Who are the ‘Middle Class’?
Autonomous Voice, a contributor to the Facebook site ‘A Global Group Where We Are Active Against Capitalism’, recently put up a 15-minute YouTube clip, entitled ‘The Middle Class: a Working Class Anarchist Perspective’. The speaker attempts to define and analyse what he refers to as ‘the intermediate position’ in capitalist society’ held by ‘middle-class people, particularly those in professorial, managerial or small business roles’ (youtu.be/AZl55qEWILk). While his illustration points to the same ultimate goal as proposed by the Socialist Party, the analysis of how that can be achieved is very different.
In particular there are indications of a need for ‘violent uprising’ and of this needing to come from the ‘working class’, seen as those who do forms of manual work in society. This concept, outdated as it is, is still clung to by many, but it fails to appreciate that all those who need to sell their energies to an employer for a wage or salary and so remain dependent on their next wage or salary payment are in the same fundamental economic position. This means not only manual workers, tradespeople, nurses, service workers, etc., but also so-called middle-class workers such as teachers, administrators, engineers, medics, tech workers, and others, all those in fact who are often described as ‘professionals’. All these workers, whether considered working class or middle class, have a common interest that is diametrically opposed to that of the other small class of people in society (we would call them the capitalist class) who own enough wealth not to need to sell their energies in order to survive. And this is the case even if, as things stand, the vast majority of wage and salary earners of all descriptions fail to perceive their subjugation to the system they are tied to.
So while ‘Autonomous Voice’ is quite correct in stating that the role of many ‘professionals’ is ‘to administer the system of exploitation and keep it running smoothly’ and that they have an attitude of complicity towards that system, he is quite wrong to suggest that this somehow takes them out of the game and that they are not themselves exploited and entirely dependent upon the ups and downs of the economic forces of capitalism. True, they – or many of them – may have conventional, indeed docile, attitudes towards capitalist society and the way it works and may seem to be, as the video puts it, ‘a buffer preventing radical change’. But the same also applies to the vast majority of those the video sees as members of the ‘working class’. All in fact are locked into the wages system and have to live with the insecurity of the monthly pay slip.
So while we would agree with the need for the kind of society advocated by this video, it confuses and derails the argument by suggesting that some workers have different interests to others. Whatever their line of work, all workers scramble to sell their energies under conditions of duress, and are usually denied the ability to control how they work and whether that work – and pay – will continue. There is a global division between the vast majority, who need to sell their energies for a wage or salary, and the tiny minority that choose to buy those energies. In the end all members of that vast majority have the same class interest – to establish a wageless, money-free society that the Socialist Party exists to campaign for and that will provide the means for all to live free and autonomous lives.
Currently very few wage and salary earners are contemplating being part of any such movement. Yet, it is the only way to transcend the capitalist system that dominates all our lives, and it can be readily voted into being if enough of us want it. It will provide a means whereby democratic associations of women and men will be able to organise on the basis of voluntary work and have free access to whatever goods and services they need, because the whole society will then collectively own and control all the resources that provide these. People will no longer have to do jobs they do not enjoy – or even hate – just because they need money. They will be able to do work they want to do and enjoy. People will cooperate to do the work that makes society function and they will make decisions democratically – in their workplaces, local communities, regions and, if circumstances require, globally. Above all there will be no more top-down control, no leaders or governments, and no more money controlling people’s lives. Only when this happens will we have a society where the freedom to develop and express our needs and potential is equal for all kinds of workers and where the material needs of all are satisfied.
HKM