PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Oscar-nominated actor James Woods is selling one of his four homes in Rhode Island, a property on Boone Lake in Exeter, for $1.39 million, according to the listing real-estate agen…
When ever Marxists tell me that these wealthy celebrities (actors, athletes etc.) are working class because they are selling their labour, I remind them that their obscene wealth means they own multiple properties (that they rent out, like Killer Mike and Dave Chapelle), businesses and investments.
My understanding of class is it's defined by your relationship to capital. A shareholder or landlord could do labour, but that doesn't make them working class
class is not a bright-line category, what matters is the dominant aspect of his relationship to capital the means of production, which is pretty clearly his investments and not his acting compensation. he could stop acting right now
Marxism is dialectic, it rejects absolute pure categories. Things sort of exist
on a spectrum but sort of don't. The way Marxists use categories is to
understand that everything is connected to each other through a series
of quantifiable interconnected steps, but that something is always
dominant, and this dominant aspect is what determines the overall
quality of the thing in question.
If you're trying to shove everything into a pure category of absolutely
worker, absolutely capitalist, then this is just a useless endeavor.
When we talk of "worker" or "capitalist," we don't mean it as if these
are pure categories, where a worker can't ever own capital, or that a
capitalist can't ever do labor. They may do these things, they may exist
somewhere in between. But clearly at some point, certain
characteristics become dominant over others. Clearly Jeff Bezos's class
interests are not the same as a minimum wage worker, as the latter
likely has next to no capital while the former has far more capital than
he could ever, by his own labor, afford.
There is no reason to try and shove this person you're describing into a
specific absolute box. If they're a salaried worker who runs some very
small business / self-employment on the side as supplemental income, you
could just say they're a worker with petty bourgeois characteristics.
You don't have to say they're absolutely "petty bourgeois" or a
"worker". You can just describe that they have characteristics of
multiple categories. No reason you cannot do this.
When ever Marxists tell me that these wealthy celebrities (actors, athletes etc.) are working class because they are selling their labour, I remind them that their obscene wealth means they own multiple properties (that they rent out, like Killer Mike and Dave Chapelle), businesses and investments.
My understanding of class is it's defined by your relationship to capital. A shareholder or landlord could do labour, but that doesn't make them working class
class is not a bright-line category, what matters is the dominant aspect of his relationship to
capitalthe means of production, which is pretty clearly his investments and not his acting compensation. he could stop acting right now—by zhenli真理
someone find the lathe
But seriously, videodrome is the only thing worth watching that he's heavily featured in
He is a landlord that also does a real job
I wouldn't say they're working class, but they're not ruling elites, at least not all of them have businesses.
They're not necessarily haute bourgeois but they're likely best viewed as petit bourgeois at best.
It's just buying your way into the owning class. Anyone can do it if they obtain obscene amounts of wealth.
You can it with even a moderate level of wealth