Not in the slightest. I wish!
I refer you to post #833.
It’s may be a condition that not all working class people share, but it doesn’t signify a change in class (for the reasons outlined above). Any more than having a contract while others are on zero hours makes you a different class.
Not so sure about this. If you own your house, even if you still have a mortgage, you have passed over into a group whose interests successive governments, tory and labour, make a point of directing their policies towards protecting. Doesn't really matter what you call it tbh, but it's a significant shift in your position in society.
It’s not in itself a change in your relationship to the means of production. And the extent to which it’s useable capital is addressed above.
It's this sort of analysis which has gained for you your unenviable reputation
This ends up being circular though. "I have defined class as being relationship to MOP, so anything else you mention does not define class." Whereas actually people are using - and are entitled to use - class as a wider description of people's position in society. To defend your position you have to say that only relationship to MOP matters because the conflict between capital and labour is the defining conflict of society etc, but this requires buying into a whole ideological system. 'Marxism has the only valid defn of class because Marxism has the only valid description of society' is not really defensible except to dedicated Marxists. The dishonest move that then goes on is 'Only Marxism has a materialist account of people's interests, everything else is wet liberalism', whereas what a bunch of people on this thread are trying to argue is that there is an account of material interests that does not accord with classical Marxism, and considers things besides relationship to MOP. To reply to that with 'Well that's not true because only relationship to MOP matters' is simply to refer back to the ideological framework that others were trying to challenge.
I think you'll find dlr isn't a marxist
Then what you are calling class is not the same thing I’m calling class. In which case we can bring in whether you like avocados and Charles Dickens, because it’s not the same thing we’re talking about.
I'm not sure this is strictly true. Increasingly, those in the second category are the children or grandchildren of those in the first - they literally relate.
Indeed I am not. I’m an anarchist communist. I do accept that Marx’s analysis of capitalism, especially as found in the volumes of Capital, is still the most thorough available, and indispensable.
I think he wants you to explain why people should subscribe you your/Marx's conception of class, rather than any other.
They needn’t. But my post #799 explains why I think it’s important to revolutionary communists.
Sure, but I think I could make the argument successfully that what matters about class at large scale is material interests, and that this can be quite complex in our society. I don't think avocados will have much analytical power to explain why what happens in society happens, whereas I do think material interests do. The material interests of a worker who will inherit a house are objectively different from those of a worker who will not inherit a house. The latter will e.g. put up with a lower salary if they enjoy a job, the latter can't afford to put up with low salaries, whether or not they enjoy their job. This has serious effects in certain industries - e.g culture industries, which then has an effect, through art, on how people view themselves etc etc
Ah, hold on. That’s a different example. That’s not savings from one’s own labour stored as the house you are using, that’s inherited wealth. As the name of the tax that would apply (capital gains tax) suggests. C/f now my list of responses to “what abouts”.
Exactly.
You're behind the times Danny, almost no-one buys a house these days without inherited wealth. The only people buying just from their own labour are those people on £100k.
say you live in the south east without saying you live in the south east
I'm talking about how material conditions affect the behaviour of people on a large scale. Owning a house is one of the factors, whether or not you are making money on it or profiting from someone else's labour.
Er bollocks.
If you think you can make it successfully you can try again
I don't think it does; you've not really made a case for why a relationship to the means of production is the best measure of material interest in the modern world (and you've slightly glossed over some of the challenges that poses e.g. we all own the means of production by way of shares in pensions).
I do, it's true, and I was talking about the conditions in the south east (plus a bunch of other cities). But what do we make of the fact that it used to be abnormal to buy your house with inherited wealth but is now for large parts of the country the norm? This is a change to material conditions.
