Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class?

[Raheem]

I'm not sure that's true. 'Capital' isn't a synonym for 'property'; it's property that's used in production (through being worked on by labour).

No. I think there's a distinction between active and inactive capital, but it's all capital. Would you seriously say that if I bought a Picasso it would not count as capital?

That said, I do think ownership of property which could be used as capital puts someone closer to the bourgeoisie than workers. But the majority of homeowners don't have sufficient equity that they'd be better off by selling their home and investing the proceeds, given they'd still have housing costs. Obviously, having equity in a home gives people a different stake in the economy, but, as long as they still have to sell their labour to survive, I'm unconvinced that it's as fundamental as some seem to think.

Here you seem to be making an argument that no-one has capital unless it completely liberates them from the need to work. No. £500 worth of capital is capital, it is just not a massive amount of capital.

Whatever advantage is conferred by someone's capital, it's capital. If it allows you to retire a week early, it's capital. If it gives you an income additional to the state pension in retirement, it's capital.

The reality is that almost anyone who owns a house outright in the southeast of England could give up work and live off the capital they own, if they chose to. If they choose not to, it doesn't mean they have no capital, it just means they are making a certain decision about what to do with the capital they have.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

All houses are someone's capital investment.

Do you even live in the real world? My examples are from decades ago where a worker could afford a mortgage. Now it’s nigh on impossible.

 

[Humberto]

I can’t believe we are working towards a definition of working class that includes ‘must be in receipt of state benefits’ that’s almost as batshit as the ‘bucket ownership theory’.

Just read Capital..it’s not actually that hard to get your head round it. Once you have read it and understood it then, and only then, start arguing how Marx is out of date…

I think a lot of people try and give up. I know I did.

 

[Raheem]

Do you even live in the real world? My examples are from decades ago where a worker could afford a mortgage. Now it’s nigh on impossible.

I don't understand what point you are making.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I don't understand what point you are making.

Fair enough. Throughout the thread I was trying to say that owning your own house doesn’t make you petit bourgeois but that Avenue is being cut off anyway because of the insane escalation of property prices.

 

[xenon]

I can’t believe we are working towards a definition of working class that includes ‘must be in receipt of state benefits’ that’s almost as batshit as the ‘bucket ownership theory’.

Just read Capital

Why?

How will it help?

 

[xenon]

No. I think there's a distinction between active and inactive capital, but it's all capital. Would you seriously say that if I bought a Picasso it would not count as capital?


Here you seem to be making an argument that no-one has capital unless it completely liberates them from the need to work. No. £500 worth of capital is capital, it is just not a massive amount of capital.

Whatever advantage is conferred by someone's capital, it's capital. If it allows you to retire a week early, it's capital. If it gives you an income additional to the state pension in retirement, it's capital.

The reality is that almost anyone who owns a house outright in the southeast of England could give up work and live off the capital they own, if they chose to. If they choose not to, it doesn't mean they have no capital, it just means they are making a certain decision about what to do with the capital they have.

How does that work then? They live in a house, how do they live off it? are your shoes capital? This is ridiculous. as in your argument is.

 

[Raheem]

Fair enough. Throughout the thread I was trying to say that owning your own house doesn’t make you petit bourgeois but that Avenue is being cut off anyway because of the insane escalation of property prices.

I don't know what owning your own house makes you, tbh, except that I think it means you possess capital.

 

[Raheem]

How does that work then? They live in a house, how do they live off it? are your shoes capital? This is ridiculous. as in your argument is.

People owning houses in London? They sell them, they move to the Scottish Highlands, they have a few hundred grand spare.

I'm not saying they should or shouldn't, just that they have an asset that allows them to do that if they choose. They have capital, in other words.

 

[Serge Forward]

Why?

How will it help?

It explains how capital works. I can disagree with Marx on a few things, but his understanding of how capitalism works is bang on and stands the test of time. If you can't find the time or energy to read Capital vol 1, then at least read Cafiero's "Compendium of Marx's Capital" or Engels' "On Capital" summary... or Marx's shorter pamphlets "Value, Price and Profit" with "Wage Labour and Capital".

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I don't know what owning your own house makes you, tbh, except that I think it means you possess capital.

I don’t own my own house. But I think proles that do aren’t capitalists.

 

[Raheem]

I don’t own my own house. But I think proles that do aren’t capitalists.

I agree. I'm not saying owning a house is a bad thing. It does mean you are accumulating capital. That doesn't necessarily make you a capitalist, just as owning a violin doesn't necessarily make you a violinist.

 

[Joe Chi Min]

If you can't find the time or energy to read Capital vol 1

Who has ?

 

[deeyo]

marxism is about understanding society, how it works & maybe even how to change it - where to apply our small force to the wheel of history for the greatest effect on its course.

it deals with groups of people, stratas & classes. the class of a single individual is -in context - irrelevant & may not always be possible to pinpoint. people are complicated. borders are fluid. not all middle class households employed servants in the victorian era, not all who did were middle (or upper) class.

marx & his contemporaries saw an enormous potential in the emerging industrial working class, & hoped it would be able to do what never had been done before, put an end to oppression & make humanity reach its full potential, the communist utopia. it wasn't the biggest class - far more people were still in agriculture- it wasn't the poorest or 'most oppressed' but - 'Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class'

so far their hopes hasn't come true. but they were right about the power of the workers united - conditions have improved, progress has been made, to own a house or a car ain't as exclusive as it once was.
we all have access to healthcare far better than the upper classes of the nineteenth century had. we have sick leave, pensions, education, electricity, showers, washing machines..


this has happened through reforms rather than revolution, but the practice or threat of collective action whether through strike or violent uprising was what made them possible.

as for updated marxist class analysis -
i think these articles might be of interest as examples of contemporary marxist works, both to the 'marxists' & the 'sceptics'. therborn might be an old marxist-leninist but i think he's an 'honest scholar' - one can argue with the 'analysis' & disagree with the conclusions/suggestions while still use the descriptive parts :

Göran Therborn, Class in the 21st Century, NLR 78, November–December 2012

From São Paulo to Beijing, a rising middle class has been hailed by liberal commentators as a bulwark for consumption and democracy in the decades ahead. Taking stock of these claims, Göran Therborn offers a magisterial overview of the global class landscape and the still prodigious numerical...

newleftreview.org

https://thelifeandworkoferikolinwright.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/therborn.paper-on-class-analysis.pdf

the first one is from 2012, the second one from 2019, is sort of an update & maybe a bit more 'activist-orientated':

'So, we have worldwide, workers in the South trapped in pre-industrial work and
working conditions, or in quasi-industrial rightsless “informality”, and workers in the North, fragmented, polarized, under surveillance.
At the other pole, we have capital richer and more globally powerful than ever, and dynamic at that, in new digital tech business and in spectacular real estate development projects...'

 

[seeformiles]

Many updates to Marx HAVE been attempted. That was what I was talking about in my lengthy post that everybody ignored two pages ago.

The biggest thing that Marxism leaves out — mostly because the theory underlying it wouldn’t be invented for another 100 years — is the mechanisms that make the working class ACTIVE AGENTS in the reproduction of the hierarchy. It isn’t just a series of oppressions that are done to the working class. They are not just objects of oppression but also subjects of and subjects to oppression. These mechanisms include differences in behavioural repertoires of individuals at different levels of group dominance (which is why these supposedly unimportant “social signifiers” do actually matter), ideological asymmetries that legitimise the social order but are actively promoted across the social order, and asymmetrical ingroup biases that can even result in outgroup favouritism by those at the bottom of the pile.

All inter group oppression is in some sense a co-operative exercise, requiring co-ordination and collaboration between dominant and subordinate groups. Marx didn’t really attempt to grapple with this, not least because nobody would really construct the most basic of frameworks to start to grapple with it until at least the 1950s. He did identify “false consciousness”, which was a brilliant insight into how the working-class accepts the hegemonic position of the ruling class as fair and legitimate. That was years ahead of its time. But it only goes a fraction of the way. It needs to be more than a passive acceptance; it’s an active construction.

Am I right in reading this as nepotism and favouritism in terms of opportunity exists at every level of society - not just among the ruling class. e.g. When I was a teen, a coveted job was working the bins but, unless you had a relative or friend working at the council you had no chance?

 

[Cat Fan]

On the property ownership stuff, it's because the whole market has been financialised and leveraged, such that it's not possible to buy a property as a new entrant to the market without taking on huge debt. The whole global economy has been financialised this way since the 1980s. That's a leading driver of inequality for me. The principle of compound interest makes the rich richer and keeps the poor, poor.

So in a way all property has become a financial asset which is part of why it's so unaffordable. Demographic trends which were in buyers' favour in the 60s and 70s as the world economy recovered from the 2nd world war have gone completely in reverse as well.

 

[kabbes]

Am I right in reading this as nepotism and favouritism in terms of opportunity exists at every level of society - not just among the ruling class. e.g. When I was a teen, a coveted job was working the bins but, unless you had a relative or friend working at the council you had no chance?

That fits into the behavioural asymmetry part of group behaviour. It’s ingroup bias, which is a type of asymmetry. So you’re right that it is part of the model (but not if you think it sums up the whole thing).

 

[Serge Forward]

Who has ?

To be honest, it was a cure for my insomnia... though it gets more of a page turner in the middle.

 

[LDC]

I agree. I'm not saying owning a house is a bad thing. It does mean you are accumulating capital. That doesn't necessarily make you a capitalist, just as owning a violin doesn't necessarily make you a violinist.

Capital is not a singular thing; can be fixed, constant, etc. Owning a house doesn't mean you are always accumulating capital at all, depends on the house market. I think people are mixing up a Marxist use of the term with a broader more commonly used use of the term (to mean a valuable asset) aren't they?

 

[brogdale]

Capital is not a singular thing; can be fixed, constant, etc. Owning a house doesn't mean you are always accumulating capital at all, depends on the house market. I think people are mixing up a Marxist use of the term with a broader more commonly used use of the term (to mean a valuable asset) aren't they?

Not uncommon when some people in a discussion are using economic terminology.
IMO capital is distinct from the other FoP as durable goods that are in turn used as productive inputs for further production/accumulation

 

[nogojones]

I can’t believe we are working towards a definition of working class that includes ‘must be in receipt of state benefits’ that’s almost as batshit as the ‘bucket ownership theory’.

Just read Capital..it’s not actually that hard to get your head round it. Once you have read it and understood it then, and only then, start arguing how Marx is out of date…

I've put it on my reading list. I just have to work my way through these three volumes first

 

[Pickman's model]

I've put it on my reading list. I just have to work my way through these three volumes first

you might find this article of interest too

 

[nogojones]

you might find this article of interest too
View attachment 361340

This seems a bit of an extreme way of dealing with the petite bourgeoisie if they choose the wrong side.

 

[Pickman's model]

This seems a bit of an extreme way of dealing with the petit bourgeois if they choose the wrong side.

they can choose to be above the ground or underneath it

 

[brogdale]

How is a dictatorship of the proletariat going to happen if there's doubts about who to kill?

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

How is a dictatorship of the proletariat going to happen if there's doubts about who to kill?

Kill them all and let Marx sort them out.

 

[Sue]

Kill them all and let Marx sort them out.

Liked for the repurposed quote.

ETA I was in Beziers in September there.

 

[smokedout]

I can’t believe we are working towards a definition of working class that includes ‘must be in receipt of state benefits’ that’s almost as batshit as the ‘bucket ownership theory’.

Just read Capital..it’s not actually that hard to get your head round it. Once you have read it and understood it then, and only then, start arguing how Marx is out of date…

That's not what I was arguing, I was just pointing to some demographic information based on income/benefits and suggesting it might be relevant because no matter what your relationship with the means of productions is how much money you've got is a pretty defining factor in someone's life.

But also doesn't the analysis ultimately come down to interests? In Marx's time communist revolution was in the interests of the entire working class, although even he warned of reaction from the labour aristocracy. Is communist revolution in the interest of a Pimlico Plumber on a 150 grand a year who lives in a six bedroom house in Kent? Or even an exprienced teacher on 60 grand who's paid off their mortgage and very much enjoys their job and their life? These groups didn't really exist in any scale when Marx was writing and yet they now make up a large part if not the majority of the UK working class (if we are basing class solely on relationship to capital).

And like everyone else they primarily vote and align politically with their economic interests, which is Tory for for a lot of them. As I've said before home owners don't want the value of their house to fall because some commie bastard just built a million council houses. Higher rate tax payers don't want to pay more tax because benefit claimants need more money. The advantages of revolution or even piss weak social democracy to this part of the class are abstract at best. Hence the reaction to Corbyn amongst many of them. Burying our heads in the sand and thinking they'll all come flooding to the barricades when the time comes based on a 150 year old theory gets us nowhere.

 

[Brainaddict]

Once again I am begging people not to assume that everyone who disagrees with Marx has not read Marx. Capital is not a factual account of the world, it's one way of viewing what he believed to be happening at the time and the consequences of it. People have found Capital useful in various ways over the years but this still does not make it a factual account which you must agree with as soon as you read it.

What I also find funny is how scathing Marx was about people who used outdated ideas and didn't confront the changes in the world and the problems of the times. I honestly think if he were resurrected today he would be pretty brutal to most of the people who call themselves Marxists and are still sticking fairly rigidly to his ideas despite the massive changes in the world.

 

[kabbes]

It’s also worth seeing Marx in the context of some of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries, like Darwin or James Maxwell or Freud. The whole basis of what they were proposing was utterly revolutionary and brilliant. They completely transformed the way we look at their fields. They came up with ideas that have been proved right and are still in use. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t also come up with things that were wrong, though (particularly Freud!). And it didn’t mean the theory ended with them. It’s not complete by itself. The whole point of providing a theoretical revolution is that it then provides the ground for those after you to build on.