Thread by @paulgknox

Race, ethnicity, gender, Indigeneity & disability systematically structure access to class privilege & are determinants of deprivilege. The excellent essay by @sproudfoot illustrates the cultural, psychological & place-related disorientation that class dislocation can produce.

@sproudfoot But how is class defined now? As articulated by Marx & Engels it was simple & specific: relation to the system of material production. "Working-class" meant wage labour, which by definition meant 1) you were paid to be available for work you were able to do, and …

@sproudfoot … 2) a portion of the value you produced was retained by your capitalist employer, and 3) you had no control over the sale, price, destination etc. of the product, or of the deployment of profit, reinvestment, maintenance of machinery, etc. Your family too was working-class.

@sproudfoot The Marxist schema included land-owning and finance capitalists, the bourgeoisie (merchant capitalists & managers), petty bourgeoisie (small business & independent artisans), intellectuals & lumpenproletariat (the "reserve army of the poor"). All within the industrial system.

@sproudfoot The term "middle-class" originated as a construct designed to blur class distinctions. It suggested a crude categorization decoupled from production & capital, & based on wealth alone: the rich, the poor & everyone else. The middle class supposedly included everyone with ...

@sproudfoot … a home or farm, a small or medium-sized business, a professional credential, a stable blue or white-collar (increasingly public-sector) job, an officer post in a uniformed service, or an income from somewhere that let you take part in the society & lifestyle of the foregoing.

@sproudfoot When we talk about the 1 per cent now we're implicitly accepting this notion of class as a function of wealth rather than relation to the economy. Although "the 1 per cent" looks great on placards, class as a framework for analysis has to be more complex.

@sproudfoot Obviously capitalism has evolved. Production & markets are increasingly globalized. Automation plays havoc with manual labour, skilled & unskilled. In Canada, most jobs involve more brainwork than musclework. Most people produce knowledge or services, not physical goods.

@sproudfoot Despite privatization, millions still work in the public sector, making their relationship to the capitalist economy more complex. Still, the rise of such concepts as public-private partnerships makes it easier to see how knowledge generated in the public sector is tied to …

@sproudfoot … decisions about the deployment of capital and the creation of surplus value (or profit) in the private sector. Plus, walk Into any office or work unit in health or education and you'll see class at work along with the intersecting influences referred to above.

@sproudfoot You'll see divisions of labour, discrimination in opportunity, reinforcement of class-originating disadvantages, assumptions based on class attributes, attenuation of goals because of class-related insecurity, & much more, all systematically amplified by intersectional factors.

@sproudfoot The opportunity to participate in the knowledge economy is mediated by class. So is the chance to be a protagonist in the development and deployment technology, or a beneficiary of it, rather than a victim. Equal access to education was supposed to lower class barriers, but …

@sproudfoot … its promise has only partly been realized. The expansion of post-secondary ed allowed some people to acquire "social capital" - not necessarily through formal learning but because of the human networks formed at college or university. But material circumstances can still …

@sproudfoot … determine who gets to PSE and more important, who's able to stay there. Rising costs, often imposed by governments, are an important factor. But we're also seeing business activists advocating a return to discrimination in the allocation of "social capital."

@sproudfoot As for professions, they're also increasingly stratified. Some are effectively proletarianized with most working for wages, e.g. dental hygienists, practical nurses. In others - doctors, lawyers - more are salaried and especially in health care division of labour is sharpening.

@sproudfoot Discovery and knowledge creation is seen as separate from clinical work; clinicians are tasked with routine symptom management & Rx provision with even diagnosis expected to be referred to specialists. This coincides with greater access to credentials for BIPOC, women, LGBTQ.

@sproudfoot Time to wrap up. Yes it's time for more open talk about class - what it means, why it persists, in whose interest, how its contours are different from before. Most important, how does intersectionality work, so those disadvantaged primarily by persistence of class ...

@sproudfoot … feel their voice is legitimate and those for whom class is just one source of oppression are further empowered to speak and act.

I know there's much existing theory and practice on this subject; sharing these thoughts not to usurp or speak over but in hope of hearing more.

@sproudfoot Thanks again to @sproudfoot for her essay/memoir and to @NoLore for encouraging discussion. Unroll upcoming. (fin)

@sproudfoot @NoLore @threadreaderapp unroll please tx