Whatever happened to Marx’ “ownership of the means of production” definition? Also, even beyond that, it makes sense to have an understanding that the precarity felt by an upper middle class person is not remotely the same kind of daily struggle faced by a lower middle class person. Not being able to afford property vs. not being able to afford food.
Ultimately it is important to recognize that all humans in the capitalist system are recruited to participate in an extractive, antihumanist global process.
By what definition is somebody who can’t afford property “upper middle class”?
Americans seem to feel that middle class means having your own “home”, meaning a small plot of land with a house. The number of such homes, within a certain distance of workplaces, schools, and various urban amenities, is limited. There’s nothing any economic system can do about that. At some point, people have to accept smaller plots of land and/or stacking the dwellings (ie living in apartments).
The popularization of the stock market make the “means of production” definition fuzzy. If you own .001% of Tesla, do you own the means of production? What about 1%? What about 20%? Is it 51%? Elon Musk is obviously in the owner class, but he only controls 20% of Tesla. But if it’s 20%, then does going in with 4 buddies to buy a $500,000 surface parking lot make you an owner? You only need $100k for that and you might not even be employing anyone, and you’re not producing anything except parking. You’re not like set for life at $100k.
I assume this is solved by using money as the “means of production” instead of thinking of it as ownership of a business or machine, but that still doesn’t solve the fuzzy nature of it, you need to set a border at an amount of money.
It’s really not fuzzy. The stock market existed during Marx’s time. If you own enough to live off of without labor, you’re Bourgeoisie. If you own a small business but also must labor to run it, you’re petite bourgeoisie. If you do not own enough to live off of and do not make your primary income via ownership, you’re Proletariat.
The fuzzy part is picking an amount to consider “enough to live off of.” Elon Musk still works, it’s not a question of if you are currently working but a question of whether you need to. But some people “leanfire” retire with $300k in stocks. So is everyone with a net worth of $300k or more part of the Bourgeoisie?
And apologies to the true theorists because I’m sure Marx covered this somewhere but this makes me wonder about the elderly or unfortunate living off of government payments like Social Security with zero net worth…they don’t work to survive, but they don’t have any money.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t direct linking to an image on Reddit cost your lemmy instance a fair sum of money?
The last color of the rainbow is Purple. Violet and Indigo were made up by Green to divide Purple. Make no mistake, Green is actively working against your interests.
Stfu, putz
And in the real world there is a huge difference between 30k and 250k a year. Made up 🤣
I think it comes down to your level of analysis, or how you define relations. Having been living off $30-40k income for most of my life, I can definitely get the sentiment of the large differences between that and someone making $100k (even $60k), or at least someone living a working class vs middle class lifestyle. But that also goes for someone making $0-10k to $30-40k. Either way, the salience of financial insecurity hits a lot harder for someone with less existing cash.
That said, I also get the sentiment of the nil difference between working and middle class versus the ultra rich who generate huge swaths of passive income and can basically can dictate whether or not the lower classes have enough for rent. Why bother fight against each other when there’s a much larger and casual target.
In a more nuanced answer, for solidarity sake we do need to recognize our similarities to work together for a better system. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore our differences and privileges either. We should work towards achieving core necessities for all even at the cost of our own privileges (i.e. an opposite tragedy of the commons: those with some threshold excess contribute to the pond). Determining that threshold is another question, with both absolute and relative poverty thresholds with their own criticisms. And not to say that no class hierarchies will form either, technically skilled and heavily laborious jobs should be rewarded, and people will always try to skim a little off the top to get ahead of their own benefit. But in recognizing our differences, we recognize a need to monitor ourselves for the benefit of everyone.