Definition of Class

Merely defining a thing isn't science, and since we're talking about how to define "class", I'm stating that Marx's definition is extremely limited, leading to some silly examples of who belong to what class.

Not necessarily, that's putting the cart before the horse.
For example, is the poor farmer who hires a couple hands really "bourgeois"? In a revolution scenario, is he getting gulag'd simply for owning a farm and hiring people?
Compare that with some supervisor for a tech giant in California. He works, doesn't own the means of production, yet has a half-mil salary, and lives like the actual "proletariat" only dreams of, despite having practically nothing else in common with the rest of the proletariat.

There's also other aspects to "class" outside of income, or relation to the means of production. Socially, there are aspects of the caste system in India which aren't caused by the relation to the means of production, but is entirely a social phenomena. Culturally, you have many countries which also still have "noble" or "aristocratic" distinctions, even if some of these people are from bloodlines that have already become poor centuries ago.

In order to achieve a truly classless society, there's obviously a whole plethora of other phenomena to take into account than merely "who owns the means of production".

Your relationship to the means of production have HUGE bering on your position in society.

A poor af Bourgeois dipshit land owner employing share croppers is 999999.99×infinity more exploitative in their interpersonal social relations than some silver spoon Chad whose dad is a lawyer.
Even though the Chad clearly has the POTENTIAL to be worse. We could even say he has the power to do so. One might argue the mere ability to purchase MOP and become Petite Bourgeois is itself a classification which deserves attention.

But even more important than the moralizing about who done it worstest is the fact that the classification of people who are in the position of working for a wage have a latent potential to organize around that clear shared reality to change it.

Fucking pay differences are like the ultimate hair splitting.
Probably worse than the worst SJW "oppression olympics" clusterfuck.

It's not what divides us it's what unites us that builds socialism.

Otherwise you're just being moral or progressive. It's not wrong to be that but it's not revolutionary in itself.

Hence feminist radicals > radical feminists.

Some of that probably comes across as workerism which sucks too though.
I mean if it's social relationships we are talking about we aren't helped by being reductive about what those are or can be.

I just want to stress the point that if it's not something that unifies people it's by definition anti-political.

The question is one of exploitation.
Does the tech manager exploit people?
Being a sort of boss he must be dominating them.
To a degree he might be engaging in class treason.
Ofc it all depends on his relationship to other people and the MOP.
Does he dominate people?
Does he exploit them?
Why are we focusing on him instead of the capitalist pulling everyone's strings here?

Are you thinking in terms of revenge for a moral wrong or in terms of what is the linchpin of the social disfunction and the linchpin of the remedy?

If he owns MOP etc. Yes.
No.
Ultimately he's still proletarian.
I thought the caste system was a way of spooking people into submission and thus is very much not only a social phenomenon but an economic one.

The ideas is that economic relations effect social relations and vice verca. Both effect eachother and changing one will change the other.
please correct me if I'm wrong

I think the problem with California tech Chad is that he should be accountable to the people he is supposed to manage.

It's not bad to have leadership it's bad to have fucking little fiefdoms with lords and ladys which is what the tech industry is becoming.

Just to be perfectly clear here, the definition of "exploit" is "make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource)." There's nothing inherently bad about that. We exploit sunlight. We exploit oil. We exploit hookers. There's nothing inherent about the definition of "exploit" that implies "inequality", but the fact that you're using words like "treason" and "dominate" means that you have your own subjective ideas about what the word "exploit" means.

Then I disagree with your entire post, as would most of the planet. Unless we're talking about the most undeveloped nations on the planet, where their economies are based entirely around "farming"; absolutely nobody else in the west would consider a farmer part of the "Upper Class", while a supervisor for a tech giant in California part of the "Lower Class".

I'm not denying that there's a large cross-over between "how much money a person has" and "who owns means of production", but as far as classifying people economically goes, it's an incredibly limiting definition that completely ignores their wealth and social standing in regards to what "class" they are.

First and foremost, I would differentiate between "economic class" and "social class". In the U.S., those are generally the same, but other countries have social and cultural differences that "social class" rather than "economic class" is a useful distinction. And when it comes to "economic class", it seems far more useful to break it up into different levels of wealth… though the specific numbers are up to debate. But there's quite obviously a gigantic difference between the 0.1%, the 1%, the 20%, the 50%, etc., regardless of whether they're small business owners or tech sector supervisors.

meant for

That's because they're using "socio-ecenomic" class instead of class in the Marxist sense.

Umm… no.
Like both mutualist flag posts are the same person first of all.

Second I phrased that all with question marks to provoke critical thinking.
I did NOT equate exploitation and domination.
I did not lead the conversation either.

Also I'd like to use Marx's context for the word exploitation.
As in

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour

"In his Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx set principles that were to govern the distribution of welfare under socialism and communism—these principles saw distribution to each person according to their work and needs. Exploitation is when these two principles are not met, when the agents are not receiving according to their work or needs.[4] This process of exploitation is a part of the redistribution of labour, occurring during the process of separate agents exchanging their current productive labour for social labour set in goods received.[5] The labour put forth toward production is embodied in the goods and exploitation occurs when someone purchases a good, with their revenue or wages, for an amount unequal to the total labour he or she has put forth."

And I am not moralizing about it.
But I am suggesting we can split society based on exploiters and exploited and the latter can abolish the entire relationship by organizing around shared interest in their position as exploited.

It should have been obvious that when I was quoting "meant for", I meant that towards the person who was specifically talking about the exploitation of labor in the first place.

As for your input on Marx's definition of "exploitation":
Well, yes, but this completely ignores pretty much every facet of how businesses actually develop and sustain themselves. My supervisor isn't my supervisor because "fucking porky"; he's been working there 20 years, and knows a hell of a lot more than I do. There isn't any job which is "press button, make porky millions, $0.01 has been deposited into your account", or people would just take out loans to buy the "make me millions" machine. To reduce complex industries into such an sophomoric simplification would be damning.

The people who exploit everything and everyone the worst have absolutely nothing to do with "owning the means of production".

These are things like "The IMF". These are people who live in a stateless society, where currency is treated as monopoly money, and "means of production" is so hilariously so far beneath them that they would likely laugh at you for even thinking they could be bothered to care about that, assuming your net worth could even buy 60 seconds of their time.

Things like the IMF were introduced almost a 100 years after the Communist Manifesto was written, so it's not like Marx could have taken these organizations into account.

However, since we're obviously playing by a completely different ballgame than what he conceptualized over 150 years ago… isn't it a bit idiotic to not build, modify, and change his ideas based on how radically the world has changed since it was written?

every

fucking

time

Do you mean supervisor as in your direct superior that's subordinate to the owner of whatever business you're working in? Or do you mean the owner?
If it's the former it's any combination of luck, the boss liking them, or actual merit. If it's the latter it's probably the first one.
Source for that claim, by the way:
technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/
Now, given that these are the primary factors of how people come into power in the business world, why do they particularly deserve power? Should it not be decided on an ad hoc democratic basis as to who has power for any individual reason?
There isn't any job with so large of a gap between wages and surplus value(in the first world anyway), no. But you still make more value than is reinvested into the means of production and that you get as wages, this surplus value goes direct to porky.
This is the asymmetric, unequal, unjust, and most greviously, inefficient mode of production we now have.
No. Like. Emphatically no. They have the money, they control the biggest corporations that make the money and exploit the most workers. By every measure, they own the means of production. How is this not obvious?
So you're saying that those that control capital, how it's invested and where, and the means of producing more capital, don't own the means of production? Are you you not capable of putting two and two together or are you being intentionally disingenuous?
I mean, the IMF is little more than an international collab project by porkies. It's simply the international aspect of capital.
And what exactly needs to be updated about it? In what way is Marxism unable to address, explain, and propose solutions to these problems?

"Ultimately he's still proletarian."

Man this a straight up retarded analysis. A manager at some fancy schmancy tech company is not a fucking proletarian. A manager does not produce value, rather it is the entire function of the managerial strata to facilitate the extraction of surplus value from the proletarian in the name of the bourgeoisie and in doing so they are rewarded with a cut of the surplus value. How is this not obvious.

Just because Marx laid his focus on the categories proletarian and bourgeoisie it does not mean that there are not other relations of production at play here, and that is what class is, no?. The managerial strata has a relationship in production that is different from both the proletarian the owners. They act as the lieutenants of the ownership class. Saying a manager has the same relationship towards production as the worker is like saying that the slavedriving foreman is a slave because he isn't the master.

Yes.
In terms of hierarchies, most businesses I've worked for have been
1. General workers
2. Team lead/most experienced worker
3. Supervisor
4. Manager
5. CEO/Owner/guy in charge of all departments.
The number of everything depends on the number of shifts/number of departments/etc.

Sure. I've dealt with working with someone who got their supervisory position based on familial ties to the boss. Last I heard, the company went under, because someone with zero ability or experienced was placed in an important position without any ability or experience.

Every other supervisor position I've worked under has been, "I'm a supervisor/manager because I have a combination of experience and education far beyond what you have", and usually proved it on a weekly basis.

That depends. Should someone not be allowed to pass on the fruits of their labor onto their descendants? It's a chaotic process taking place over multiple generations, with too many factors to reasonably count; generally, people with "power" in "the business world" are a result of many generations "not fucking up", and in some cases "luck" and/or "innovation". And, of course, all it takes is for a single generation to fuck all that up as well.

You also take none of the risk, none of the investments, and have incredibly little expected of you as a worker. What you get paid doesn't tend to reflect how bad the company performs, and if you don't like the job, you can just walk out with no questions asked.
I know that there are a variety of advantages to owning your own business, but the level of "grass is greener", especially when it comes to "bourgeois" small business owners is beyond any sort of reasonable defense.

They don't, directly.
You're thinking INCREDIBLY small time, when you really get down to what the very basis of "wealth" means. Stop thinking in terms of "means of production" for a second, and consider things in terms of global financial markets.

The very idea of even paying attention to any sort of business worth less than the top 100 is a completely foreign concept to them. They don't "control" the means of production… the "means of production" is so many levels beneath them that they have managers who manage managers who manage managers who manage mergers who manage managers, etc etc, to the point where even bringing to their attention "how a business operates" would likely get you fired for wasting their time.

Obviously, Marx neither foresaw this, and I'm not sure if he could to begin with.

They literally run the world.
Look at where the U.S. has been invading for the last 50 years, and look at which countries aren't bound to the IMF.
This is the problem when you put on complete blinders to everything outside "means of production". The control of the means of production is a highly significant factor, but it's beyond retarded to claim that it's the only relevant one.

Probably the fact that it's outdated by approximately 150 years, communist revolutions have unfolded the opposite way he predicted, financial markets are wildly different than they were then, he didn't account for overpopulation or the sheer rate of Malthusian environmental effects.

You can still respect Marx for what he set out to do, while admitting shortcomings in need of revision, the same way you can respect Freud while realizing his theories weren't perfect.

This is… maybe 50% what I was getting at.

I agree in the sense it's obviously a problem with the simplistic division between "owning the means of production" and "not owning the means of production". There's obviously a ridiculous number of layers to the onion here. Some are useful and necessary, and some aren't.

But unless you're talking about a conception of "work" that is "PUSH BUTTON: PRODUCE MONEY FOR PORKY", there's generally a lot of experience and knowledge that one gains over the years of working in a certain industry, that makes you an "expert" above and beyond less experienced, less knowledgable, and less educated people working in the industry.

I know you're itching to drop a dank redpill about how the IMF was created from the thin air by the jews to keep the white man down, user, but if private ownership of the means of production didn't exist, neither would the IMF. Their entire existence is predicated on the fact that there are capitalists who need to borrow money for their businesses. Marx knew that bankers exist, and it doesn't put his theories into question in any way whatsoever.

Capitalism is a system, not a sliding scale. Bankers and those who own physical factories presuppose and reinforce each other.

The capitalist runs a risk of, at the absolute worst, becoming a prole if his business fails, and even that happens rarely. The prole runs a risk of starving to death if he's laid off and can't find another job. What an incredibly weak argument.

Do they have ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million times the experience you have? Do they work ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million times harder than you do? I don't think so, and yet they're earning that much more in wages and profits. Stop being a cuck.

I'm going to stop you right here.
That wasn't even remotely my intention.
My intention was one, specific example as to how everything has changed in the last 150 years, which requires a rethinking of Marxist assumptions about class, as it refers to "means of production".

I'm not reading the rest of your shitpost until you rephrase it without your leading idiotic assumptions.

It still doesn't mean that they are "Ultimately still a proletarian" (what you said). The managerial position still changes their general relationship in production even though they might have gotten there from a proletarian position and have some experience and skill to go with it.

Even if it wasn't your intention, "thinking outside of the means of production" requires a mystical force such as jews or alien lizardmen to explain why the IMF exists, where it gets money and to whom it lends.

Purely sociological definitions of "class" are not useless, and they can sometimes help better understand society and how it functions — but they're severely flawed in that they're subjective. If someone's class is defined by their income bracket, then at which point do they stop being proles? You'd have to come up with an arbitrary number ($1,500? $3,000? $10,000?) above which wages cannot be considered working-class somehow, and that doesn't really make any sense. And to be honest, that approach is often crypto-socdem because the problem those who promote it have with capitalism is inequality, not the fundamental categories of capitalism (wage labor, private property, market discipline, generalized commodity production, etc) per se. It's particularly popular among left-wing French academia who have abandoned Marxism long ago.

That doesn't mean Marx's theory of class shouldn't be updated to better fit contemporary reality though, which can be miles away from what the world looked like two centuries ago — or you do end up absurdly claiming CEOs or celebrity athletes are "proletarians".

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It does. Just like every single aspect changes the "general relationship in production due to experience and skills".

Knowledge, skills, and experience don't magically disappear due to communism.

That's mostly what I'm getting at. Is that millionaire in his McMansion for playing sportsball supposed to be "proletarian"?

We clearly need an updated definition to reflect the current state of affairs.

1st world programmers, managers et al are labor aristocrats. They only receive such high pay because of super profits.

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I have a lot of reading material regarding updated class theory, but it's all in French. :(

The IMF exists because it's an efficient (probably, the most efficient) means of control, at the moment.
It's the same way that Stalinism was an efficient means of control.
It's the same way that weird "Kim Jongism" is an effective means of control.
You're just too fucking stupid to even consider that there might be a single aspect of reality to consider beyond "muh prokey", and unfortunately because you're such a fucking retard, is why I have little hope for the left in the next couple centuries.
It's a death cult, completely incapable of the cult of personality formed around Marxism, which can't evolve, can't admit its failures, and can't grow into anything better. It's the antithesis of progress, and "porky" is laughing at you in his brick, wood, and straw houses, all because leftist idiots can't fathom that Marx wasn't the incarnation of Jesus.

You're right, it is.
It's a tool of control in the name of the bourgeoisie you dense faggot, that's what we're getting at. It's absolutely about porky because the IMF ==is== porky you dumb fuck.

It literally isn't.
The IMF couldn't possibly give less of a shit about what patsy """controls""" the means of production, you intellectual invalid.
They're too busy manipulating the basic currency of entire countries to even give a shit about who's controlling "the means of production".

Control by whom?

People whom are so far beyond spending a single second considering what "the means of production" are that they're entirely irrelevant.
These kinds of people changed the entire face of the whole economic game, making "le owning the means of production" the "Big Bad" completely irrelevant.

Do you think the IMF would continue to exist if private ownership of the MoP would continue to exist? Capitalism is a system, not a sliding scale.

...

read this
spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2014/10/28/is-class-real-some-empirical-contributions-from-econophysics

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Yes, considering it has persisted through multiple "communist" revolutions.
If your idea is, "Well, if EVERYONE revolted…", then even moreso yes, it will apparently persist until a potential post-scarcity event, which communist societies would never have brought about anyway.

I like how you went from soft concern trolling to screeching about Stalin and muh communism doesn't work in the span of forty posts. It's funny watching your emotional breakdown in real time. Believing the IMF doesn't need capital to manage the flow of capital is literally magical thinking.

…What?
The only thing it needs is "wealth", and the amount of wealth that the IMF controls is so far beyond Marx's ideas of "means of production" that they're rendered irrelevant.

As to the point you didn't address, if any sort of solution relies on "every single place on earth accepting your solution", it's historically doomed to failure.

Any true communist revolutionary action needs to take these things into account, and not merely "the means of production", since we live in an economically, socially, and culturally diverse global society where "who owns the means of production" is not nearly enough of a comprehensive understanding of class to be even remotely useful 150 years later.

An aspect, sure, but as a dividing line, leaves many things to be desired.

I like how you put "wealth" in quotes because you yourself understand that it is a completely meaningless and subjective category unlike class which is rock solid. Like it or not, but the means of production and our relationship to them are as relevant as ever, because they're quite literally how we produce and do everything. If you want to disprove Marx feel free to propose a superior theory. I'm sure it'll be scientific and logical and not just some conspiracy theorist babble about bankers who make "wealth' out of nothing.

I'm not sure if you're baiting at this point. The distribution of "wealth" is not subjective.
…Okay, you're baiting.
Ironic shitposting is still shitposting.

Of course not. But being a manager under capitalism isn't simply a question of using experience and skill to coordinate labour as it could be under socialism. Just like the slavedriver isn't simply coordinating labour by way of skill to coordinate labour. There is another power dynamic going on. Hiring and firing, enacting the will of the owner to enable surplus extraction, these are examples of a power dynamic going beyond mere coordination and expertise.

I am trying to tell you, for the third time now, that capitalism is a system and not a sliding scale. An international banker might be more wealthy than a factory owner but he still needs that factory owner to exist and create profits through exploitation (exploitation isn't when people do bad stuff btw, it's a concrete process in which the capitalist takes surplus value from workers). Take away porky's ability to make profits and the bankers will lose their wealth. It's really quite simple. Meanwhile you've yet to explain how your vague idea of wealth is valuable to the class struggle and practically applicable.

that millionaire in his mcmansion playing sportsball is literally destroying his own body for the team owner's pocketbook

This painting is so edgy it makes me a little hard., though I'm pretty sure it was meant as anti-communist propaganda.

But wealth is, and any definition of "class" which is disconnected to the concept of "wealth" is pretty much missing the picture just as hard as ignoring the means to accumulate wealth (means of production).

We're talking about a group of people who are so WEALTHY that not only do they not operate the means of production, NOR do they own the means of production.
These are people who literally pay others, not even directly, to own the means of production, because they're so wealthy they can't even be bothered with trivial things like "owning a business".

That only works if there were some kind of global revolution, since we now currently live in a global society. That's obviously not simple. Haven't you been paying attention to how pretty much every socialist revolution is being subverted by global capitalists, using their WEALTH?

Because although Marx's ideas remain highly relevant, he's not some sort of holy prophet who's divine word is objectively correct about everything. It's been more than a hundred and fifty years since he wrote the Manifesto, and the material conditions of our current day are radically different from when he was alive, just as much as they will have radically changed again 150 years from now.

If we never actually update our theories and understanding of how the world operates economically, socially, and politically, we'll become as irrelevant as some long dead tribal cult; something for anthropologists to poke the dead bones of.

Stop that.

I am going in circles at this point. Marxist theory isn't about who is more or less capitalister or rich, it aims to describe our society as a system based on economic relations. The fact that some people own property and others work for a wage is literally the foundation of how we function and organize as a society. Global banking is merely an abberation of this system, its emergence is not comparable to the transition of slavery to feudalism, feudalism to capitalism etc. We still work for wages, people still own property, nothing has fundamentally changed and the Marxist model still stands true. Some circles of the society do lie outside of the proletarian-bourgeoisie duality, but Marxism doesn't aim to explain every facet of everything, "merely" the fundamental way of how society functions.

That's one of the central points of Marxism, good job.

No user, you misunderstand. You don't just get to say "Marx is wrong". Define wealth, explain how bankers holding wealth makes our society fundamentally different to what Marx was describing, and tell me what revolutionaries are supposed to do about it instead of seizing the memes of production.

No. I'm saying "we", because I'm uncertain myself exactly how/what to include to expand on the definition, and somebody might have a better idea.

And it's a pretty blatant flaw to leave "wealth" out of the equation of "economic relations".

That's like saying "Nothing has changed, the Earth still spins around the Sun." Marx made multiple predictions that have so far turned out to be wrong, such as the rate of profit falling, or that workers revolutions would first take place in 1st world countries, when historically it has taken place in disadvantaged ones so far.
In light of certain flaws, and developments which Marx never could have predicted… you're literally arguing in favor of plugging your ears and going "LALALA", instead of actually updating Marx's original ideas in light of new information.

A global revolution isn't going to happen, which is another flaw. If it does happen, it will take place on a state-basis first, as what's been happening. Also, I'm pretty sure the idea of a global communist society was his "end-game" scenario, not "Gee, I bet everyone will just decide to do what I say!"

I don't.

Yes, I do, you fundamentalist psycho.

There are multiple ways to define it, but currently, "the amount of money and holdings (net worth) one possesses". Though to Marx, it would probably be something more along the lines of "who owns the most land and has the most potatoes".

Because they have no direct relation to either owning, nor being a part of "the means of production". These are people who can bankrupt nations by mere currency trading.

I never claimed to have all the answers. I'm saying that holding "The Communist Manifesto" as some kind of holy book that can never be wrong about anything, because "it's the word of God" is an absolutely idiotic stance to take, especially while claiming "it's scientific".

You can respect Marx in the same way you respect Isaac Newton. But a few hundred years later, in the light of NEW INFORMATION, it's absolutely idiotic to hang on to outdated ideas. Both Marx and Newton would slap you if they were alive today.

It ignores social standing not those other things.

Yes, it does.
The fundamental tenant of the entire Manifesto is essentially "workers" vs. "people who owned the workers".
Marx, not do his discredit, probably couldn't dream of a globalist class that's so wealthy that even "people who owned the workers" were ridiculously far beneath them.

because the means of production create wealth you jackwagon. Bourgeois wealth undermines feudal bloodline wealth. There is literally nothing else that comes close to determining 'ones position in society' or 'social standing' than personal wealth.

tbh I've always just used it alongside other definitions.
although usually even when you clearly label each use of class ("class in the marxist sense", "social class") some pedant usually feels the need to "correct" you.

income is severely overlooked

Either you recognise it, or you ignore it. You know what happens when you ignore it? You drop a cluster bomb on any hope of solidarity because the socially-influential Seattle/California set are going to take over. They've got social capital and they've got the cash+spare time to do it while you're at work. I'll spare you the real point (a long and confused tirade how their material problems differ from those of normal people in the real world) and cut to the easy Zig Forums pandering part: You wanna know the other fun part of that crew taking over? You can say buggery to any economic organising. This is idpol territory now!

When the only thing you have in common is technical relationship to the means of production, you have a problem.
maybe one day we'll find a definition of computer use that lets us gulag the California medium set, then all will be well.

tbh worker's bloodline wealth needs more consideration. just because your dad never owned the MoP doesn't mean you're not getting any inheritance from him if satan above gives you good cards.

So would a SV worker who makes almost $200k/year (plus benefits such as stock options) be considered a "prole"? Pic related.

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yes, labour aristocracy and all that

He would be labor aristocracy, i.e. a prole being paid by superprofits and therefore not likely to have any reason to unite with the proletariat as a class.

It literally is though you illiterate.

For the purpose of describing capitalism, there are only two classes, those who are obliged to labor (which would include the chronically unemployed and the disabled, because there is the assumption that those people have to prove themselves "worthy" in the eyes of the bourgeoisie), and those who are not obliged to labor because of their property rights.

If you want to suppose some other model to describe society then you can talk about different kinds of classes, but wealth distinctions don't have a scientific basis for making someone fundamentally different, and anything relating to social standing would have to be explained by reality, not by feels or spooks

I don't think the critique of capital is all-encompassing and all you need to understand about the entirety of human society, but for the purpose of critiquing the mechanics of capitalism the contradiction between worker and owner is all that is needed. There is no other class distinction that is absolutely intrinsic to the mode of production as the worker/owner distinction, and no other class that can be clearly defined as a permanent feature of the system. The only way I can see income meaning anything is if someone is sitting on a large enough hoard of money that they never have to work again, and even then the money hoarder still depends on the institutions of capitalism for their hoard to mean anything. Otherwise, even well-paid workers are still workers. Paying off segments of the working class and playing them against each other is an age old trick that goes back to ancient Roman slavery days.

Good thread, OP.

The best examination I can find is here:
nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/class.php

The real question is, what exactly was Marx's definition of class?

Guess what? He never wrote one!
The only time I can find that Marx attempted to actually define the word was in Capital Volume 3. He asks, "What constitutes a class?" and then goes on to list the three big classes of his time, their superficial differences, and then the manuscript breaks off. If you look at Marx's use of the word it becomes clear he had a flexible definition. He did not reduce the concept of class to a simple formula that could easily be applied. Marx did not think in terms of formulas. If you look at Marxists.org they don't even have an actual quote where Marx defined 'class'. The reduction of 'class' into "relationship to the means of production" is actually revisionism.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote that historically society was divided into many classes:
"In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations."

Marx then wrote,
"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat."

Here we can see that Marx would not have argued (since it was false) that only two classes existed under capitalism. His argument was that the historical process was polarizing society into two classes over time.

Marx wrote far later in Capital vol.3:
"In England, modern society is indisputably most highly and classically developed in economic structure. Nevertheless, even here the stratification of classes does not appear in its pure form. Middle and intermediate strata even here obliterate lines of demarcation everywhere […]"

Here Marx recognizes that even in the most developed capitalist country the historical process of polarization was not so evident and that many sub-groups existed between the two or three large classes.

Conclusions:
1) Reducing Marx's conception of "class" to a simple formula is literally revisionism.
2) Marx identified "three big classes" in his time - workers, capitalists, and land-owners.
3) Marx believed that classes were constantly created and destroyed in history.
4) Marx anticipated that society would increasingly polarize between workers and capitalists.

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Marx's never-to-be-completed attempt to define class.

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You're a strange man.

for the record I do agree with the idea that a lot of people hold onto ridiculously outmoded ways of thinking, because a fair bit of this comes from Marx's actually wrong theory that industrial capital was going to dominate everything and quite underestimated the gravity of financial capital.
Unfortunately I'm not really so well versed in the changes that has brought about to modern capitalism, so I can't help much more than that.

Your relationship to the means of production determine your income and status.

People with a high net worth own means of production because its the best investment of their money, and people with means of production naturally make more money than workers, making them have a high net worth.
Social standing is almost entirely class based. A rich autistic sociopath has a higher social standing than the nicest, smartest poor person.

It is the best definition, and the only definition that makes sense. Socialism is about removing this structural inequality that creates and maintains all other inequalities.

Forgot to add:
Also, class if an amazing definition because it is unambiguous. You are bourgeois if you own means of production, you are proletarian if you have to sell your labour power to the bourgeoisie to survive.
Income is arbitrary, net worth is arbitrary and social standing is not definable in any sense.

Yes.

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I think there is a point you are trying to make but I really didn't get it, though I would respond if I understood better. Usually someone being a wage-worker means they actually don't have money to pass on. The satan and good cards bit confuses me. As for your other reply, what other things do you think need to be in common? Those things would be what seems idpolish to me. At the same time, aside from idpol as reformist-diversionary drivel, I'm coming to desire the common (at the same time unique) place, as per Heidegger's being-in-the-world, which the Situationists in their own way recognized was under threat by modern urbanism.

A reasonable chunk of the middle(ish) social class can expect to inherit a house alongside other assets and a somewhat trivial sum of money, and a non-trivial segment of well paid wage labourers children can expect impressive inheritance. These people are usually, in relationship-to-MOP terms "proletarian" but they are going to receive lump sums they've done sweet buggery to earn.
On top of that, looking at social class you've got other factors that will determine your position going forward. Having parents who went to university makes it more likely you're going to go to university and all that. These things all come together to make the bloodline of a worker relevant. (Well, above a given income threshold.)
Where you wind up / who your parents are is determined by forces outside your control, like the cards you're dealt in a card game. I am unsatisfied with my cards, and therefore conclude they were dealt not by god - who would be the usual cosmic dealer - but by Satan.
i forget exactly. it's late. I kind of touch on the thrust of it below, incoherently.
There is a degree of that, though in a sort of exclusionary way. It's easier to point to people who live unreal lives than collate what leads to people living real lives. There's also something about how you handle being "among equals" - on the one hand a higher status person treating you as an equal is obviously desirable, but on the other it can backfire and come across as underplaying their own status for their own benefit. that could also be uncharitably be framed as being aware of privilege, within an olderish British understanding of that term, i.e. income, parentage, schooling, but not so much race or sex. We may well both be exploited by the boss

Are you seriously obsessing over the small inheritances of the working class? A lot of Burger families are desperately holding on to the property of their parents or grandparents if they have any, otherwise it's damn near impossible to have any sort of stable existence. I know I lucked out by inheriting a (really low market value) house, otherwise I'd be on the street right now.

For my case, my income is under 15K a year, all things put together. I'm literally the scum of society as far as my image and social standing is concerned. The important thing is that, as a property owner, I have a class interest in things like low property taxes and bourgie things. I could in theory rent out my house and live out of a tiny home or a tent (so long as the pigs don't throw me in jail for vagrancy). Living off of rents is the very definition of being a capitalist pig. It really is about property rights, and obviously I'm not keen on giving up those property rights because fuck paying the insane rents landlords charge. Is my class interest naturally right and good? Of course not. But the point is, inheritance only matters in the capitalist theory of political economy because property rights are a thing. There is nothing mystical about inheritance that makes inheritors socially special. Those social distinctions are not intrinsic and transcendent. I'm still scum of the earth and there's nothing special about me where I "deserve" my property. My mother went through hell to get this property, and what thanks did she get from capitalism or society? She got shit on royally and was driven down to working at Wal-Mart, which probably contributed to her early passing.

Just because some people have a sense of superiority and act like jerks, doesn't mean their superiority is inherent to the system. Just about every asshole human tries to lord over others. If you want to build a sociological theory about how people are organized, or a theory about political economy, you need to deal with facts, not appearances. Now, I can write all day what I think about academia and the corruption of the education system, but the dominance of the educational system and credentials is not ironclad, in the way that property rights are ironclad in legal principle and in practice.

I think there is a severe misunderstanding at work here. I'm not even sure what the Brit's point was honestly. I was trying to say that capital mostly undermines land ownership because of the wealth-value it can generate. Of course land is still owned and landlords are cancer. As for Mr. Bong, yeah, in America we have /some/ of that inheritance but not much and it's all drying up, Marx's observations about the ruination of the petit-bourgeoisie is happening en masse in America now because as a country it finally ran out of their (petit bourg) primitively accumulated wealth. That's why now in America the petit-bourg (not the salatariat) are more than ever loathsome scum who turn to their poor white neighbors or vulnerable foreigners for their labor. All the meanwhile they become debt slaves or cash out. So stories like are more and more common here. Really sorry about your mother user.

ur mask is slipping, liberal

It literally isn't, and if that's the hill you would like to die on, then so be it.
Any type of revolution clearly doesn't need a religious psychopath such as yourself.

This place has to be the absolute most degenerate shithole of pseudo intellectualism that I have ever had the misfortune of encountering.

Here I am attempting attempting to update leftist theory, and all I'm surrounded with is COMPLETE AND UTTER RETARDS screaming about "lol read books", or "lol ur a liberal".

I give up.

The left is dead, and the left killed it.

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Because it's correct, liberal scumbag.

In part, yes. (Though not being the beneficiary of any such inheritances I'll fight "small" to my dying breath. As you yourself immediately note afterwards: otherwise it's damn near impossible to have any sort of stable existence.) But really I think I let myself get distracted. Touching on inheritance and property muddies the waters although it's still a relevant and major part. Parents simply giving their kids more stuff/cash while still alive is an equally important thing, and also one that can endure even in families with terrible cashflow (and thus, little inheritance at the end of it.)

To be honest part of the problem isn't even people acting like jerks. It's people acting like they're your friends and allies. It's the kind of people who pay lip-service to a minimum wage hike or some kind of actual reform identify as a lefty and post anarcho-communist memes and talking points, and then fall back into spending most of the time fighting over their trivial middle class or consumerist problems. Which of course, includes their idpol cause of the week. They may say they're your ally, but their economic and social framework of reference is so different that you're screwed. Underneath it all they know their parents can buy them out of hell, there's no risk of foodstamps filling their table.

Now that's not to say the "middle class" as a whole is entirely worthless, just certain segments and groups that need to be segregated. (And despite my prior mention of idpol, that's not soft-reactionary code for excluding people on the basis of anything but economic status.)

Perhaps a pastiche of it might be "better a bourgeois class traitor than a well-to-do proletarian."
although really I'm just typing it because it's a fun contradiction of social democracy on the bourgeois-political level: you make normal people better off, then a chunk of them get ideas above their station and pull the ladder up behind them because they're now "middle class".
Not fast enough tbh.