this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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middle class is an illusion
oh it's a real thing, it's the fascist base
Please explain what exactly you mean by that?
Are they not simply misinformed comrades-to-be?
From a materialist lense, middle class usually refers to the small business owners, landlords, etc. Petty bourgeoisie basically. They historically tend to welcome fascist ideology out of fear of losing their privileged position in society.
So there's a difference between the working person who might get caught in a false consciousness versus the tenuously well-off person who's somewhat class conscious. The latter is likely a lost cause more often than not. The former can often be reasoned with if we can speak to their experiences as a worker and cut through the spectacle.
But yeah the Liberal use of the term "middle class" as someone occupying arbitrary income brackets is an immaterial abstraction with very little utility for either prediction or description.
In my mind it's always comes down to a very simple question: Do they have to work for someone, or does someone work for them? If the first is true, they're working class, if the second, they're capitalist class, aka ruling class.
There is no middle class.
Eh I just don't think there's much utility in being so strict with categories. That's fine as a shorthand though, and for explaining to coworkers who aren't familiar with the theories.
But the point of a material analysis is to, well, analyze. What are people's material interests? How do those interests shape a person's revolutionary or reactionary potential?
Rather than try to illustrate it myself with made-up examples, I'm gonna delete the paragraph I wrote and just post an actual material analysis from history
The whole point is that we're fighting amongst ourselves about what basically amounts to comfort levels for the most of us, while we should all look at each other as comrades to stand with against those that are actively taking advantage of all of us plus the rift we've created between ourselves.
I agree with the sentiment, but please do read the essay I linked. It really changed the way I thought about things.
It's very much about strategizing and analysis, not moralizing or dividing or anything like that.
Oof, I just looked and I'll try when I'm better rested but damn, someone really needs to find a way to make theory accessible to nonmedicated ADHDers 😬
i'm nonmedicated adhd.
it's a short read. maybe five minutes.
if you want the tldr: there are divisions within classes and they need to be analyzed and understood. just going by someone's relationship to wages in the value form is bound to mess you up.
especially in the essay format, you can keep your own attention by reading the conclusion first and then reading the rest with that in mind.
Oh I can empathize with that struggle. If I get time this week maybe I'll try to write a basic summary of it.
from zak cope's divided world, divided class.
on class:
cope explains:
and lastly:
No offense but isn't that basically my point but with a whoooole lot more words and (again with) the reinforcement of these differents parts of the working class?
labor aristocracy work for people but the people they work for are sufficiently subsidized by global imperialism that they can compensate the labor aristocracy in a manner that would be equivalent to the bourgeoisie anywhere outside of the imperial core. the labor aristocracy understand this at a base level and thus tend to align their interests with the interests of imperialists and global capital accordingly. hence the fascist base comment.
That's the simple way of looking at it, but things have a tendency to become more complicated. There's talk of labor aristocrats and petite bourgeoisie for a reason.
Hitlers first and most ardent supporters were generally middle class. I'll see if I can find so e English literature on it
Maoist Third Worldists make a strong case for bourgeoisification.
I think that's changing as the American empire declines, but for a long time the "middle class" directly benefitted from the superexploitation of the 3rd world. It's how their middle incomes could afford so much.
Only because it's widely thought that their incomes had to come from exploiting those beneath them, instead of taking it back from those above.
You're being exploited by someone who tells you that's what it takes and you just have to look below for someone less fortunate than yourself and exploit them. Instead we should come together with those less fortunate and collectively turn our attention to those who have been exploiting all of us to take it back instead of fighting the puppet on the other hand.
Their own lives were comfortable and easy in the middle class. Risking it all for revolution to help other people is not in their class interests.
The middle manager is still being exploited by the CEO, sure, but lets not pretend like the middle manager is a potential revolutionary. How much better could their life actually get? They have a home, vacation, healthcare, education, leisure time, and all the toys they can buy.
But! Like I said, as the American empire declines that changes drastically. Without cheap 3rd world labor to superexploit and with the decline of their own middle incomes, they'll quickly find their comfortable and easy lives disappearing. Suddenly the middle manager isn't so different from the rest of us down in the dirt, and the CEO will still be raking in millions and billions off of their labor.
Once bourgeoisification is reversed, the middle class ceases to exist.
They think it's not in their class interests because they've been conditioned to see themselves as "temporarily impoverished billionaires" and that any day can be their lucky day to join the Big Boys upstairs as long as they keep standing on the backs of theworking class people who are only beneath them because the shiny dress shoes of some 9-5 middle manager that keeps kicking them in the face as he tries to claw his way up an imaginary food chain.
Sorry if I'm getting overly ranty and/or poetic but I feel this should be a no-brainer and I'm getting passionate.
It’s not a no brainer, it’s a point of debate for like over a hundred years and the people who recognize the concept of the Labor Aristocracy as Lenin described it have generally shown to be correct, I don’t have much faith in the revolutionary potential of the people in the imperial core until the empire itself begins failing.
The idea is that superprofits from exploiting foreign workers are distributed broadly enough to the domestic “middle class” to make them comfortable and give them a stake in imperialism and therefore capitalism, so they have little revolutionary potential. And this has mostly been true, though I’d say neoliberalism has been short sighted enough to concentrate the wealth so tightly at the top that conditions have been getting worse for even the “labor aristocracy”, so it may be less true going forward. That and if the third world with the help of China/Russia etc can effectively give imperialists the boot, the imperial core bourgeoisie won’t even have the option of buying off their workers anymore. But that’s something that will take decades to develop.
I would read "the economy and class structure of german fascism" which goes into how the petite bourgeoisie form the base of fascism
In the colloquial sense middle class is just an income bracket usually small business owners and skilled workers. Its a fairly meaningless categorization for describing someone's relationship to society.
Small business owners (aka petite bourgeoisie) however, are the base of fascism as they are both heavily and precariously invested in capitalism. When capitalism enters a period of crisis, its the petite bourgeoisie that get politically motivated to "save" it by more fully subjugating the working class, but also intervening in the market to preserve sectors more loyal to the new fascist regime.
Yeah, because of capitalism and how rich the rich have become.
Its like 99% of us all have this big smelly turd. Everyone is fighting to touch the turd.
Theres an enourmous amount of people at the bottom who are just about able to put a finger on the turd. The working class.
A few more who are standing on their shoulders who have managed to get a hand or two on the big turd. The middle class.
And the rest have managed to climb ontop of the turd. The upper class.
Then theres rich people who are shitting out the turd and flushing it away.
The reality is, we all fight to be a higher class of people but compared to people like elon and trump we are all one class. The great big turd class.
You're missing the point; the middle class is an invention of the ruling class to divide the working class so we can fight amongst each other about collar-based gentrification and other nonsense.
Thats what my analogy was saying. We all believe we are of different classes, but really, we are all just fighting over the same giant turd.
I didnt miss the point. You missed mine.
Nah I got it, I just chose not the see a dividing line between feet and shoulders of the working class ;)
Maybe my analogy was bad. You are still saying the same thing as me. Im pointing out the illusion of class differences or your "dividing line" when i describe the levels on the turd. Im not saying i see the lines. Im pointing at the trick that people fall for which you clearly agree with.
It used to exist to a degree, but has been erased over the last sixty years or so. Gee, I wonder what was going on back then that resulted in punishment for the people.