working class, what does it mean?

[dennisr]

The question is why entertaining and even cultivating the very awareness that there inevitably "should" be a class difference. By doing so you seem wanting to deprive one group, the "upper" class, from its usefulness and even its right to exist all while the other group, the "workers" is told they can exist without the former. Doesn't that sound strange to you in the light of their obvious - because inherent - interdependence?

Your angle on all this is different from most of the other folk here Aldebaran. You re trying to argue this is a false and artificial definition of different groups in this society that i am creating.

I imagine you would probably argue that this definition is just one among many.

But the marxist definition is not about how individuals see themselves at any given point it is an expression of the underlying economic relations and how those underlying divisions decide the potential central source of social change. ie the working class is the force that has the interest in changing its lot by getting rid of the redundant ruling class (to put it crudely). So what you are actually opposed to is my explaination of the nature of capitalism.

To put it simple:
*If there is no capital, there is no workplace there is no need for workers.
*If there are no workers, there can even be no construction of the very workplace there can't be gathered capital to pay for its very construction for its workings, for the workers.

If "workers" become the owners of the capital - and in the supposition they have the background and skills to make this transition go smoothly and hence without loss of jobs/capital -: Who then is going to do the work if not other workers, while the former workers in their eyes inevitably then are shifted to the "upper" class level.

Are you surprised that a marxist is arguing for the abolition of the working class? then you should read marx himself - he argues the same thing.

In your points above there seems to be an assumtion that the interdependence in this society between bosses and workers has a) always been there and b) remains a necessity

on a - actually class society has only existed for a very short time in terms of overall 'human history'. marx argued that class divisions are a product of the development of divisions of labour. the capitalist relationship, that between 'owner of capital' and 'seller of labour' has existed for an even shorter period of time. Despite the constant attempts to make this out to be a 'natural' relationship it is not and never has been. In fact it was only imposed by force of arms - by pushing millions off of the land and into cities and factories by destroying an entire way of life that had existed for centuries. It was a continuation of brutal, murderous methods to enforce the 'needs' of a tiny minority onto the majority of people. the ruling class have been and will always be challenged - that is how change occurs (that is how we have say and nhs or and educational system in the uk say) - That is what marxists call 'class struggle' (again crudely - but the point stands). for most of human history, humans had no concept of 'ownership' let alone 'ownership of the means of production'

and b - owners of capital make their capital by stealing from the labour of the rest of us. the relationship is parasitical. the majority of people are better equiped (ideologically and technologically) than at any other time before hand - a result of accumulated knowledge and experience - to run their own lives.

I want a classless society - it does not mean i think people should stop producing ('working') - I just don't think people need to be defined by their work alone, I want equality - not because it is a lovely liberal idea - but because human beings working together collectively (being the social animals we are) would be in my opinion a much more effective way of running society - a way in which the interests of the majority of people would be better met. I think people starving while their governments and bosses sell cash crops to rich western governments is insane. I think other people starving themselves because of concerns over the 'way they look' while the previous group i mentioned are simply starving due to lack of food is insane I think people living in medieval conditions to produce cheap xmas prezzies is insane. I think murdering tens of thousands to control an oil supply is insane. etc etc I want to live in a sane world.

Individual relationships are what humans allow or want them to be. Artificial divisions in societies are created to keep societies rolling and developing within more or less controlled/controllable patterns. "Class" is artificially constructed and as such no more a defining factor in your relation to others than what you make of it.

A lovely idea - but it remains thats, a fanciful and pious liberal hope. You cannot abolish lived social relations by 'wishing' them away.

Look at the vast majority of the world (not just at the uk) for a moment - look at bangladesh, china, india, etc etc etc. Billions of people are forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence (regardless of religion, creed or colour). Yes, of course they constantly act back on that (we only have to look at the hundreds of virtual uprisings going on in china over the last few years). The world working class is robbed, beaten, stolen from and starved - literally in the case of poorer workers and peasants.

Are you going to tell me this is just because these people haven't all held hands and said 'hey, this is not real, we just do not believe in it any more' - and that it would then all go away?

you probably prefer to offer religious succour Aldebaron - "the opium of the people" and "the sigh of the oppressed". I can understand and sympathise with such an expression of peoples pain and experience - it does not make them any less oppressed by their co-religionist bosses though.

If getting down on my knees would improve things I would be more than happy to do this. But when my knees hurt, and nothing has changed in the real world, I need to stand up - and I need to get my fellow wo/man to sand up beside me if we are going to be able to collectively change our lived situation

 

[sinbad]

nice post, interesting. I'm going to read some more Marx, was he pro centralisation or anti centralisation? Would he have advocated farm ownership as it was in Poland, everyone owning a little bit of land or state owned farms effectavely employing workers?

I do have issue with the use of the terms working class etc just because of the connotations they have for us now, why can't we throw those terms away and use ones more pertinent to us now?

 

[Das Uberdog]

wrt chilango - I make no 'value judgements' - only realistic assessments of what any real revolutionary movement will in reality be based upon. A parralel issue which contains many similarities, for example, is Trotsky's view of the 'intelligentsia'.

As regards the representatives of the ever-increasing semi-proletarian intelligentsia – unable to escape from their eternally dependent and materially insecure way of life – for them, carrying out as they do fragmentary, second-rate and not very attractive functions in the great mechanism of culture, the cultural interests to which Adler appeals cannot be strong enough independently to direct their political sympathies towards the socialist movement.

A worker comes to socialism as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass, which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality, and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes up against obstacles – and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become.

If we exclude that stratum of the intelligentsia which directly serves the working masses, as workers’ doctors, lawyers, and so on (a stratum which, as a general rule, is composed of the less talented representatives of these professions), then we see that the most important and influential part of the intelligentsia owes its livelihood to payments out of industrial profit, rent from land or the state budget, and thus is directly or indirectly dependent on the capitalist classes or the capitalist state.

Among Adler’s assertions this much is true, that the intelligentsia is interested in the retention of capitalist exploitation not directly and not unconditionally, but only obliquely, through the bourgeois classes, in so far as the intelligentsia is materially dependent on these latter. The intelligentsia might go over to collectivism if it were given reason to see as probable the immediate victory of collectivism, if collectivism arose before it not as the ideal of a different, remote and alien class but as a near and tangible reality; finally, if – and this is not the least important condition – a political break with the bourgeoisie did not threaten each brain-worker taken separately with grave material and moral consequences.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1910/xx/intell.htm

This work doesn't fit 100% snugly with our discussion (as lots of Trotters pamphlet is quite contextual) but the essential point he makes is that the 'intelligentsia' are of a different class - and in the last paragraph, that though we may well see some of this class move towards us when material interests sway from one side to the other, that they are not historically (nor economically) reliable in terms of joining labour movements.

To transfer this to small-businessmen, builders etcetera - they are of different economic class, with different fundamental interests. This is not to say that culturally and socially their sympathies might not lay with the workers' movement, but their position in the capitalist economy means that their economic mentality must be one of individualism. As stated previously, in a crude indicator of this difference in interest, the self-employed builder is economically interested in lower taxation, lower regulation on working conditions, less formal labour relations with any teenage lads they might choose to employ, etcetera. They own their tools and means of production. They recieve the full amount of remuneration from their labour, they are not alienated from its profits. Socialism will be built on the workers' movement, not small-time private enterprise. A-Z Marxism as I say, I'm surprised there's been any contention...

wrt sinbad, 'working class' is still the correct definition for the specific class which would lead the path for social change. irt 'centralisation' - Marx was anti State. This doesn't mean that he was anti-centralisation (the most fruitful and rational of economies would work on the basis of a central planning bureau or something, probably...) but such an organisation would not be an established state structure, but rather, a structure which working people actively involved themselves within on a day-to-day basis through the delegation of responsibilities.

 

[dennisr]

nice post, interesting. I'm going to read some more Marx, was he pro centralisation or anti centralisation? Would he have advocated farm ownership as it was in Poland, everyone owning a little bit of land or state owned farms effectavely employing workers?

One of the saddest things for marx and marxists has been the appalling 'experiments' carried out in the name of marx. stalinism - and bureaucratic state collectivisation as part of that has done more than anything to bury what the ideas were actually about under piles of shameful crud.

as far as i know marx himself was very opposed to any prescriptive 'plans' for any future socialist society. he left that to the folk who were actually going to carry out these revolutions to decide.

ultimatly he was not so far from many folk claiming to be 'anarchists' in that he saw the state as a body - ultimatly, behind the flim-flam - to enforce class rule (as i would claim it does in this society). the idea being that when everybody run society there was no need for any 'directing' state machine. where marx and marxists differ with anarchists is that we don't believe it will wither away overnight - that it can be formally abolished because a new 'people's power' wished it abolished.

in russia and eastern europe a revolution was isolated and strangled leading to a growing bureaucratic caste who took over the reins of the still-existing state (i'd recommend trotsky and later lenin as a fuller explaination - but then i'm biast!) and imposed their bureaucratic will (by force) on the majority. state collectivisation in poland, for example, was 'imposed from above' not decided and ran by the people most effected by the results. i can safely say marx himself would have been completely opposed to that.

i'd recommend reading the writer himself rather than any of his interpreters - starting with the basic stuff - the communist manifesto etc. it still has a a lot of points to say that make you think - "hell, thats obvious innit when you think about it" - it surprising given how many obvious preconceptions one would understandably have about a book with such a title

marx pointed out the ever increasing centralisation of real economic power in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists - and that continues now in he form of the big multinationals - on a scale even marx did not dare to imagine. Just look at supermarkets in the uk - Tescos etc. centralisation in fewer hands marx would have utterly opposed

I do have issue with the use of the terms working class etc just because of the connotations they have for us now, why can't we throw those terms away and use ones more pertinent to us now?

yep, no problem with that - they are just terms, thats all. marx himself talked about the 'proletariat' (his term for the working classes). Even that has distorted connectations in the wake of the stalinist mess - like every other aspect of what is called marxist theory - but it still has a real value imo in its explaination of social relations

 

[dennisr]

the 'intelligentsia' are of a different class

To transfer this to small-businessmen, builders etcetera - they are of different economic class, with different fundamental interests.

you are spectacilarly missing the point.

a) lumping self-employed builders in the same category as businessmen is wrong

b) the small businessmen are themselves more divided (between very small, small and medium - hence their weakness as an independant 'class' in terms of capicity to act as a unified group - as with trotsky's points about the intelligencia - an amporphous grouping rather than a clear 'class')

c) the idea that there is a fundamental difference of interests between most tiny one/two man teams of self-employed builders and the majority of the rest of the working class is utterly confused. you seem to think it is a revelation that - as everyone else seems to have already recognised - the organised working class is of course the most solid and reliable base of socialist ideas. its obvious to most other folk here so a bit of a non-point

d) why are you so desperate to prove this pre-conception of yours by some false reference to trotsky - who was making the more pertinant point that only the working class can emancipate the working class - not a 'leadership' of intellectuals

given you have decided that half the working class are not in fact working class - so you have already dismissed trotsky's idea!!!! weird....

 

[ymu]

DU: The parallels with the Trotsky pamphlet are clear, but ... How can you claim that the self-employed "receive the full amount of remuneration from their labour, they are not alienated from its profits"? We're not talking about a small company here - we're talking about self-employed individuals. Plumbers, electricians, builders and White Van Man. They might technically own the means of production, but I'm not sure a toolkit and a van quite equates to an exploitative relationship vis-a-vis the proletariat.

They're not extracting surplus value from anyone else's labour and they're not usually extracting any more of the company's profits than they would be if they were employed, although they often get to keep more of it because of the lack of overheads and employment law associated with using them instead of an established workforce. If it was cheaper to use established workers they wouldn't get the work, due to this silly thing capitalism has about profit.

 

[dennisr]

'centralisation' - Marx was anti State. This doesn't mean that he was anti-centralisation (the most fruitful and rational of economies would work on the basis of a central planning bureau or something, probably...)

what you mean by centralisation is very different by what sinbad means

 

[ViolentPanda]

By your definition a teacher is working class, surely? Unless they're a head of some department.

Poor Ern.

 

[dennisr]

DU: The parallels with the Trotsky pamphlet are clear, but ... How can you claim that the self-employed "receive the full amount of remuneration from their labour, they are not alienated from its profits"? We're not talking about a small company here - we're talking about self-employed individuals. Plumbers, electricians, builders and White Van Man. They might technically own the means of production, but I'm not sure a toolkit and a van quite equates to an exploitative relationship vis-a-vis the proletariat.

They're not extracting surplus value from anyone else's labour and they're not usually extracting any more of the company's profits than they would be if they were employed, although they often get to keep more of it because of the lack of overheads and employment law associated with using them instead of an established workforce. If it was cheaper to use established workers they wouldn't get the work, due to this silly thing capitalism has about profit.

i don't think uberdog has worked any of it out that far

more a case of "christ, i've dropped myself in a hole of my own making here and i'm trying to bullshit my way out rather than holding my hands up and saying 'ok' i've still got to look into the details a bit and work out what i am actually saying rather than dig myself deeper down"

 

[Das Uberdog]

a) lumping self-employed builders in the same category as businessmen is wrong

Self-employed builders are businessmen. That you can claim otherwise is... baffling, in the least. They have a business - that business is their trade. They are of the business class.

b) the small businessmen are themselves more divided (between very small, small and medium - hence their weakness as an independant 'class' in terms of capicity to act as a unified group - as with trotsky's points about the intelligencia - an amporphous grouping rather than a clear 'class')

They are culturally and socially divided as a result of their peculiar situations; on the one hand they have capitalistic self interest for all the reasons I have already pointed out several times. On the other hand, their businesses are often insecure, they are often not fantastically paid. Some of them even go out of business and end up working in a factory again!

Their level of fraternisation with ordinary working-class folk in day to day situations means that their interests and their beliefs (and indeed perspectives) will often fall outside the boundaries of a strict class perspective (unlike the restaurant owner, the shopkeeper, etcetera). However, this does contradict their economic interests as semi-capitalists.

c) the idea that there is a fundamental difference of interests between most tiny one/two man teams of self-employed builders and the majority of the rest of the working class is utterly confused. you seem to think it is a revelation that - as everyone else seems to have already recognised - the organised working class is of course the most solid and reliable base of socialist ideas. its obvious to most other folk here so a bit of a non-point

It's not a revalation - I keep having to reiterate the point because though you guys seem to pay lip-service to the whole affair, none of you seem to be able to logically extend that fact to a wider arena. If you think Marx would have accepted self-employed builders as anything other than petit-bourgeois, you know very little about him or the movements he was involved in.

d) why are you so desperate to prove this pre-conception of yours by some false reference to trotsky - who was making the more pertinant point that only the working class can emancipate the working class - not a 'leadership' of intellectuals

I've made the parralels of the argument very clear, please read my post with an eye to 'understanding' rather than 'renunciation'. I've been telling you all along what I'm saying is not contentious, you've just completely failed to see what I'm getting at.

given you have decided that half the working class are not in fact working class - so you have already dismissed trotsky's idea!!!! weird....

Errrrrr

How can you claim that the self-employed "receive the full amount of remuneration from their labour, they are not alienated from its profits"?

Errr, because it's true? Which employer skims the top off the self-employed builder's labour? You need to revise your labour theory of value mate.

 

[Das Uberdog]

i don't think uberdog has worked any of it out that far

more a case of "christ, i've dropped myself in a hole of my own making here and i'm trying to bullshit my way out rather than holding my hands up and saying 'ok' i've still got to look into the details a bit and work out what i am actually saying rather than dig myself deeper down"

How you can say that when you guys actually disagree, I do not know.

Oh yeah, wait, I do - you've just spectacularly missed the point...

 

[dennisr]

Self-employed builders are businessmen. That you can claim otherwise is... baffling, in the least. They have a business - that business is their trade. They are of the business class.

Years ago on this site here was this obnoxious right-wing twat who used to go on about being a self-made man. A small businessman. When other folk critisised his view of himself as some sort of entrepenarial spirit and superior to the feckless wage workers around him (including me) I had to point out that i was one of his self-employed 'businessmen' types.

I then explained that it was one of the biggest shams created under thatcher - loads of 'businessmen' who are in practice 'day-workers' - not that far removed from dockers standing in pens being picked out for a days work (as you pointed out elsewhere about the status of many self-employed workers). I went into a long winded explaination about the gap between the fantasy idea and the reality of the conditions the vast majority of working people work under.

Similarly in many under-developed economys a 'general strike' consists of all the stalls, shops and petty businesses being closed down (i have a nigerian friend who is both a leading national union organiser - oil industry - and buys cheap shoes when he comes here to sell on his roadside stall in his second or third job). So are you saying there is no working class in nigeria??

More than that most of my own family (male side) are builders. Now - according to government statistics we are all 'businessmen'. The reality is somewhat different. The reality is that the insecurity of our situation, the loss of my mum and dads home because he was ill for six months. The fact my dad is still working in a hard manual job despite being well over retirement age now and will until he dies.

That is NOT a person with the mentality of a 'businessman'. That is person who sells his labour as and when he can. Who is ripped off, underpaid and conned like every other working person. If you honestly beleive that people like this do not have exactly the same interests and lived lives of those around them (ie my mum - a school dinner lady, my aunties, his workmates) - that they are not 'salt-of-the-earth' proletarians in their everyday lives but 'businessmen' you are living in cloud cuckoo land mate

I would be the first to agree that this is also the type of person who is not as likely to have the experience of unionised struggle - although he does rely day to day on his workmates - but that is true of a huge swave of the working class in this country nowadays, the vast majority outside of the main cities. And, if I was you with your beleifs I would give up hope now!!

 

[dennisr]

Errr, because it's true? Which employer skims the top off the self-employed builder's labour?

Yes - what do you think happens? Does that builder get his 'profit' from stealing from someone else's labour as the employer does?? (do you really need me to answer that...)

 

[Das Uberdog]

That's because you don't understand my beliefs, and the fact that almost the entirety of your last post is something I agree with and does in no way contradict anything I have said so far.

What I am saying is not contentious, it is properly applied Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist theory.

 

[Das Uberdog]

Yes - what do you think happens? Does that builder get his 'profit' from stealing from someone else's labour as the employer does?? (do you really need me to answer that...)

As we've established, to be petit-bourgeois you don't have to employ anyone under you.

Or do you disagree with Marx' definition?

 

[dennisr]

As we've established, to be petit-bourgeois you don't have to employ anyone under you.

Or do you disagree with Marx' definition?

What we have established is that plenty of 'marxists' have confused the minutie of what marx was saying with the substance of what he was saying, sometimes to the point of absurdity and increasingly pointlessly given that the point, as the old fella said, was to change things not to philosophise (in this case about the minutie of who deserves the prolatarian label more or less in your personal view).

you cannot fit the working class, or anything else, into your worldview - marxists need to build their wordview around underlying realities - I think marx himself did a good job of that - some of his followers less so.

show me marx's definition (in the process of finding the links you can read up a wee bit)

but what would i know - i'm petty-bourgoius, apparently

ps or semi-capitalist??? ))

 

[Das Uberdog]

You know it's bizarre - you started off accusing me of reducing a class distinction down to mere 'cultural' associations (in all honesty, the opposite of what I was doing). You've then spent the entirety of the rest of the thread, jumping between this allegation on the one hand, and on the other trying to convince me that self-employed builders are working class by cultural association.

Your definition of 'class' is meaningless - it incorporates anybody who wishes to be a part of it, or suffers from discomfort at the hands of capitalism. Such a compromise on the meaning of class is in reality absolutely needless in building a broad movement in which members of all classes struggle for the destruction of said classes.

 

[Belushi]

I love being petite-bougeoise, its much better than when I worked in a factory

 

[dennisr]

You've then spent the entirety of the rest of the thread, jumping between this allegation on the one hand, and on the other trying to convince me that self-employed builders are working class by cultural association.

no - by the reality of their relationship to the means of production - not the same thing at all (my singular point made a couple of posts ago - about their day to day experience and social relations - was that it reinforces this reflection of their actual reality)

 

[dennisr]

I love being petite-bougeoise, its much better than when I worked in a factory

I earn more money (at the moment like - it'll all go pear-shaped though as the economic changes begin to bite)

 

[Das Uberdog]

no - by the reality of their relationship to the means of production - not the same thing at all (my point about their day to day experience was that it reinforces this reflection of their actual reality)

Their actual reality being that they own it?

 

[dennisr]

Their actual reality being that they own it?

own what?- my old man could not keep a roof over his head within six months of reaching a point where he could not sell his labour?

this is a practical example that is meant to underscore the lived reality of loads of so-called 'self-employed' people.

you really are trying to impose your mis-reading of an idea onto the reality that people actually live arn't you? the thing is it simply does not fit

 

[dennisr]

seriously - the question stands - what do they own???

are you confusing my old man's tool bag with mr. tesco's ownership of thousands of acres of land, factories, access to credit and distribution networks?

do you really think this means they have a closer 'interest' to each other then my old man has for example with his unionised, wage-earning dinner lady partner?

 

[Das Uberdog]

Your old man was given his tools by an employer and could claim no ownership of them? He couldn't take them home at night?

So you accept that what you're saying is class has nothing to do with economic relations to the means of production and distribution, and is all about poverty and hardship?

If you care to read the thread, this is something which I've flagged up on numerous occasions.

Cheers for the opportunity to run rings around you. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[Das Uberdog]

Is a hard-working peasant who's friendly with workers and comes to communist meetings a worker?

 

[dennisr]

Your old man was given his tools by an employer and could claim no ownership of them? He couldn't take them home at night?

So you accept that what you're saying is class has nothing to do with economic relations to the means of production and distribution, and is all about poverty and hardship?

If you care to read the thread, this is something which I've flagged up on numerous occasions.

Cheers for the opportunity to run rings around you. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

a) so his tools are 'the means of production' ))

b) no

c) - shall we do a vote on the who is running rings around whom them?

 

[ymu]

Errr, because it's true? Which employer skims the top off the self-employed builder's labour? You need to revise your labour theory of value mate.

I did explain my point at some length after that opener. The employer is the entity that contracts the services of the self-employed builder. He is paid out of the same profits that an employee would be paid from and if he wasn't cheaper than an employee he wouldn't get the work.

The fact that he gets to keep more of the total profit than an employee would is irrelevant - there's nothing forbidden about being working-class and making a good living. He just wouldn't get the work if it was cheaper to have an employee instead, so he cannot possibly be receiving a greater share of the profits - he's just not having as much of his share siphoned off to pay other low paid administrative workers and estate costs.

 

[dennisr]

Is a hard-working peasant who's friendly with workers and comes to communist meetings a worker?

given that both the remaining members of the proletariat (in your book) will need all the allies they can get its probably not a good thing for them to start pushing lables on other folk.

your 'insight' on this thread makes it easier for me to explain why the membership of the SWP has fallen hook, line and sinker for the latest turn of the party towards non-class based, popular-frontist style 'alliiances'. An abstract view of class makes it easier to drop when perceived' needs must'.

 

[dennisr]

that was a very sad and snide comment on the other unrelated thread 'uber'dog - are you feeling a bit 'under' dog at the moment - all resentful and bitter?

 

[Das Uberdog]

I did explain my point at some length after that opener. The employer is the entity that contracts the services of the self-employed builder. He is paid out of the same profits that an employee would be paid from and if he wasn't cheaper than an employee he wouldn't get the work.

The fact that he gets to keep more of the total profit than an employee would is irrelevant - there's nothing forbidden about being working-class and making a good living. He just wouldn't get the work if it was cheaper to have an employee instead, so he cannot possibly be receiving a greater share of the profits - he's just not having as much of his share siphoned off to pay other low paid administrative workers and estate costs.

OMG OMG U MEEN SOMTIEM TEH BILDER GET PAYD LES THAN WORKER OMG Y DIDNT ENE1 SAY THAT B4!?!?!?!!!111??!??/!?

Learn to read.

As for dennisr, well done on finally getting round to what your argument has been amounting to this whole thread and publically renouncing class politics and Marxism for populist politics, in which class is nothing but a precarious alliance of different cultural interest groups. The peasants are workers? What Marx have you been reading?