Counterpoint: when someone's income is large enough to the point where they have a sizeable amount left over after paying monthly expenses, the vast majority of people use that leftover to invest, and at a certain point, the passive income from their investment is enough to push them over to being petty bourgeois.
My point is that someone who earns $200k/yr is only proletarian if you believe they blow all their money on expensive cars or stuff their money in a bank account where interest doesn't match inflation and not use their money to invest in real estate like what people who earn $200k/yr actually do. Everyone I know who earns in that income bracket has a rental property or has a noticeable investment in stock.
I think there's a danger in completely divorcing income bracket from relations to the means of production because it assumes people who earn a shitton of money won't invest at all, which is completely unrealistic.
They're called labor aristocrats. It is really weird seeing some people on here (obviously not you) defending people who make $100k a year as "working class". It's so ridiculously divorced from reality.
It’s obvious this is moralistic to you, and so you refuse to use Marxist definitions of class but instead insert your own
The only thing that determines class in a Marxist analytical framework is: do they own the means of production? is their income made from ownership of production, or selling labor to those who own production? If it’s both, in what proportion.
That specifically is the definition of class in the framework we are using. It doesn’t mean those on one side of the line are “good” or “bad” or even “revolutionary”. It just means whether we are calling them proletariat or bourgeoise. There are subclasses, and overlap that we can discuss and not all segments of the proletariat are necessarily revolutionary or progressive (lumpen for example). There are also side cases, such as remnants of old classes from pre-capitalist arrangements like peasants (basically no peasants in USA though).
I see many liberals conflate class with cultural signifiers, with difficulty of labor, with arbitrary income brackets, with specific industries. This is all false and not how Marxists use and apply the terms. We are talking about grouping classes up by shared material interests in regards to the means of production, because only along this axis can one group come into consciousness enough to grab the means of production for itself and move forward history.
It’s the investment and the passive income that follows that alters their class, as they become owners of the means of production. It’s not the income that does that automatically, there’s a correlation but it’s not 1:1 and we need to have coherent definitions of class, and this type of thing on the OP is sloppy liberalism
Counterpoint: when someone's income is large enough to the point where they have a sizeable amount left over after paying monthly expenses, the vast majority of people use that leftover to invest, and at a certain point, the passive income from their investment is enough to push them over to being petty bourgeois.
My point is that someone who earns $200k/yr is only proletarian if you believe they blow all their money on expensive cars or stuff their money in a bank account where interest doesn't match inflation and not use their money to invest in real estate like what people who earn $200k/yr actually do. Everyone I know who earns in that income bracket has a rental property or has a noticeable investment in stock.
I think there's a danger in completely divorcing income bracket from relations to the means of production because it assumes people who earn a shitton of money won't invest at all, which is completely unrealistic.
200k/yr prole who spends all excess money on drugs :rat-salute-2:
They're called labor aristocrats. It is really weird seeing some people on here (obviously not you) defending people who make $100k a year as "working class". It's so ridiculously divorced from reality.
They are still working class, just privileged one :shrug-outta-hecks:
“Defending” and “working class”
It’s obvious this is moralistic to you, and so you refuse to use Marxist definitions of class but instead insert your own
The only thing that determines class in a Marxist analytical framework is: do they own the means of production? is their income made from ownership of production, or selling labor to those who own production? If it’s both, in what proportion.
That specifically is the definition of class in the framework we are using. It doesn’t mean those on one side of the line are “good” or “bad” or even “revolutionary”. It just means whether we are calling them proletariat or bourgeoise. There are subclasses, and overlap that we can discuss and not all segments of the proletariat are necessarily revolutionary or progressive (lumpen for example). There are also side cases, such as remnants of old classes from pre-capitalist arrangements like peasants (basically no peasants in USA though).
I see many liberals conflate class with cultural signifiers, with difficulty of labor, with arbitrary income brackets, with specific industries. This is all false and not how Marxists use and apply the terms. We are talking about grouping classes up by shared material interests in regards to the means of production, because only along this axis can one group come into consciousness enough to grab the means of production for itself and move forward history.
That's what makes someone making $100k a year not "working class". Their material interests are with the people richer than them.
which can be gray in a lot of cases. Like knowledge workers having their brain as the means of production.
It’s the investment and the passive income that follows that alters their class, as they become owners of the means of production. It’s not the income that does that automatically, there’s a correlation but it’s not 1:1 and we need to have coherent definitions of class, and this type of thing on the OP is sloppy liberalism