Petit bourgeois? Our money is all in our house and in retirement assets that are just America’s poor excuse for a pension system. If we’re petit bourgeois, so is every retired school teacher that’s worked long enough to earn a pension.
Petit bourgeois refers to people that have to work but also control their own means of production. Classically this meant artisans, tradesmen, shop owners, etc. People who aren’t having their labor exploited, but also still have to work.
In our careers, we’ve almost always worked regular salary jobs. We’re not immune to job loss. We do not own the means of production. We’ve had our labor surplus siphoned off by employers our whole careers.
That’s the whole point of this discussion. Even most millionaires are just working class people trying to achieve a little bit of stability in their lives.
You can have whatever definition you want. But for me, working class means just that - a person that has earned their bread through the work of their own hands, not through the exploitation of the labor of others, through rent-seeking, or from inheritance.
I’m sure you can cite plenty of theory, but frankly, I don’t care. I prefer a definition of the term centered in lived experience. If you go off raw wealth, you just end up classifying entire nations as working class or bourgeois, at which point the term loses all meaning.
You are saying that capitalists own the means of production, while “little capitalists” don’t.
I don’t think its useful to lump in high-income professional work with the low end of capital accumulation. The sums may overlap, but the actual class interests don’t, at least not entirely. Good analysis should recognize the distinctions here.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Petit bourgeois? Our money is all in our house and in retirement assets that are just America’s poor excuse for a pension system. If we’re petit bourgeois, so is every retired school teacher that’s worked long enough to earn a pension.
Petit bourgeois refers to people that have to work but also control their own means of production. Classically this meant artisans, tradesmen, shop owners, etc. People who aren’t having their labor exploited, but also still have to work.
In our careers, we’ve almost always worked regular salary jobs. We’re not immune to job loss. We do not own the means of production. We’ve had our labor surplus siphoned off by employers our whole careers.
That’s the whole point of this discussion. Even most millionaires are just working class people trying to achieve a little bit of stability in their lives.
hamid@crazypeople.online 5 weeks ago
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You can have whatever definition you want. But for me, working class means just that - a person that has earned their bread through the work of their own hands, not through the exploitation of the labor of others, through rent-seeking, or from inheritance.
I’m sure you can cite plenty of theory, but frankly, I don’t care. I prefer a definition of the term centered in lived experience. If you go off raw wealth, you just end up classifying entire nations as working class or bourgeois, at which point the term loses all meaning.
hamid@crazypeople.online 5 weeks ago
amorpheus@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
That’s true for a lot of people in “first world” countries. One is ahead of billions of poor people basically for existing.
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
FYI, this person told me to kill myself because I said they don’t handle criticism well and tell people to kill themselves.
I can’t report it because I’m banned in the community for saying China isn’t perfect.
lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/73259654/27442305
AppleTea@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
You are saying that capitalists own the means of production, while “little capitalists” don’t.
I don’t think its useful to lump in high-income professional work with the low end of capital accumulation. The sums may overlap, but the actual class interests don’t, at least not entirely. Good analysis should recognize the distinctions here.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I think you’re thinking of the professional managerial class.
hamid@crazypeople.online 5 weeks ago