Classes

[Y Chwyldro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg]

I understand in Marxs' time there were more industrial workers/pesants and more rich land/factory owners than ther are now in Europ and the USA. So all the other arears of work i.e teaching, medical, law wtc. where do they fit in in Proleterin and Bourguoise terms? And what part would they play in a revolution?

[BobKKKindle$]

Your class is not defined by the work you do or the commodity you produce, but rather your economic role in terms of your relationship to the (ownership and control of) the means of production. So the quantity of indstrial workers is largely irrelevant. A proletarian is one who accesses the goods and services necessary for him to survive through selling his labour power as a commodity to an owner of Capital. In this respect, an office worker and a farm labourer would both be proletarians, even though the work they do is very different.

Highly paid wage labourers can sometimes be defined as petty-bourgeois, as even though they fit the defintion of a proletarian, they make exercise control over others in the workplace and recieve a salary more befitting of a member of the bourgeoisie. Their role in a revolution is often ambiguous and non-unifrom; some parts of this group will support a proletarian insurrection, especially when they work in a part of the public sector and their employment has been threatened by the introduction of market forces.