Class

A neo-classical approach :-)

Eventually I'll get a more detailed and coherent article on class up here, until then I include part of a discussion on the aprop mailing list (see below).

Before getting to that post however I will include a brief explanatory note; the picture of class I think is best for liberal capitalist conditions is as follows:

Big Citizens; ("haute bourgeoisie") Might also be called the Owning Class. The very large scale capitalists, who "own the system" (replacing the old aristocracy).

Citizens (or "bourgeois" or [upper] middle class). These have been called "the people who direct the system in its day to day operations", but plain "Citizen' in some ways sums it up best. They may work for a salary but largely have (and by the nature of their work are expected to have) autonomy as to how they do their work. They could not be said to "sell their labour-power as a commodity".

This class includes practising members of the learned professions, middle level capitalists, top level management (including politicians for example); and senior journalists and the like. Top level union officials belong here, although they are still battling for their legitmacy in this slot to be accepted, the recent history of the "Labor" Party in my country has been basically about this battle for legitimacy.

Small Citizens (or "petit-bourgeoisie" or "lower middle class"). . Small business (including farmers), lower management, lower professions. The business wing of this class is the core social layer of the radical right, the lower professional wing the core social layer of the radical left. This is in part because they have the sense of entitlement of the Citizen class without being treated as such!

Working Class (working class can be a misleading title, it has also been called the "proletariat", which is to say the "Breeding Class") In terms of employment, all people who are supposed to be simple "order-takers " at work, or who would be that if they had work. "Ordinary people" who take no significant part in running the system. In Australia something like 70% of the population.

Exact percentages can't be given for a number for reasons; the border between the classes is fuzzy , and official statistics are not compiled on the basis of these categories.Economically dependant family members take the class of the person they are dependant on. In capitalist systems there is of course class moblity ( that is the strength of capitalism) although not so much as capitalist apologists tend to claim. In any class one will find a "trueborn" majority and a minority of upward or downwardly mobile newcomers. Wealth and income correlate with class but not exactly. Some members of the working class will be richer than some Small Citizens and so on.

Much more could be said, but it'll have to wait, for discussion of some few of the issues arising see below:

From the aprop list

In the post below I went on a bit more than I intended. The point I started
out trying to make (in appreciation of Scott's comments) is that we are not
going to get any sense about class until we stop treating it  as a way of
distinguishing friends from enemies. (Working class good, Middle class
ba-ad). Class prejudice in this sense is only one step up from racism. My
own experience is very strongly that it doesn't go down at all well with
most members of the Working-class, not because of their false consciousness
(the attribution of false consciousness to people they want to 'help' is
very characteristic of some of the lower professions) but precisely because
of their lack of false consciousness. The great aim is to *destroy the
class sytem* not to barrack "up the Workers"

Lacking a clear understanding of class can have very dangerous  practical
results. One of the most dangerous is the confusion of the salaried Middle
Class with the Working Class. (This doesn't even have the pathetic excuse
of being the Word of the Dead God Marx. It isn't.) This is not because
there is necessarily anything wrong with Middle Class people. Some of my
best friends etc. I am currently doing my level best to claw my way up into
the Middle Class (or Citizen class) myself.....The reason is that if we
mistake Middle class interests for Working class interests we are likely to
ignore Working-class interests (and attitudes and etc.) If we mistake
Middle-class resistance and activity for Wc ditto, we are likely to
mistakenly assess the state of the class struggle. (What we are struggling
for in the class struggle is to *destroy class*) . If we think we are
making progress among the Working-class when we are in fact making progress
among the Middle class we are likely to ignore propaganda among the Working
class.

One of the deadliest errors, and we are talking really deep shit here, is
to think that leaders of Working-class unions are themselves Working class.
Look at the nature of their work. Its administrative and advocacy
work.....Middle class work.....

In the interests of propaganda, seriously, class struggle Anarchists must
get this stuff straight.....


Scott wrote:

>Middle Class is a very useful, but very distorted and poorly understood
>term.
>
>At my work, the class differences in lifestyle and attitude are very
>apparent between the Managers (Middle Class) who are often also
>landlords, stockholders and home mortgage holders (they are paying on a
>mortgage on the home which is legally owned by the bank which retains
>title until the mortgage is paid).
>
>By contrast, the lower middle class "professional" and "technical"
>workers can only aspire to live like the middle class folk by having a
>two salary household and living frugally.  We (yes, I am Lower Middle
>Class) don't own stock or so-called "income property."
>
>The working class, like our graphic artists, get by and pay their rent,
>but make less than us (I was Working Class for many years as a
>construction worker, warehouse worker, painter, furniture mover, factory
>worker and soldier).

This is pretty much how I would use those terms; and its not so different
to the way  I notice mainstream political commentators use the terms. Maybe
they are not so confusing as I've been assuming, I just got the impression
they are from talking to leftists and Anarchists!

 Here's a proposition: left radicals  tend to be unable to look at the
class system without a squint: Firstly because because they are centred on
the "lower middle class" (or, as I am trying to plug the "Small Citizenry")
, which needn't be a problem in itself, except that

Secondly their *abuse* of class categories as moral rather than descriptive
means that they have to insist that they are "Working Class". (Marx
suffered from no such delusion about himself, of course, but Marx is more
invoked than read. Even when leftists 'read' Marx, it seems they just look
at the words rather than attempt to extract meaning. But I digress.)
Typically they are "lower middle class" employees, in the sense used by
Scott above. Thus they make employment the touchstone of class in spite of
the ludicrous results that leads to. Bill Clinton (or, if you like,
Professor Noam Chomsky) must be Working Class, as he is receives a salary;
and the old man with his hot chestnut stand in the snow outside the
Whitehouse (or MIT as the case may be) is a capitalist, and therefore a
bourgeois, because he lives on profits. So arise ye American Presidents and
Senior Academics and overthrow the yoke of Pavement Stallholders! You have
nothing to lose but your Chestnuts!......

By comparison small business people, for example self-employed plumbers,
often seem to be described as "Working Class" on, presumably, the grounds
that they most usually have no tertiary education and and have accents and
other superficialities resembling the Working Class stereotype. (This seems
to be almost universal in the US and British situation comedies we get in
Australia by the way...consider Roseanne even before her lottery win. *Not*
Working Class, but Small Citizen class, ie "lower middle", obviously.)

I mustn't keep going on, as I could do this all day and night. A couple of
years ago I wrote a major article for Rebel Worker on this subject. It
needs to be revised a bit. I'll stick it up on my website soon, with or
without revision: 

Meanwhile, let me finally stress again how important I think this area is
for getting the message of class-struggle Anarchism across.

Love to all , Jeremy 

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