Now there are 9 classes

[alanjjohnstone]

Anything to pretend to be an intellectual, eh?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-13/changing-world-work-i-americas-nine-classes

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Now there are 9 classesAnything to pretend to be an intellectual, eh?

It's just a variation on the usual liberal sociology: 'income' defines 'class'. And they only focus on 'earned income'.He muddies the water with a bit added about political power.We must use Communist ideology: 'class' is an exploitative relationship.If one knows the difference between vampires and victims, and recognises the flow of exploitation, then one can understand our definition of class.It's nothing whatsover to do with 'income' (most of the exploiters don't earn their income), or clothes, accent, cultural preferences, education, etc.One can wear a flat cap and keep whippets, and be an exploiter.One can earn £100,000 a year, and watch ballet and opera, and be exploited.It's not 'appearances' that count, but 'relationships'.Bosses and workers both come in all shapes and sizes.

[alanjjohnstone]

I think this Standard article tried to explain an aspect of "high-waged workers"

Quote:

those who play for the first teams of clubs (rather, businesses) in the Premier League, are paid fabulous amounts of money, by working class (if not capitalist class) standards. What is their income? Is it wages? Not really. It’s more like rent. Rent is paid whenever there is a natural monopoly in something that cannot be increased, normally land, mineral deposits, waterfalls and other natural features that can be employed in production. The rent of land and natural resources is essentially fixed by the paying demand for it. The higher the demand, the higher the rent.As Arsène Wenger pointed out, “you normally need special qualities to be a strong footballer”. It is these “special qualities – which are a sort of natural resource that cannot be increased – that enable the best footballers to command so high an income, but as rent rather than as the price for the mere sale of their labour power. Their income is so high because the demand for their talents is so high, Premier League football being Big Business with, thanks to television, a huge market.

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1221-may-2006/cooking-books-2-footballers%E2%80%99-wagesAs you say…all shapes and sizes, particularly incomes…How often have we heard the refrain …pensioners…they are just same as capitalists living idle lives off investments of their occupational pension funds (or private annuities)…Whatever happened to we were all going to be capitalists…SID, ? 

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

We must use Communist ideology: 'class' is an exploitative relationship.

 We do and we always have done.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

LBird wrote:

We must use Communist ideology: ….

 We do and we always have done.

Except when you want to understand science, and the production of 'truth', eh, Vin?For that human activity, bourgeois ideology seems to completely suffice!Ooops… 'science' isn't an 'ideology', is it, it's an asocial, ahistorical activity done by apolitical elite physicists employing a neutral method to produce eternal, universal 'Truth'?Pull the other one, Priest-Physicists!

[Anonymous]

Then why do you call 'communist ideology' 'bourgioues science' when I use it to understand class? Or when I see 'class' as an exploitive relationship am I seeing it through bourgeois positivism? 

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

How often have we heard the refrain …pensioners…they are just same as capitalists living idle lives off investments of their occupational pension funds (or private annuities)…

We're bound to 'hear' this, because it's crude bourgeois ideology.As if a worker who's worked their entire life selling their labour, and has eventually retired on a decent occupational, even final salary, pension, can be compared to an exploiter.They might as well identify billionaires with terminal cancer patients dying in hospital, because neither is working, and both are living off other workers.Only those ignorant of the system of socio-economic exploitation called capitalism could think pensioners are comparable to capitalists. Unfortunately, many are ignorant of just that, and so are open to crude propaganda.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

Then why do you call 'communist ideology' 'bourgioues science' when I use it to understand class? Or when I see 'class' as an exploitive relationship am I seeing it through bourgeois positivism? 

You're just confused, Vin.I've tried to help, like a good comrade should, but you don't seem to like me or my ideas. C'est la vie.

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[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

You're just confused, Vin.

 Very! 

[Anonymous]

The US sociologists are expert creating new social classes, they do not define social classes according to their relationship with the means of production,  It is a society based on social  fantasies. The so called blue collars workers and white collars workers are two different types of  social classes, and sometimes the blue collar workers have  higher income too Poverty is defined according to  the income,  instead of being called  a wage slave, that is the best way to keep the workers confused, and a sector of the working class living under the illusion that they are in better condition, when the financial crisis arrives everybody starts to rush to the unemployment line The most  ironic expression is: I am a member of the middle class, and you are a member of the working class, does it mean that the middle class does not work ? They are shooting themselves The middle class pay taxes, the poor do not pay taxes, we support the poor,  but they  do not even know who really pay taxes and who is the real financier of the state. The political trends they  also have different levels and degrees, for example,  Obama is at the center of the left,  instead of saying that he is a good servant of the ruling class., and the definition of socialism and being a socialist is even worse. All that shows that the working class needs their proper political education apart from the ideology of the ruling class A good political technique to hide exploitation and hide the real understanding of who the  exploiters are , and to keep the working class divided, it plays the same role as patriotism and nationalism

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