I agree with pretty much everything this man has to say. If you don't, that just means you're filthy rich; or an idiot. Or a filthy rich idiot.
Karl Marx said it was the destiny of the working class to displace the
capitalist system, with the
dictatorship of the proletariat, abolishing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a future
communist society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In
Capital,
Marx dissected the ways in which capital can forestall such a
revolutionary extension of the Enlightenment. Some issues in Marxist
arguments about working class membership have included:
- The class status of people in a temporary or permanent position of unemployment.
- The class status of domestic labor, particularly the children (see child labor), and also traditionally the wives of male workers, as some spouses do not themselves work in paying jobs outside the home.
- Whether workers can be considered working class if they own personal property or small amounts of stock ownership.
- The relationships among peasants, rural smallholders, and the working class.
- The extent to which non-class group identities and politics (race,
gender, et al.) can obviate or substitute for working class membership
in Enlightenment projects, where working class membership is
prohibitively contradictory or obfuscated.
Some answers to some of these issues, as argued, analyzed, and formulated over the centuries, are:
- Unemployed workers are proletariat.
- Class for dependents is determined by the primary income earner.
- Personal property is clearly different from private property. For
example, the proletariat can own houses; this is personal property.
- The self-employed worker may be a member of the petite bourgeoisie
(for example a highly paid professional, athlete, etc.), or a member of
the proletariat (for example, a contract worker whose income may be
relatively high but is precarious).
- Students' class status depends on that of their family, and also on whether they remain financially dependent on them.
- Race, gender and class are overlapping social stratification
categories. It is possible for capitalists to strategically substitute
the members of race, class, and gender groups to attain capitalist
objectives; but once these stratification categories are formed and
deployed, membership balkanizes experiences and interests.
In general, in Marxist terms,
wage laborers and those dependent on the
welfare state
are working class, and those who live on accumulated capital and/or
exploit the labor of others are not. This broad dichotomy defines the
class struggle.
Different groups and individuals may at any given time be on one side
or the other. For example, retired factory workers are working class in
the popular sense; but to the extent that they live off
fixed incomes, financed by stock in corporations whose earnings are
profit
extracted from current workers, retired factory workers' interests, and
possibly their identities and politics, are not working class. Such
contradictions of interests and identity within individuals' lives and
within communities can effectively undermine the ability of the working
class to act in solidarity to reduce exploitation, inequality, and the
role of ownership in determining people's life chances, work conditions,
and political power.
The position of core capitalists is not nearly as contradictory
within a capitalist system. Capitalists get their income, wealth,
status, and power from owning the means of production, and they will
have it managed for their own aggrandizement. From the capitalist
perspective, it would be silly to manage production (or build political
resources that could influence economic relationships) for the benefit
of workers. To the extent that workers sometimes benefit in some ways
from capitalism, it is not a central goal, but a byproduct. Thus,
operating with less class interest contradiction and less identity
contradiction, and more resources for political coordination, capitalist
class members can often coordinate and prosecute their interests with a
great deal of efficacy, over and against workers.
