I know we have our Marxist definition and all that, but it seems to be a really pervasive 
, everywhere I go. Some people I've talked to think for instance, all scientists are silver spooned and never worked a day in their life because they don't do construction, or whatever.
How do you argue with people like this? Can you?
just keep hammering them with questions and don't let them slip about with vagueries or cliches until they agree that the working classes can only be defined in contrast to the owning class.
For example: wtf is a "scientist"? A sociologist is a scientist who might do dozens of interviews to solve a problem. A biologist might trek into a swamp many times to collect water samples. A chemist might be dealing with extremely hazardous chemicals, far more dangerous than anything most workers deal with. This is all work by any means, and at most these people are petite bourgeois, but the vagueness of some "scientist" allows it to mean some dude in a lab coat with a clipboard that jerks off all day for a six figure salary. Don't let them be intellectually lazy. Make them say that if a scientist works for someone else, they are by definition a worker.
I think it's also worth noting that there are plenty of contradictions within the "working class" and that the "Proletariat" (which is the class of most interest to Marxists) is not synonymous with "working class".
Yeah in the cushier of my scientist jobs I regularly broke 15,000 steps a day, worked with cancer causing chemicals on the regular, and had to move heavy shit around all the time. Also animals that bite. In the less cushy one I was in a corn field in the Florida summer for several hours a day.
But I bet you were easily clearing 40k+ a year like some kind of robber baron.
$34k
Then the corn one was when I was a student so only part time for a whole $12 an hour. In the summer though that part time was basically full time.
I love bursting people's bubble about how much scientists make, especially when they act like we're some kind of ivory tower elites.
Even the scientists who are established spend all their time begging for grant money (unpaid time) to be able to pay themselves and other people at a rate that averages out to be often below minimum wage