As in: Which makes the most sense from their PoV, ethics aside.
The middle class isn’t real. You are either working class or owner class. Anything else is just there to divide the working class in a forever class war with the owner class.
Who are the "middle class" supposed to support in the class stuggle?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
plz1@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
K1nsey6@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There is no middle class, there is only working class and the parasitic class.
OboTheHobo@ttrpg.network 3 weeks ago
The middle class still works to make a living. So they are part of the working class.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
The middle class is a fabrication. It’s an income bracket created by capitalism, not a true analysis of one’s association to the means of production and labor. It’s “real” in the sense that many people identify themselves to it, but it’s not real in a Marxist sense.
A vast majority of people in the middle class are the proletariat. Some of the people in the middle class are petite bourgeois.
RBWells@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The lower classes, because “real” capitalism grows from the bottom and trickle down is discredited nonsense. There is no benefit to supporting those who don’t need it. Buying from small local shops and employee owned outfits, and if you are a business owner, paying well and giving employees ownership stake and profit sharing, that at least moves the needle in the right direction.
AFA self interest, middle class has more to gain by the poor becoming middle class, than by the rich getting richer.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Middle class is a fabrication designed to make the working poor think they’re better off than they really are.
threeonefour@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
In the book 1984, one of the characters postulates that in any system of government there are 3 groups. The unwashed masses comprising 90% of people, the elite who are better than everyone else making up 1% of people, and a middle buffer of 9% of people. The buffer is used by the elite to keep the unwashed masses from uprising. Anyone from the 90% who looks like they might be trouble for the 1% gets to be in the 9%. They get treated a bit better in exchange for defending the status quo. Perhaps if they defend it hard enough they can be given a spot among the 1%!
I believe the argument made by this character is supposed to be flawed, but it ends up being pretty believable. The "middle class" would be the buffer zone of people who defend the status quo in exchange for slightly better treatment by the 1% than the average person gets.
maxwells_daemon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The 1% richest hold 50% of all the wealth. If we’re being reasonable, everyone vs them is probably more than enough.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Everyone that sells their time to make a living is part of the same class. Everyone that makes their money through appreciation of capital is a different class.
__siru__@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
This, lets not forget that there used to be poor aristocrats. The amount of assets you have does not necessarily define your class, but rather how you are forced to spend your life time.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The middle class is nothing more than poor people who are convinced that they’ll be rich someday.
rikudou@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
Nope, that’s blatantly not true. I’m a middle class, I don’t think I’ll ever be rich. Sure, some people dream of being the next billionaires, but most of middle class doesn’t.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fair enough. How about, middle class is just poor people who don’t know they’re poor.
memfree@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
You can't put ethics aside. All we have is ethics. Ideally, ethics get codified into laws against doing unethical things, but not forcing people to only and always do that which someone said is ethical (no drunk driving, but no banning on alcohol). Problems crop up when the laws are unethical -- like saying corporations are people or landmines aren't warcrimes.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
The workers, 100%.
The difference between even a millionnaire and a billionnaire is one billion.
It’s such a large gap that in my view, no one really could claim to be a “temporarily embarassed billionnaire”. Nobody is; there are only workers and there are leeches.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
People who have to work a job to live are workers.
Every other abled bodied person who lives without contributing doesn’t need to be around.
njm1314@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It depends, how do they feel about guillotines?
Pappabosley@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This has always been my thought. As someone who is living a comfortable life, some would consider me as well-off or rich. Regardless, I am not private security rich, so would be an easy target at the start of the uprising.
Hence, ethics aside, it’s in my best interest to keep the ‘workers’ happy.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Setting aside the "the middle class isn't real" point, distributing the rich's wealth for the benefit of everyone else is the sales pitch of socialism, so the middle class is still on the side gaining from a successful proletarian class struggle. I mean, the bourgeoisie winning means the status quo with its permanently declining quality of life, so I don't think many middle class people are too thrilled about continuing with that.
sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 3 weeks ago
Middle class is a fiction of post ww2 westoid regimes.
They are just a deluded working class who forgot where they came from.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
“Middle class” is a social class (like “upper class” and “lower class”), not an economic class (like “working class” and “ruling class”).
If you think having a nice car makes you closer to the ruling class than the working class, you’ve internalized the mind control and it doesn’t matter what you pick, you’re a threat.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Look at a graph of wealth distribution. The difference between any two points in the lower 99% is barely noticable, when compared to what the top 1 and even .001% have access to.
HubertManne@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
As wealth inequality increases the line for who matters at the top gets smaller. At this point the top 1% controls 50% globally so on a global scale if your not in that 1% you don't matter. But like in the us its 2% so that is what it takes to be in the in crowd. In europe its 10% to be in. As wealth inequality gets worse those who previously benefited from slanted playing fields will find they fell down to the bad side of the board and they will be a major source of sucking for the top to increase their wealth expansion.
jasoman@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If you don’t know, you don’t have enough rich friends.
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The “middle class” is just the working class with debt. In class struggle terms, its not “rich vs poor”, it’s “owners vs workers”. If you have to work to support yourself, that tells you all you need to know.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I have relatives that own their house as well as a few rental properties, but they also work normal jobs, they get the new iPhone (or sometimes Samsung Phone) every year, they rarely use public transit, always drive their cars. I’m assuming they have health insurance as well. And I also heard they have other investments besides rental income (as in stocks)
Now I don’t know if they need to work, but they definitely have enough rental income to get by even if they lose their jobs.
Idk what class that is supposed to be.
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Does it matter? These are just concepts.
Ultimately, supporting the working class helps everyone.
garbagebagel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think an easier interpretation than the “owners vs workers” in this day and age is, are they billionaires. If you’re not a billionaire or close to it, you should be on the side of the working class.
The billionaires that make up only 1% of the population ans own nearly half the wealth of the entire world are the problem.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Sounds to me like petite bourgeoise
Stillwater@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
jcr@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
“they have health insurance”. It is a given in quite a few countries. No link to being wealthy. Driving your car is not about being wealthy, dependant low wage workers have to drive to go to the factory too.
The stability of the owner class comes from the lack of necessity to labour to have spending money. You can be a wage worker like Emmanuel Macron, president of France with a current wage of net 8k€ ; but he just sold his wife inherited house for 3m€, when they got it for 1m€ (1.5m after the tax bureau caught him for under-valuating it). This is not working class.
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s a really good way of putting it. We have the wealthy, the poor, and the poor who’ve been given scraps by the wealthy and are complicit in protecting them. The “middle class” believe they can gain more in scraps than they can by revolution. And so it continues.