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working class, what does it mean?

S

sinbad

swashbuckler
Something I've been pondering on lately and was wondering what other people thought. I mean is a plumber who owns a house and has sent both his kids through uni working class?
Are his kids who having qualified work as an accountant and a shop manager and earn a fair bit less than him middle class or working class?

It's something that baffles me, can anyone help me with this question please?
 
I see this thread deteriorating. I mean that in the nicest possible way :)

You'll find lots of different people have lots of different definitions for what is working class. It means different things for everyone.

A simple definition might be to contrast those who own the means of production and those who don't (who may or may not work for them depending on unemployment etc). But that is a broad definition and fails to take into consideration a whole host of things.
 
i don't know it's just that i was reading through the thread about the swp etc and some others and it just struck me that there seems to be this obsession with working class being council estates and blue collar jobs and middle class being whit collar, this is just my interpretation though. And I thought surely to be where do you draw the line of who is being oppressed and who is privileged or part of the oppression etc.
I mean I'm fairly middle class, though in other ways working class and it just strikes me that these distinctions are often very separating and destructive (?) in any kind of debate and I just wondered what other people thought?
 
When a socialist talks about the working class, they're talking about a specific social condition which creates a specific social mindset: if your job is to do something, then you're a worker. If your job is to tell someone else how/when to do something, you're middle-class. If you own the joint, you're a bourgie fucker.

There's something specific about a worker who owns none of their tools nor means of work, is completely alienated from the processes and outcomes of their labour (other than a paltry wage) and is reduced to the same monotonous list of small, succinct tasks every day which makes them a member of the working class.

Call-centre workers, for example, fall very much into the 'working class' category - the parralels with factory work are blatant. Plumbers, teachers, policemen do not.
 
Das Uberdog said:
When a socialist talks about the working class, they're talking about a specific social condition which creates a specific social mindset: if your job is to do something, then you're a worker. If your job is to tell someone else how/when to do something, you're middle-class. If you own the joint, you're a bourgie fucker.

There's something specific about a worker who owns none of their tools nor means of work, is completely alienated from the processes and outcomes of their labour (other than a paltry wage) and is reduced to the same monotonous list of small, succinct tasks every day which makes them a member of the working class.

Call-centre workers, for example, fall very much into the 'working class' category - the parralels with factory work are blatant. Plumbers, teachers, policemen do not.
Click to expand...

What - you are in the SWP, yes??? Are you saying plumbers and teachers ain't working class???

"if you job is to do something"!!! *chuckles*
 
A plumber working for someone else is a worker - a self-employed plumber is not.

Teachers - being increasingly 'proletarianised' but they're not working class.
 
You could take my definition to teaching, and some people do. I still think teachers have a degree of control over their jobs and their timetable (plus the element of them telling other folks how to 'do' stuff) which seperate them from the Proles, by and large.
 
Das Uberdog said:
You could take my definition to teaching, and some people do. I still think teachers have a degree of control over their jobs and their timetable (plus the element of them telling other folks how to 'do' stuff) which seperate them from the Proles, by and large.
Click to expand...

All of which misses entirely the point you, yourself were beginning to expand upon with your first post - the social realities, and common interests that are a result of a particular relationship to the means of production

you on something?
 
I've read plenty Marx. If you stick your neck out the window you'll see in the real world there's still plenty contention over whether or not teachers should be considered working class - it's a very middle-class profession.

*if you were, that is, talking about teaching. If you're talking about plumbing then there's no contention; a self-employed plumber is not working-class by a Marxist definition

**edit to dennisr - that's my point, teachers (and their conditions) have a different world-view from actual workers due to the form and manner of their work and their conditions. They're skilled and academic (though I grant you, increasingly not) and their job is something which they are able to engage in. They are not completely 'alienated' from the means of their 'production', nor from its 'produce'.

wrt to my comment on the 'proletarianisation' of teachers, I think that there is a forseeable future situation in which teachers are actually driven out of their 'professional' mindset and class (more rigid syllabus, increased use of factory production techniques to churn kids out through their exams, etcetera) but I wouldn't consider them (nor any teachers I know) 'workers' right now. Nor would any of the teachers I know.
 
Das Uberdog said:
a self-employed plumber is not working-class by a Marxist definition
Click to expand...

please show me this definition?

just as the marxist definition is sometimes clouded and confused by the non-marxist idea of cultural class - 'cloth caps and whippits' etc etc etc. the massive expantion of the illusion of 'self-employment' to include every mug forced to work for twenty bosses instead of one is something that distracts from the underlying reality most self-emplyed workers have in common with most salaried and most employed workers. Are you saying that most building workers (who are to a great extent 'self-employed' are not working class?
 
Every time again when someone here mentions the term "working class" it makes me think of Chaplin's "Modern Times".

Maybe I am a bit prejudiced.

:)

salaam.
 
"Karl Marx defined the "working class" or proletariat as the multitude of individuals who sell their labor power for wages and do not own the means of production, and he defined them as being responsible for creating the wealth of a society. For example, the members of this class physically build bridges, craft furniture, fix cars, grow food, and nurse children, but do not themselves own the land, factories or means of production."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class#Marxist_definition
 
"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 is different from 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/Petit_Bourgois
 
So teachers are working class then DU!

(personally I'm looking at Negris' idea of the multitude at the mo, I'll get back to you if its any use...)
 
Das Uberdog said:
**edit to dennisr - that's my point, teachers (and their conditions) have a different world-view from actual workers due to the form and manner of their work and their conditions. They're skilled and academic (though I grant you, increasingly not) and their job is something which they are able to engage in. They are not completely 'alienated' from the means of their 'production', nor from its 'produce'.

wrt to my comment on the 'proletarianisation' of teachers, I think that there is a forseeable future situation in which teachers are actually driven out of their 'professional' mindset and class (more rigid syllabus, increased use of factory production techniques to churn kids out through their exams, etcetera) but I wouldn't consider them (nor any teachers I know) 'workers' right now. Nor would any of the teachers I know.
Click to expand...

despite your qualifier - the reality is that - despite calling yourself a marxist - you are adopting (falling for would be a more appropriate term...?) a typical vague 'sociological' definition that ignores the central point of your own 'hero's ' definition of class. Relationship to the means of production.

There is 'elite' sections and divisions within the working class, false 'middle managerial hierarchies to keep people policing each other etc etc and the idea of the middle-class (something we use a lot in the uk - even me) does not help that. It falsely ties your example of a self-employed plumber or a teacher to say maggie thatchers dad (the shop keeper/businessman type) - but most plumbers and teachers have more in common, as a result of their specific relationship to the means of production, to other workers than to business people
 
Das Uberdog said:
You could take my definition to teaching, and some people do. I still think teachers have a degree of control over their jobs and their timetable (plus the element of them telling other folks how to 'do' stuff) which seperate them from the Proles, by and large.
Click to expand...


:D

You've never been a teacher have you?
 
Das Uberdog said:
"Karl Marx defined the "working class" or proletariat as the multitude of individuals who sell their labor power for wages and do not own the means of production, and he defined them as being responsible for creating the wealth of a society. For example, the members of this class physically build bridges, craft furniture, fix cars, grow food, and nurse children, but do not themselves own the land, factories or means of production."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class#Marxist_definition
Click to expand...

does your architypal self-employed plumber own land, factoires, the means of production - do they not work for wages???

Or take the question in the other direction - what about all those factory workers who 'own' their own houses - arn't they therefore 'bosses'???
 
What if I work in a factory but moonlight as a self-employed plumbing consultant? And I went to the local comp but had a nanny but she was Northern?
 
It has to be largely tied to personal capital.


Lets face it, with enough cash you could probably buy into the aristocracy
 
Das Uberdog said:
"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 is different from 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/Petit_Bourgois
Click to expand...

what does this plumber rely on for income other than her/his labour power (supplying his/her own tools like...) ??

do these plumbers really 'own thier own 'business' (as opposed to their van and tools) ??
 
dennisr said:
please show me this definition?

just as the marxist definition is sometimes clouded and confused by the non-marxist idea of cultural class - 'cloth caps and whippits' etc etc etc. the massive expantion of the illusion of 'self-employment' to include every mug forced to work for twenty bosses instead of one is something that distracts from the underlying reality most self-emplyed workers have in common with most salaried and most employed workers. Are you saying that most building workers (who are to a great extent 'self-employed' are not working class?
Click to expand...

When I worked for 'MobilKitchens' last year and they made me sign a contract claiming that I was self-employed, I evidently wasn't. This was a case of my employer exploiting the fact I wasn't about to say no to work, and reaping the benefits of having a 'self-employed' workforce (immediate dismissals, no guarantee of pay, generally flexible existance).

When my otherwise erstwhile working-class Grandad from working class Wigan lost his job at the factory and set up a Grocery Cart selling fruit and veg, he moved out of the realms of the working class and into the petit-bourgeois class. He worked a damn sight harder than he would've done in any factory too, and eventually managed to buy himself a disused B&B in St. Annes which set my Aunty Lynne up for a failed attempt at running the place, but that's a different story.

Your contract builders from the agency office getting sent off to buildnig sites are workers, whether or not their agency signs them up as being self-employed. The builder working his socks off in my neighbours garden is actually self-employed - he is not a member of the working class.

This is quite simple Marx A-Z.
 
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