If you need to work to exist, you are working class. Owners make passive income with the wealth they already have. If getting fired from your job puts your basic necessities at risk, you are working class.
And relying on your parents to bail you out does not make you owner class.
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?
How would that work?
Iunno, I’m not a web dev. Reddit created its video and image hosting services to avoid fees associated with linking content from elsewhere. When you click a link, the site you came from is listed as the referrer. Past that, your question is essentially mine.
thats not how the internet works.
If users aren’t loading the linked content then maybe, but that’s just pedantry.
Its not pedantry, its just not how things work. When you load the link its the same as if you went to reddit manually and browsed to the image. The instance having a link to reddit doesn’t mean reddit can charge the instance money now. That makes no sense.
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.
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.
This is kind of silly.
I’m definitely working class, like I couldn’t stop working and coast the rest of my life on what I have saved now without really cutting everything to the bone.
However, I max out my 401k and iras every year. We also put enough money aside that our two kids will probably need to take out little to no money for their college educations. We are contemplating how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we can afford for a house renovation, and we can still take two comfortable vacations per year.
I’m very comfortable and know I am very lucky.
Which is why it’s absurd to put me in the same category as the people who literally have cut everything to the bone and still worry about making ends meet at the end of the month. While we should still team up against the owning class, our financial situations are drastically different and shouldn’t be treated as the same because that would do a huge disservice to their actual relative situation.
I don’t think it’s about denying the difference between subsistence living and moderate wealth, so much as prioritizing a framing that identifies the systemic issue of capital rather than a comparative placement on an arbitrary scale.
It’s not that those comparisons don’t exist, it’s just less important than the shared relationship to capital, and happens to distract from what’s actually meaningful.
While it may not be explicitly denying it does infact, IMO tell a 13 year old to disregard the difference in the way this is written. So I think the comment still stands that this isn’t a great way to highlight the difference between our work to a 13yo
It tells a 13yo that comparative wealth isn’t what matters, capital ownership is.
It isn’t ‘silly’ to dismiss the former, it’s the entire point. Unless you disagree with capital being foundational to class relations…?
I think we agree more than you think. I am not asking that someone disregards the class separation and understanding it is very much a created system to separate that fine line.
My point is that this post is very literal and can come off as doing the opposite it can fill a person’s head at that age with, “you should also disregard it because it is made up and doesn’t exist.” Quite literally when the argument to be made is that while it is made up it very much is in active use and very much exists and disregarding where you stand in the world isn’t being realistic or self aware if you want to change it you have to work hard for it in most cases. The point is that it is also silly to disregard that while class is a social construct it is in use and ignoring it can put you at a disadvantage too. You could create the expectation that because it is a construct that not acting on it or against that construct is a problem as well.
My point is thirteen year olds are still very much developing kids that are very easy to manipulate and or they very much can misinterpret a point being made. I could see this being said to a kid that took it literal enough that they decide the best course of action is because it is made up it must not exist therefore it isn’t a problem and therefore they don’t need to do anything about it. That was my point. I don’t disagree with you but I think posts like this are meant to self justify other social constructs that already misconstrue ideas and we live in an age of information where straight forward statements like this are also not the bigger picture and could be equivalent to someone just flat out making a post that The Earth is flat and we have learned that young people are easily influenced.
Yes I understand that the earth being flat is an actual conspiracy but it was also established as a joke and someone took it quite literally and ran with it. The Internet is dangerous and as adults we should be explaining both sides of the fence to our youth.
“Hey classes are a construct to control it and separate so that way the wealthy have more say so and can control our rights as people. However, don’t treat that created system as fictional because it is very much in place and disregarding it is bad for you and others. If you want to change then be aware of it and make something of yourself so you can be that person with the ability to make those changes.” I don’t know about you but I would rather someone young interpret it this way rather than outright ignore it because regardless of what we think the truth is capital is absolutely relative to class relation and the culture and laws and people in power make sure that is the case. Teach young people to acknowledge that and encourage them to be aware and change that. Both can be taught but this image doesn’t express that. You and I are on the same side friend. I just took the image here more literally and if you and I can agree there are multiple ways to interpret this then imagine what a teenager would do with this single statement and developing brains.
EDIT: top that on top of things teens are already trying to understand and deal with. Their social life, understanding who they are, anxieties from their brain and developing bodies. Social fitting in, sex, education, forming their own opinions and selves and creating an identity. Then just coming out and saying, “disregard that dad is literally a working class member because the rich said so.” It isn’t how I would handle it. I would want my kid to know exactly where we stand and who has control over where we are life wise and ask them to be better or do better and change that.
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.
And it’s not the owning class, it’s the Parasite Class.
A lot of people own capital without becoming parasitical, and therefore, obscenely wealthy. But becoming obscenely wealthy requires parasitism.
It’s basically three classes:
Working Class: the vast majority of humanity. Everyone whose basic necessities for survival and physical as well as mental health is controlled by others. Despite the name, this class DOES include those who are unable to work.
Lesser Owning Class: Anyone who controls said necessities but at least employs or otherwise benefits people of the working class. These aren’t necessarily bastards but there should be as few of them as possible.
Parasite Class: The ones whose main or sole source of income is gaining wealth by having wealth already. Examples include landlords, billionaires borrowing against their stock portfolio and others whose enrichment removes money from the general economy while adding only to their own dragon hoard and/or mostly closed systems like stock markets. That these exist at all is one of the greatest atrocities allowed by mankind.
The parasite class includes the welfare class and the corporate welfare class. Not all of the poor people are working class and not all of the parasites are ultra rich.
The parasite class includes the welfare class
Not all of the poor people are working class
That’s what people who work for the parasite class keep saying to get us to fight each other in stead of them. Don’t fall for their tricks.
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
I mean, Upper Class certainly exists, working class and middle class are the same thing, and the problem is that lower class aren’t working.
Lower class aren’t working because they can’t. That’s why they’re lower class. Also, you’re wrong because NOW the middle class of working are the lower class being underpaid.
The truth & problem is that the upper class aren’t working regardless if they “have jobs” or not.
So let me spell that out. You are completely fucking wrong.
You’re both wrong. The lower class largely is working. More than ever, actually. It’s he system that’s broken, not the people in the lower classes.
