It's mostly country-dependand i presume.
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What role will other classes besides the proletariat play in the revolution? In particular, what role wil the Students, and those of the middle class who support the revolution play?
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
It's mostly country-dependand i presume.
It's quite the same as the role played by the middle class in history. They act according to their interests. The middle class, in general, will go where the tide is. If the revolutionary movement is sufficiently strong, they will go along with it. If not, they stick with the ruling class.
Rosa, explain how Marx was wrong here: </div><table border=\'0\' align=\'center\' width=\'95%\' cellpadding=\'3\' cellspacing=\'1\'><tr><td>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td id=\'QUOTE\'>in big industry the <u>contradiction</u> between the instrument of production and private property appears from the first time and is the product of big industry; moreover, big industry must be highly developed to produce this contradiction.</td></tr></table><div class=\'signature\'>
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Students are a large group and it depends on their backgrounds,etc.
The term middle class is an extremely vague term that includes certain workers an petit bourgeois so it'll depend with them as well.
Its likely that most other classes will be gone by the time we see a revolution. Already in the West, what you describe as the middle class is being pushed into the proletariat (if it was not there before). Small petit-bourgeois businesses and individuals are an increased rarity. Society is becoming more and more polarized as reforms become increasingly impossible or too expensive to implement. What remains of the petit-bourgeoisie and lumpen-proletariat will likely be split depending on the momentum of the situation or personal allegiances, historical situation etc.
<span style=\'color:red\'>"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."
-Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852)</span>
<span style=\'color:blue\'>"When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created."
-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto</span>
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Actually beadbros, on the contrary in the west ie the US, the working class is being exported to China and India and Pakistan.
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
No it's not, industrial jobs are. You can not export a working class. You are working class if you sell your labor power to an employer. The majority of workers in the US do this.
Do you even understand what class is? "Students" are not a class, nor are the "middle class" people a class.
I think other classes will be split. Some will support change, others will oppose it. Ultimately of course the goal is the abolition of class so that we can't have a ruling class anymore. So their role in the long run will be the same as everyone elses. To be become part of a socialist society.
People act as individuals, not as classes. People who support the revolution will fight for it, those who don't will oppose it. Many proletarians may oppose such a revolution just as many bourgeoisie may support it.
We shouldn't be fighting for an exclusively proletarian revolution. Revolution should improve the lives of everyone, bourgeois or prole.
Life is something worth dying for.
There are only two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeois .
And in order for the proletariat to get out of poverty the bourgeois need to lose something. It makes sense. If someones life is improving someone elses life is not improving.
"Champagne tastes can soon make you forget how important a 50 cent beer can be." -UE Leaflet
I can completely understand that, however there's a flaw in your logic.
You're implying that the lives of the bourgeosie will not be improving by ridding them of the boring, sterile lives of the Middle America.
Workers suffer physically because they have to work their entire lives to survive while the bourgeoisie suffer emotionally because they have to suppress their own desires in order to remain a "respected" part of society.
EDIT:
The proletariat and the bourgeois may be the largest classes, they are not the only ones. There also exists the lumpen-proletariat and petit-bourgeois... but I guess they could simply be considered "spinoffs" of the proles and bourgeosie.
Life is something worth dying for.
That is an incorrect class analysis for the socio-political situations in latin ameica, afrika and asia.
Why are so many people just regurgitating Marx in this thread?
While the trend you describe is real and not new, obviously it won't completely eliminate all other classes anytime soon - probably never.
So this amounts to indefinitely postponing workers' revolution, turning it into something like the Second Coming of Jesus.
Which is the logical conclusion of any "proletarian purist" approach which rejects alliances with other exploited classes - the rejection of workers' revolution, at least in practice.
That's been true ever since Gottschalk and Lasalle in Marx's time - they sucked up to the monarchy after rejecting the revolutionary alliance of the workers, peasants, and urban petty-bourgeoisie.
They aren't. You have to know Marx first.
But history has proven him right on this, so it's worth repeating what Marx's approach was.
The alliance of the working class with working farmers and other exploited layers of the population. Often emphasizing democratic demands and tasks initially.
In the advanced capitalist countries today, that includes truck owner-operators and other self-employed people. Students. Working farmers, who remain ecomically important though few in numbers.
Every workers' revolution, from the Paris Commune to Nicaragua, has started with this approach.
Those who reject it do not make revolutions. They may remain in purist sectarian isolation, or like Lasalle and the Mensheviks they may seek alliance with some sector of the exploiters.
Not really, there is such wealth in the world that if it were to be shared out equally, everybody would be at a level of wealth in excess of the middle classes today.
It's only really those at the very top who need to lose something.
What do you mean?
Where else would you fit students? They are like a class of their own. But I really meant groups who aren't working class. By middle class I meant petit-bourgieous.
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
Students are really too heterogenous to be a class. After graduation, they may belong to various classes. A "social layer", maybe.
"Middle class" is often used to refer to more than just the traditional petty-bourgeoisie (small-time exploiters). "Middle classes" may be more accurate. There are a number of classes or social layers between the working class and the capitalist class.
