Micro-revelation about socialism

[cpxbrex]

I'm pretty red and sometimes a socialist (other times a consensualist, which might be more or less left of socialism, or maybe orthogonal to the whole business, I dunno). I'm also not a terribly quick thinker in the sense that it can take me to really long time to understand things that are set out right in front of me

Comments

[autopope]

You might want to read up on the Fabian society and the origins of the modern Labour Party in the UK. Shorter form: well-intentioned middle class folks striving to bring about the worker's paradise, if only those annoying workers would shut up and do what they're told

[cpxbrex]

I dug the short form! And I knew about the modern Labour Party. ;) To the extent I had a revelation, or at least it was a revelation for me, is this weird feeling that maybe socialism - not just cats like in the Fabian Society but basically the foundations of socialism itself - teaches middle class values. And if I'm not making v. much sense, I hope it's simply because I'm still thinking about it.

But I'm pretty sure that Marx and Engels were definitely talking about small shop owners as being part of the middle class - they even had a specific term about guys like shopowners, y'know, the petite bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels pretty specifically considered those cats to be the middle class.

[cpxbrex]

Ha! Proof I don't think v. fast. I get it! You're saying that many socialist organizations have ALWAYS taught middle class values as a way to suggest the very middle classedness I'm talking about! I think. ;)

[droog64]

'Bourgeoisie' in Marx doesn't mean 'middle class', though. It means 'owners of the instruments of production'. I think 'ruling class 'covers it better, but then you're losing the specific class (bourgeois as opposed to eg aristocrat).

Similarly, 'proletariat' has a pretty specific meaning, ie the industrial working class under capitalism.

[cpxbrex]

That's what middle class used to mean - the business class, the owners of the means of production. I'm pretty solid on this one, the middle class was defined as the class between the peasantry (owned by the land) and the aristocrats (owners of the land). But by the time of Marx, the aristocracy was a dead issue. They might technically of ran a few things, and they were still the heads of state, but almost all the land was owned by the middle class and almost all the peasants had been transformed into workers either in factories or on farms owned by someone else. The meaning of middle class as a person of a particular level of economic means is, AFAIK, really a post-WWII use and not universal. Maybe the use of "middle class" to refer to the business class is slightly dated, but at the time Marx wrote it, well, not so much. The middle class was strongly understood to be the business class. And by then, workers almost uniformly referred to people doing alienated labor. (Tho' perhaps a better term could be invented to describe the

[droog64]

Well, I reserve the right to use the terms according to situation. Sometimes it's good to have ideologically-charged words at your disposal.

I would define the middle class, these days, as petit-bourgeois. That is, caught between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Small business is the obvious example. As autopope says above, a lot of people are persuaded that they're middle class when they're actually labour.

[cpxbrex]

I just wish they'd come up with less snobby charged words. My point isn't that we don't need a specialized language to describe socialist ideas. Well, sure, okay, new ideas require new words. I dig that. (I also don't think the terms bourgeois, petite bourgeois and proletariat are very good at talking about what I believe to be the issue at hand with those terms: a person's relation to capital, but I think that's another discussion. ;)

But the words that Marx used, and have become standard in socialist discussion and practice, are high sounding words from a fancy college educated philosopher who's dad was a lawyer. I believe that the use of those words is an example of the very cultural imperialism by the middle class that socialism is supposed to fight.

RE: Your Previous Post

[nebris]

Technology will eliminate the working class and then the problem of 'class' will be solved. And, yes, I do understand that will most likely be a rather unpleasant process.

~M~

Re: Your Previous Post

[cpxbrex]

And parts of me would really like to avoid the "rather unpleasant" process, particular if it involves mass slaughter of the kind that would make Stalin and Hitler wince. ;)

the "rather unpleasant" process

[nebris]

Probably more akin to the final days of the Roman Empire, which, while 'discomforting', were generally not as horrible as living under Old Mustache or Onkel Wolf...*he said from the comfort of his room* =)

~M~

Re: the "rather unpleasant" process

[cpxbrex]

Successive waves or barbarian invasions between decades long civil wars? I'm not sure that's much of an improvement! :)

I hope that you're right, of course, and while unpleasant we won't be crushed with all manner of horrors - but part of my mind knows that some fool with more power than wit will conceive a final solution for excess labor in the post-labor economy. While all of this might lead to a paradise, and I sincerely hope it does, and sooner rather than later, I don't think it's inevitably so.