Many people who are filthy rich by being corporate asslickers, the human trash that get paid huge amounts for manipulating the masses, and other similar people don't own anything yet they can hardly be called part of the proletariat.
Are they petty bourgeoisie or an exception of the working class that works against it?
They are labor in the work of disciplining the labor sector. So in narrow definition - pmc
In same way as cops are working class in that they receive money for their labor, but their function is not to produce stuff but discipline the masses, their product is only useful for the bourgeoisie
It's not marxist in the strictest sense, but like usa labor force has 12 million working in manufacturing and 22 million in professional/business services. (I'm obviously overdramatizing, cause there are logistics/construction/healthcare/hospitality as well, which will bring worker number to something like 70 million)
Its a whole separate worker group, whose services are to make bourgeoisie more money/comply with the state to not lose money. If i were reaching for a term mentioned in marx i would call them lumpen (professionalized) proles
from a theoretical position, being paid a wage and living only off that wage is working class, though certainly executive managers and pundits espousing capitalist ideology would be working class traitors. additionally, people with very high incomes are likely investing some of it to generate income outside of retirement. these people do things like buy "investment property" and become rentiers in addition to seeking out interest/dividend generating financial products and ownership of profit generating businesses. those are bourgeoisie methods of income: extracting the value from the labor of others. this is all, of course, assuming they didn't start off as bourgeoisie by virtue of inheritance.
very high income corporate positions and high profile media propagandists often come from these already-rich, leisure class families. high income positions would be transformative to someone from a true working class background, but function better as a scaffolding for maintaining wealth and power among existing familial networks orbiting capital formations and are gatekept behind family and elite school networks.
class traitor. we can run around the bushes all day fussing about the exactitudes of relationships, if they own enough capital to be 'technically' petitbourgeoisie or whatever
but the simple version is that someone who is fed by their labor is working class, and if that labor is against the working class they're a traitor. and you don't gotta be particularly well compensated to be a traitor anyways---cops used to be paid peanuts and they were traitors then too.
Once they become filthy rich, they have become part of the bourgeoisie. Hy filthy rich, I mean those that could stop working and simply live off of their “investments”. Classes in Marxism are not as rigid as say castes in India - the petit bourgeois class is a transitional class. You may be born a proletariat, but there is the tiniest sliver of hope that you could one day become bourgeois (what a joke).
Money itself is ownership. That is the allure of capitalism. Why does money accumulate interest in a HYSA? Is it doing work? You get paid dividends from stocks and stocks too appreciate over time. What are stocks but units of ownership? Earn enough and you are finally free.
As for those that are well off but not filthy rich, sure, they’re either petit bourgeois or labor aristocrats. I’d say most labor aristocrats have no real hope of actually having enough money to be considered bourgeois, so they are firmly proletariats. There’s probably a number, but I don’t know what that number is.
