Thread by @Anupam_Guha

From my observations in the last dozen days, a surprising number of people in academia have a completely wrong idea of what "class" is.

Class isn't aesthetics, class is not just apparent wealth, class isn't "how people treat each other", and class isn't who you were born to

1/n

Class is simply your relationship to the primary institution/money creating device you work for.

If you get a wage or salary, you are a worker. If you own stuff and give people a wage or a salary, you are a capitalist.

2/n

If you make a lot of money as a worker, the so called white collar jobs, you are still a worker. These jobs are at times called labour aristocracy.

If you own stuff but don't employ a lot of people, or just freelance, you are a petite-capitalist

3/n

Now there are complexities. Some people can hire (and fire) workers and can control production but don't really own the thing, like managers, divisional heads etc. They are workers of course but lie somewhere above the labour aristocracy, these are the "executive" subclass

4/n

Often people join the petite-capitalists and the rich salaried labour aristos by calling them petty bourgeoisie. But the term refers only to the former. But then it's also true these two categories (most of you on Twitter) often seep into each other as well

5/n

Then there is the complexity of stock options. Most labour aristocrats get some stocks from the company they join, or invest in mutual funds etc. Stocks are microscopic ownerships of other companies this making the labour aristocracy exploiting the proles a bit as well.

6/n

Btw, trivia, Marx as a journalist/academic was a labour aristocrat, and Engels dad was a proper capitalist though Engels was not. He didn't inherit the factory though he did get some stocks in it making him a petty bourgeoisie.

7/n

Now unlike a lot of other progressive politics where identities get essentialised, Marxists don't really obsess about your social location, it being a thing that can change or you can change it itself. Just don't go out of your way to exploit workers, we're good

Fin

Eeep forgot. All working people are not proletariat and all owners not capitalists. Take landed farmers and landless farmers in India for example. That is a capitalist but also a feudal relation, in the sense some of that relationship is based on rent (tenancy) and some on wage

Needless to say if wage is bad rent is worse, worse than capitalism.

What about labour aristos and petty bourgeoisie in cities who rent out their small houses? They are also landlords, and landlordism is bad though a large part of our society does it at various levels of wealth

Hence it becomes silly to equate class with wealth, especially in India where a large section of society has some kind of small land, or wealth making property all through the spectrum.

And if we want to fight feudalism and capitalism it can't be simplistic.

Remember, even within these subclasses there is so much wealth disparity.

A 30k a month subeditor and a 1.5L a month engineer are both labour aristocrats. A laptop repairer with 4 employees and the old aunty letting out one room to get by are both petty bourgoise

Ultimately, the point is to do away with capitalism. These complexities either away when you consider the unjustness of the entire system based on wage theft.

Fin.

*wither

gaah