What makes a person a worker, or a part of the state?

[apathy maybe]

I'm putting forward the argument that the professions listed below are all "worker" type jobs. Because if they don't work, they "starve" just like any other worker (when I say starve, in some places I mean, "go on the dole", adjust for location).

Just because they are "workers", doesn't mean that they can't be an enemy of a revolution, it doesn't mean that they can't work for the state.

But, what do you think? I want you all to draw me a line somewhere here:

* Police officer, prison warden
* Clerk in a court
* Clerk in a parliament
* Low level bureaucrat in police department
* Other low level bureaucrat in another department (e.g. education or health)
* Teacher employed at a state school, nurse employed at a state hospital
* Teacher employed at a "not for profit" non-state school, nurse employed at a "not for profit" non-state hospital
* Teacher employed at a private "for profit" non-state school, nurse employed at a "for profit" non-state hospital

Who is being exploited, who isn't? Who is part of the state, who isn't?

I don't care if you use Marxian or any other analysis, I'm interested in all answers. But, I do want justification for your answers.

[apathy maybe]

Doesn't anyone want to help me out here? Where does a Marxist draw the line about who is part of the state and who is a prol? Where do anarchists draw the line?

Help out an ignorant person! No question is too stupid!

[redguard2009]

* Police officer, prison warden

I would not call these "workers" in the socialist sense for two reasons. First, their employment is completely detached from productive forces or even the service of productive forces. Second, their mandate is as an armed guard, so to speak, of the capitalist system (assuming they are police officers in a capitalist country), and all too often that mandate brings them in direct opposition to the idea of communism.

Everyone there is, to a degree, exploited by capital relations; they are all subordinate in one way or another to an employer of some sort, be it private or state or beauraucratic. Even Police officers have a tiny shred of legitimacy to organizing on the basis of worker's rights (Police officers here are currently engaged in "near-strike" tactics; they have resorted to going on duty wearing red hats bearing their union's logo and wearing jeans or camoflage pants instead of their uniforms, though they still wear the body armour).

An interesting example (I don't know of what exactly, but it's interesting) is the relationship between Canada's state-managed healthcare and education system and the US' privately-owned healthcare and education system.

On the one hand, healthcare and schooling in the US is much more expensive than in Canada (well, in Canada, healthcare is free so obviously; education is semi-subsidized by the state, which keeps tuition prices very low). On the other, professionals who are trained as teachers and health specialists will often seek jobs in the United States where their competetive wages are much higher than what the state would pay them in a state-owned health or education system.

Is one more "exploited" than the other simply due to their change in wages, their relationship to the state and capitalist marketeering?

Note: Technically, Canada's healthcare system is semi-private; many hospitals and most clinics are privately-owned and operated; all wages and other costs for medical support for the public is simply paid by the government, rather than their healthcare workers being actual employees of the state.