" on the economy....millions of parents after all, would need to take time of work and this would lead to significant reductions in the performance of the economy.


Originally posted by TragicClown
This is part of Marxian labor theory of value, simply put it requires labor to get things from where they start to where you want them to be, where you can use them, and that labor amounts to added material value.

And the labour of teachers, produces education which in this day and age, is a requirement for a modern-capitalist economy to fumction....education, in its current format, creates a more efficient workforce.

And in this sense, I think the labour of a teacher does add "tangible value" to the economy and without it, the material value of the products produced by an educated worker, would be lowered.


Originally posted by TragicClown
The proletariat's productive labor adds material value to the economy, the intelligentsias unproductive labor does not, anything it adds is non-material.

Yet vast profits are made from the sections you deem to produce "non-material". :huh:

The labour may be unproductive; as in it's epoch specific and will be dispensed with in the next social order....but I don't see how it can be called either "intangible" or "non-material".

The "non-material" but I kinda' get; you mean that it doesn't produce a material object that adds to the economy (?). Yet, you've already said that transportation is a form of labour that is, in the main, productive; so I don't get what you're saying here.

The labours obviously "tangible", because wages are paid for the labour; which shows said labour can be defined.

Your approach, in my opinion, is not consistent....and on top of that, it&#39;s fucking confusing. <_<

A soldier for instance, is a unproductive labourer under the definition I just gave; yet looting and pillaging does add material value to the economy....and this value, is, of course, "tangible".

Likewise, a Journalist who writes columns, produces a material object that contributes to the economy by becoming part of a newspaper, another material object, that is sold for money.

The News Media, does add a lot to the economy; and those who work writing the columns, in the printing presses (do they still have those?) and transporting the newspapers all add material value to the product and also contribute to the economy and are therefore, working class.

The case could be made, that particularly famous Journalists who act as hacks for the bourgeois, aren&#39;t comparable to normal Journalists....though based on my basic knowledge of Journalism, these people tend to be freelance Journalists or "stringers"; which means they&#39;d be classed as petty-bourgeois anyway.

But I wouldn&#39;t say that Joe Bloggs who writes for the Daily [some shitty city in England] was part of the intelligentsia class.


Originally posted by TragicClown
Building plans are not tangible products, they don&#39;t have material existance, buildings are.

This gets weirder by the minute. <_<

How don&#39;t building plans have a "material existence"? :huh:

They are an actual material object that has been produced by the labour power of one or more workers; and they certainly have "tangible" value....an Architect will be getting charged out at about £50/60 per hour these days, and an Architects apprentice will be being charged out at about £30 per hour.

So based on your other criteria, I don&#39;t know quite how you&#39;d dismiss building plans as "unproductive"; though here&#39;s your reasoning....


Originally posted by TragicClown
A bunch of construction workers and an engineer can build a house better than a bunch of construction workers without an engineer, but a bunch of construction workers can still build something alone, whereas an engineer alone can&#39;t build anything. It should be obvious were the material production is coming from, the engineer simply assists the construction workers without producing anything themselves.

But you see, your own words should point out the inconsistency in your approach....as you say, "A bunch of construction workers and an engineer can build a house better than a bunch of construction workers without an engineer".

In other words, the labour of said Engineer adds "tangible" value to the product which increases the value of said product....so the Engineers labour is productive.

As for your argument that the job of Engineer is, potentially at least, dispensable; that it&#39;s an unproductive aspect of a Construction project. Well....you&#39;re right there; an Engineer could be dispersed off.

However, the formal position of clothes maker or truck driver or whatever could also be dispensed of; and someone who didn&#39;t do that formally would just do that little bit extra.

The position itself, likely could be scrapped....but still, someone would need to draw up plans, however basic, and therefore, I&#39;m afraid the logic of your analogy falls apart.

The labour of the Engineer, both adds material value and is productive; therefore meaning, that the Engineer is working class.

Of course, we&#39;re talking about Engineering in general here; there&#39;s about 10-15 sub-sections of Civil Engineering alone, and fuck knows how many sub-sections there are of the other forms of Engineering.

So, it&#39;s likely that some Engineers are working class, where as others, like those who are part of the Construction Management, aren&#39;t working class.


Originally posted by TragicClown
This isn&#39;t a change in the marxian economic class of teachers, its simply a decline in the social prestige of the class....

Seems to me, that back in the day, the job of teacher was one where the teacher had the kind of personal autonomy usually associated with say, Freelance Journalists.

They sold their labour power much like a self-employed person would....and therefore, they&#39;d be part of the petty-bourgeois.

Now, with mass education likely being a significant factor, the role of a teacher appears to be one of a more working class relationship to the means of production....they sell their labour power and are part of a workforce rather than being an individual contractor as it were.

Certainly your position on this, seems out of line with traditional Marxist economics....rather than more and more people, mainly from the petty-bourgeois and peasantry, being drawn into the working class; your position is that the intelligentsia class is expanding massively.

Indeed come to think of it, using your framework, the intelligentsia rather than the working class, is (likely) the class that grew the most over the last century. Which if current trends stay similar, poses some interesting theoretical questions with regards what may happen in the future.


Originally posted by TragicClown
Again i was using the word exploitation in the marxian economic sense not in the common usage.

Well I wasn&#39;t using it in either the "common usage" sense....or the martian sense for that matter.

Take a teacher who works in a Private School, just to make matters simpler....the parents of the children who attend the school will be paying for the labour of said teachers with regards producing a product; education.

Further, whoever owns the School, will take a portion of this money for themselves and therefore, s/he is profiting off the labour of said teacher; and under basic Marxist economics, this means that they are extracting surplus value from the teacher which makes the teacher a wage-labourer....in other words, working class.


Originally posted by TragicClown
And in any case, exploitation in either sense is hardly a requirement for collective organization so i don&#39;t know what your example proves.

Collective organisation, in the form of a Union, appears to be something that is almost unique to those whose occupation is one which is working class. As I tried to point out, but you misunderstood....


[email protected]
lol thats absurd. Lawyers have a National Lawyers Guild and a bar association and some of the wealthiest americans are members of the Screen Actors Guild or the Directors Guild of America. How about the Guild of International Bankers based in London, is that indicative of Banker&#39;s working class status?

Firstly, I said whether an occupation was Unionised was a way to "quickly ascertain whether a job is working class or not"....in other words, it&#39;s a little guide that will hint at the possible class of an occupation.

Additionally, my point, which you seem to have missed (?), is that professions that are not working class, tend to organise into some form of Guild rather than a Union. Perhaps I didn&#39;t make that clear enough?

Basically, as you likely know, a Guild is more like an elite organisation of skilled people; where as a Trade Union, is an organ through which Industrial Action and Collective Bargaining can be pursued.

A Guild, as far as I know, don&#39;t operate in a manner that in any way resembles Trade Union activity....indeed modern Guilds, as far as I can tell, are used to pursue the business interests of (mainly) the petty-bourgeois.

As for the Screen Actors Guild, as far as I know the majority of it&#39;s members are not "wealthy Americans". Indeed, as far as I can tell, unlike other organisations termed Guilds, the Screen Actors Guild is a Trade Union.

And if having a few famous and wealthy members invalidates its position as a Union in your eyes, then I guess that the IWW isn&#39;t a Union either; cause Noam Chomsky is a member of that particular organisation.


TragicClown
....not people committing crimes for non-economic reasons.

....? :huh:

Other than "crimes of passion", possibly all crimes have an economic reason; yet, a big time coke dealer isn&#39;t, in my opinion anyway, a lumpen-prole....rather, I think they should be classified as part of the bourgeois.

After all, even if it&#39;s in an illegal sense, s/he will still have the same relationship to the means of production as other members of the bourgeois.

[apathy maybe]

Ignoring other problems that Armchair Socialism raised,

I assume that you would place managers in the bourgeois or the petit-bourgeois? Or are they intelligentsia?

I see a problem also with having classes that don&#39;t have class interests in a Marxian analysis. Shouldn&#39;t all classes have a distinct class interest? What is the point of the class otherwise?

(I think that the Lumpen-proletariat do have a class interest, that is to join one of the other classes. So I agree with Armchair Socialism when he argues that some criminals would not fit in this class.)

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think it&#39;s impossible to define all sections and sub-classes in societies because classes and the people in them are fluid. Additionally, there are always exceptions - teachers, for example, are technicaly petty bourgeois professionals, but in practice they are unionized and have more in common with the bus drivers at schools than lawyers or college professors. At another point in time teachers may have better pay and working conditions (and because they are basically their own manager when they are in the classroom working) they might identify more with other professionals than workers.