Short answer would be, while capitalism is the system where workers sell their labor to capital, that doesn't mean every worker has a similar relationship to capital. A comfortable office worker in Seattle has a very different relationship to capital than say, a garment worker in Hyderabad.
I think it's a salient point that, in all of the works of Marx and Engels I've read so far, I can't recall them once ever talking about the middle class - arguably those who sell their labor as lawyers, doctors, bureaucrats, etc. All of the discussion is around factory workers but agricultural workers and domestic servants also get mentioned as well.
Now, there's this passage in Capital vol 1 that sorta contradicts what I said:
If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.
But in this instance, the schoolmaster is still "working like a horse". And I'm not saying a middle class worker is automatically the enemy of Marxism. Just that there's a different relationship there. Even in this example, the schoolmaster is clearly being compared to a factory worker. And in this sense I'd say yeah, there are quite a few folks outside of factories who I would still consider proletarians (say call center workers). But at some point I don't think we can pretend that making a decent income is precisely the same as a worker who's making virtually nothing.
How so?
Short answer would be, while capitalism is the system where workers sell their labor to capital, that doesn't mean every worker has a similar relationship to capital. A comfortable office worker in Seattle has a very different relationship to capital than say, a garment worker in Hyderabad.
I think it's a salient point that, in all of the works of Marx and Engels I've read so far, I can't recall them once ever talking about the middle class - arguably those who sell their labor as lawyers, doctors, bureaucrats, etc. All of the discussion is around factory workers but agricultural workers and domestic servants also get mentioned as well.
Now, there's this passage in Capital vol 1 that sorta contradicts what I said:
But in this instance, the schoolmaster is still "working like a horse". And I'm not saying a middle class worker is automatically the enemy of Marxism. Just that there's a different relationship there. Even in this example, the schoolmaster is clearly being compared to a factory worker. And in this sense I'd say yeah, there are quite a few folks outside of factories who I would still consider proletarians (say call center workers). But at some point I don't think we can pretend that making a decent income is precisely the same as a worker who's making virtually nothing.