Proletariat, but on and off because I'm technically too sick to work but mental health shit isn't taken seriously so I bounce between jobs every time I have a mental breakdown from burnout.
Being poor and neurodivergent sucks. There are things I'm good at, but they're all things that require a degree and I have no way to support myself and study at the same time. So I get stuck in jobs I am terrible at and that also trigger my mental shit, grin and bear it for a few months before my mind literally melts down and I lose the job and start at square one. Rinse and repeat every 6 months.
Life is hell sometimes.
at least hell isnt lonely
This would make a god-tier album name
ok, so I am confused. I own a controlling share on a diamond mind in the Congo, but I also get paid to be on the board of directors. Does this make me a petty criminal or a vagrant?
every poster used to be a lurker, which makes them the best kind of class traitors
hate to be a NEET
but honestly it is still better than working, even though most people would considered me a second-tier human or something
If you can live without being exploited that's a good thing. For most people it's also either due to disability of some variety or the stage they are in life or just shit luck. Capitalism requires this sort of surplus population to continue more and more, most wage labor isn't even productive labor in the first place. There is no shame in not working. People in prison technically count as NEET. Most of the unemployed would love the chance to become the proletariat because even if your labor is exploited for a wage, it's still regular income. In a mostly service economy where jobs pay jack shit and there's less and less whatever weird thing Marx had with the 'lumpenproletariat' is just no longer relevant, he got most stuff right but jobs are different now.
Jobs aren't different, the division of labor has just shifted. Labor becomes more automated and populations rise which leads to a labor surplus and security of capitalism. Also, the proletariat is by no means the majority of the working/laboring class. Even in 1917, the proles were a minority.
They're just the class with the most revolutionary potential, which has kinda shifted now because of universal education/literacy and the internet. Marx basically just saw that the proles were really good at self governance and formation of councils/unions which made them ideal for creating democratic replacement for the existing bourgeois state.
Yeah, I know. If it weren't the fact that nobody will ever date me while I'm a NEET (and living at home), I wouldn't give a fuck, I could find my own things to do with my time
It makes more feeling sense when you recognize that sound engineers, backstage people, and all the rest are very much proles. Most people involved in the music and film industry are proles even if the most visible people in it aren't.
I'd argue most musicians are also proles, like, they don't own the opera theatre they need to play in for a living wage.
The poll itself shows the assumption of clear cut borders, though most students do work.
For example in Germany 2/3 of students do work on quite a few have to finance their students on their own. The people who don't work (even though quite a few are privileged) are mostly financing the studies via credit, which delays their class conscious a bit - not till they finish their studies - but till they have to pay their loans back, they get sick, or something interferes with their studies.
As such the real answer for most students would be "proletarian", however even for those who currently don't work the question is: "what part am I?" the answer is not easy. Marx said that it is a myriad of connections and influences which make you part of the working class.
Those influences (but in general not specifically) often stem from the fact that members of the working class are analytically doubly free (free of capital to draw profits from of which to subsist on one hand and on the other free of a bond binding you to a specific plot of land - unlike serfs) and as such are forced to work to subsist and not wither away. A quick test if you are working class or not (I will put capitalists and land lords onto the same category for the sake of the argument) is this: If you would not work for 8 years would anything bad happen to you? If yes you are working class, if not: You are real bourgeoisie and the profits you generate from capital and other streams are higher than the minimum amount necessary for you to subsist.
Clarification: The stratification of classes can't be reduced into the dichotomy between capitalist class and working class, though those are the two class actors according to Marx which expose the contradiction of the system itself and the working class as subject ought to have the power and interest to change the system.
Does this mean that the class interests of petit-bourgeosie and working class are identical? No, however it means that there are different groups and you have to look at the specific social relations to get insight and make arguments from.
One more thing: To put lawyers who earn a lot and "self" employed gig workers and individual contractors who are fake self employed into another category as proles is problematic and neoliberal in itself. Such self employed contractors are used to hide that the working class person is still part of the working class and the reserve army, dividing the solidarity of the people.
Still I like such polls as they are important to get closer to objective points, not that the poll itself is objective, but it is necessary to get insight into the social relations of us (thanks :cia:).
How is academic petit-bourgesie? They work for a wage, don't they?
Academics, at least if they aren't precariously employed (which is a rather recent development), tend to be public servants. Those are usually counted as petite bourgeoisie because they serve the state, not capital (at least not directly) and also tend to have pretty good conditions of employment. And even if academics nowadays have no chance of getting a permanent position, the traditional Marxist position is that universities are bourgeois institutions that transmit petit bourgeois ideology at best.
do you/ does anyone happen to have any articles looking at the status of academics through a marxist lens?
wasnt there a struggle session not too long ago because some user or users were pretty far up in some corporate hierarchy? this doesnt seem surprising
yeah, though i think that person eventually resigned and started training to become a nurse a little while after that struggle session
the lad who created the kgb was a polish aristocrat. there are good class traitors out there.
low key wish I were one of them.
I am sort of half joking because I was surprised to see 5% of people self identifying as bourgeoisie.
On an individual level sure it's good, but I wouldn't recommend people get too puffed up about it either.
I mean this isn't exactly a scientific poll, I highly doubt it's representative of all users on the site
the guy's name was Felix Dzerzhinsky and Lenin regarded him as a comrade. And it was the organization which was the predecessor of the kgb called the checka so oops.
yea, Putin's the product of the late stage ideologically lost ussr leadership. But every member of the bolshevik party during the overthrow of tsarist russia deserves daddy status.
I hope no members of royalty post here, I wouldn't want them to feel left out by this.
I'm "self-employed" in that I'm a contracted delivery driver who had to start an llc, but wholly dependent on my contractors for work :soviet-hmm:
Same, though I was a proletarian for about eight years prior to going back to college, and I expect to be a proletarian again once I get my degree.
Defining the proletariat as those specifically working, and then unemployed people as non-proles seems wrong to me.
If you are class-aware, and not an owner of capital, you can be part of the proletariat. I would also consider petit bourgeious, as long as you're not directly exploiting the working class (I see you landlords) as potentially proletarian these days. Marx said that the proletariat will grow to include the PMC as their labour moves towards being wage labour, and I think this is happening.
Anyway, lumpen are bootlicking scammers, bourgeious are bourgeious, and everyone else can be proletariat - if they are class aware. Even working class wage labourers aren't necessarily part of the proletariat if they have no class awareness -- although unlikely on this site.
That's how I interpret the classes as described by Marx, am I wrong?
I actually half disagree with this. For the proletariat, which is the revolutionary class consisting of members of the working class. This is why the lumpen exist, they are the reactionary membership of the people facing the same socio economic situation as workers. And why people need to be recruited to the proletariat, how it grows on size over time, and why the proletariat can "emerge" under nonspecific socioeconomic conditions.
I agree that the material conditions create the proletariat, but it is specifically the class consciousness that defines its existence. There can be a working class that is not revolutionary, and therefore not the proletariat.
I think you're right. I fully agree that regardless of consciousness anyone who could be revolutionary whether or not they are now, are comrades. But we disagree in the inclusion of class consciousness in the proletariat. I add it because Marx's definition of the proletariat as a revolutionary class suggests this as a requirement. My thoughts are what was the working class before their material conditions caused the proletariat class to form? To me it is the emergence of class consciousness, precipitated by exploitative conditions, that causes the transition from working class to proletariat -> with revolutionary potential.
It is specifically this transition that makes me believe that the revolutionary potential of the class can grow, as more people are recruited to the proletariat through education of class consciousness.
