# Was Marx right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 27, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529 "2010-12-27T17:12:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/101 "2010-12-29T21:16:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Remember, your consistent denial up to this point in this thread that this or that event was a “class struggle” is utterly meaningless and dismissable unless you can provide us with that baseline point. You are operating from a position of ignorance. It’s the job of people trying to argue that ‘class struggle’ is a real phenomena and valid analytical tool, to define it with an operational definition and internally consistent delineations. Those who want to debunk a gloss can simply show that the gloss is wrong, and do not have to show circumstances in which it would be right or create a definition for it that doesn’t have the problems of constant-goalpost-and-definition-shifting if pointing out that shifting is part of how the analysis is debunked in the first place. You may want to claim that other people not supporting their claims means that debunking them is “dismissible” or “meaningless”, but that’s rather obviously special pleading and nonsense to boot. You seem to not understand that it’s the person’s job who’s making a claim to prove a “baseline point” rather than the person arguing that a term is amorphous, protean, lacks specificity, is based on internally inconsistent delineations arbitrarily picks one factor out of many in a conflict and, as used by Olent, is absurdly claimed to be the one and only method of achieving progress or social change. If _you_ want to claim that “class wrestling” is a real and well defined, then _you_ need to provide a quality definition and show how it has analytic and predictive power. This is basic, try as you might to handwave the flaws in the “class hijinks” concept. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/102 "2010-12-29T21:24:26Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > No. First of all the middle class is not dying, it has suffered due to the recession but consider that will recovered from all previous economic crisis. Indeed since Marx’s time the middle class both numerically and proportionally have grown massively. With massive displacement during depressions - notably during the 1930s. The middle class doesn’t die, but it can, and does, get the living shit beaten out of it on occasion. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/103 "2010-12-29T21:30:28Z")
_The Amazing Hanna_, yes, I was referring to what Marx said regarding how it was not likely that while capitalists had the upper hand that democracy would not be as it was intended, on this item he was wrong. Not all developed nations have FOX news, not all capitalists succeed on controlling the news or democracy. And even here not all follow _Faux_ news. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/104 "2010-12-29T21:36:33Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > If _you_ want to claim that “class wrestling” is a real and well defined, then _you_ need to provide a quality definition and show how it has analytic and predictive power. > > This is basic, try as you might to handwave the flaws in the “class hijinks” concept. Well, I do not follow much \*\*BrainGlutton \*\*on this, but it seems to me that the concept is not avoided when doing analysis of conflicts on news pieces, at least in Europe: > **[BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Thai crisis exposes class struggle](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7716033.stm)** > > Ongoing political protests are splitting Thai society along class lines, the BBC's Jonathan Head finds. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/105 "2010-12-29T21:59:18Z")
Haven’t really kept up with the discussion, but thought maybe some definitions of terms might be helpful. From [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_struggle): > [@](#): > > Marxist analysis of society identifies two main social groups: > > ``` > * Labour (the [proletariat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat) or workers) includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labor power and being paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They have little choice but to work for capital, since they typically have no independent way to survive. > * Capital (the [bourgeoisie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie) or capitalists) includes anyone who gets their income not from labor as much as from the surplus value they appropriate from the workers who create wealth. The income of the capitalists, therefore, is based on their exploitation of the workers (proletariat). > > ``` > [@](#): > > Marx noted that other classes existed, but said that as time (and capitalism) moved forward, these other classes would disappear, and things would become stratified until only two classes remained, which would become more and more polarized as time went on. Other classes are: > > ``` > * the self-employed (petit bourgeoisie) — these are people who own their own means of production, thus work for themselves. Marx saw these people swept away by the march of capitalism, such as family farms being replaced by agribusiness, or many small stores run by their owners being replaced by a supermarket, and so forth. > * managers, supervisors, white-collar staff, and security officers – these are intermediaries between capitalists and the proletariat. Since they are paid a wage, technically they are workers, but they represent a privileged stratum of the proletariat, typically serving the capitalists' interest. These are often classified as class traitors by socialist organizations and government because even though they share the working man's plight, they actively support the status quo. > * soldiers and servicemen- Also widely considered to be class traitors, Marx theorized that the army was a part of the proletariat, similarly to the managers and supervisors, but with significantly lower wages and standard of living. Trotsky postulated in the theory of Permanent Revolution that the support of the army would be necessary for the Russian Revolution to succeed. > * the lumpenproletariat – the chronically unemployed. These people have at most a tenuous connection to production. Since Marx, many states have tried to compensate for the difficulties experienced by workers due to cyclical unemployment. Unfortunately there is also a growing structural unemployment in which people are permanently dependent on welfare programs or employed relatives. These people form the lumpenproletariat, along with thieves and con artists of various kinds who depend on crime for their income. Marx saw the problem of unemployment growing more acute as capitalism went on, so this class would exist prior to the foreseen revolution. Marx deemed the lumpenproletariat as unimportant, and not playing a major role in the labor/capital class struggle. Since they would benefit in his view from a revolution, they would be on the side of the proletariat. But he saw them as unreliable, since they were likely to be mercenary in their attitudes. This view was revised by some followers of Marx such as Mao Zedong, who saw a greater role for the lumpenproletariat in class struggle. > * domestic servants, who often had a better standard of living than the proletariat, but who were considered by society as by nature dependent upon their literal masters, and so male servants were not considered worthy of receiving the vote. > * peasants, who still represented a large part of the population well into the twentieth century. Capital for such workers — for example, a tractor or reaping machine — was in most countries for a long time unthinkable, so they were not considered some sort of rural proletarians. Trotsky's analysis of the peasant demonstrated this class to be divided in loyalty between the capitalist class and the proletariat, in that the wealthier land-owning peasants (Soviets found this in the Kulak) had an interest in maintaining a capitalist system, while the poor landless peasants had interests more aligned with those of the proletariat; thus is why the peasant class could not lead a revolution. > > ``` Some other points from the article: > [@](#): > > Marx thought that this conflict was central to the social structure of capitalism and could not be abolished without replacing the system itself. Further, he argued that the objective conditions under capitalism would likely develop in a way that encouraged a proletariat organized collectively for its own goals to develop: the accumulation of surplus value as more means of production by the capitalists would allow them to become more and more powerful, encouraging overt class conflict. If this is not counteracted by increasing political and economic organization by workers, it would inevitably cause an extreme polarization of the classes, encouraging the revolution that would destroy capitalism itself. > > The revolution would lead to a socialist society in which the proletariat controlled the state, that is, “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. The original meaning of this term was a workers’ democracy, not a dictatorship in the modern sense of the word. For Marx, democracy under capitalism is a bourgeois dictatorship. > > Even after a revolution, the two classes would struggle, but eventually the struggle would recede and the classes dissolve. As class boundaries broke down, the state apparatus would wither away. According to Marx, the main task of any state apparatus is to uphold the power of the ruling class; but without any classes there would be no need for a state. That would lead to the classless, stateless communist society. -XT ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/106 "2010-12-29T22:22:47Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Where did the American bourgeoisie come from, then? From America. **Decades after Independence.** ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/107 "2010-12-29T22:26:02Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > You are right in asserting that if there are no experiments or tests made to the theory, then it is not scientific. But simply stating that doesn’t prove there have been no experiments or tests made against Marxism. But, Marxism is non-testable and non-falsifiable on its face unless stated much more rigorously than Marx did. I mean, what data can you think of, which, if observed, would falsify Marxism? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/108 "2010-12-29T22:30:23Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > It’s the job of people trying to argue that ‘class struggle’ is a real phenomena . . . It’s nobody’s job to **argue** that, it’s simply a fact – like the fact that weather is a real phenomenon, even if nothing else about meteorology is self-evident. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/109 "2010-12-29T22:37:51Z")
Marx was right about one thing, it is too dark to read inside of a dog. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/110 "2010-12-29T22:55:26Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It’s nobody’s job to **argue** that, it’s simply a fact You concede the issue and can neither provide an operational definition nor a consistent analytical framework, noted and accepted. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/111 "2010-12-30T01:10:20Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > You concede the issue and can neither provide an operational definition nor a consistent analytical framework, noted and accepted. Hey, **I’m** not the one using fatuous and desperate intellectual dishonesty to try to define class struggle out of existence, as you did in [post #50,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13295229#post13295229) and in [post #52,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13295267#post13295267) and in [post #62.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13295514#post13295514) You’re the only one moving the goalposts here. (Well, you and sometimes **Olentzero,** but you’re by far the worse offender.) I hold these truths to be as self-evident as anything can be in sociology or politics: 1. **Class is real.** No sociologist in the world would dispute this. Hierarchical social class differentiation has existed in every known human society above a mesolithic level, from ancient times to the present day, and there are some things we can say about it that apply in every known society: People of different classes live very different lives. There might be some class mobility, but for most people their class identity is determined from birth and they will live their whole lives in the same class. Different classes have, or develop, different social and cultural characteristics. Most people marry within their own native class. Class relations are always hierarchical. Two social classes are not simply two groups with different functional specialties but equal status, like electricians and plumbers; one has a superior position to the other in terms of prestige, wealth, privileges, opportunities, education, and/or power/influence. 2. **Class interest is real.** Different things can be good or bad for the people of a given social class. In some respects, different classes have identical interests – plagues are bad, cures are good, for all classes of a society more or less equally. In some respects, however, different classes can have different and conflicting interests. 3. **Class action is real.** When members of a social class – not necessarily all of them, just enough to make a difference – try to further or protect their class interest, that is class action. This does not necessarily require “class consciousness,” in fact it does not even require concerted action. As Michael Lind noted in [url=]_The Next American Nation,_ “In personifying the overclass and describing its strategy, I do not mean to imply the existence of a literal conspiracy. When members of a disproportionately powerful class pursue similar class-based interests, the result will be similar to that of a conscious program even if there has been no concerted action.” By the same token, and further down the ladder, a striking labor union local can meaningfully be said to be taking “class action” even it has no stated or hidden goals beyond a dollar-an-hour raise and makes no effort to get other unions involved. 4. **Class conflict is real.** Whenever the class interest or class action of Class A collides with that of Class B, there is class conflict. 5. **Class struggle is real.** Class struggle is simply any class conflict that is not immediately resolved by victory or compromise or surrender. If the parties in conflict keep on fighting to get what they respectively want, there is class struggle. **And it happens all the time.** It might be fought out in the media, in the courts, in the marketplace, in the classrooms, in the blogosphere, in the boardroom, on the shop floor, on the picket lines, and/or on the battlefield; it might be about a vision of revolutionary social transformation or it might be about a 40-hour week with time and a half for overtime; but it’s all equally class struggle. Whether “class struggle” and “class war” should be taken or used as synonyms, and, if not, at what point the first can be said to escalate into the second, is a trivial question not worth discussion here. It is only important to note that a class struggle, like any form of widespread social conflict, always has a potential for violent expression. 1. **Class struggle matters.** It might or might not be the all-explanatory engine of history Marx believed it to be, but at any rate it does very often make real differences in the political, social, and/or economic circumstances of a society. It cannot be dismissed as marginal froth compared to any of the other things that drive such changes, such as technological progress or political leadership or religious beliefs or environmental factors or the fortunes of war. And, as an afterthought that bears mentioning: 1. **Non-class social divisions exist.** People in a society can be divided by sex, socially-defined “race,” religion, region, ethnocultural background, or sports-fan rivalries. These are not essentially class divisions, they are not necessarily hierarchical divisions, and the groupings can cut across class boundaries. However, a non-class grouping can become identical with a social class in some circumstances – e.g., “race” might define class status and economic function, as with the four _varna_ or “colors” of India, or the Norman elite of medieval England, or the imposition of permanent lumpenprole status on African-Americans from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights movement. In such cases, everything said above applies to such race-classes, with the addition that any class conflict/struggle involving them can be complicated by other sociocultural factors incident to racial relations. Which is why white working-class Americans have never really regarded black working-class Americans as being in the same “class” as themselves, even where socioeconomic status was equal, and why it has been problematic for any working-class action to include both groups. However, this is merely an added set of factors; it does not mean that the presence of such divisions in a society renders “class struggle” in that society meaningless or nonexistent or irrelevant. All of the above are simple statements of evident facts, and as such should be completely unobjectionable. They do not say “Four legs good, two legs bad”; they do not assert that any hierarchical class relationship necessarily involves the “exploitation” of one class by another; they do not include or imply any opinions or value judgments as to the justice or injustice of a class system; nor as to the importance of class relative to that of non-class social divisions, nor the myriad other factors that might shape a person’s life; nor as to the possibility or impossibility, or desirability or undesirability, of a classless society; nor as to class conflict as embodying any kind of Marxist dialectical process, nor any teleogical process of any kind. :rolleyes: And, well, every word of the above is just so fucking **obvious** that I shouldn’t even have needed to state it; it should all simply be assumed as the starting-point for a debate of this kind. Now, **FinnAgain,** I repeat: What would **you** consider a genuine historical instance of class struggle? You have zero credibility in this discussion until you can answer that question. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/112 "2010-12-30T01:40:08Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Hey, **I’m** not the one using fatuous and desperate intellectual dishonesty to try to define class struggle out of existence, as you did in [post #50,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13295229#post13295229) and in [post #52,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13295267#post13295267) and in [post #62.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13295514#post13295514) You’re the only one moving the goalposts here. (Well, you and sometimes **Olentzero,** but you’re by far the worse offender.) > > I hold these truths to be as self-evident as anything can be in sociology or politics: > > 1. **Class is real.** … It is only important to note that a class struggle, like any form of widespread social conflict, always has a potential for violent expression. Check. > [@](#): > > 1. **Class struggle matters.** It might or might not be the all-explanatory engine of history Marx believed it to be, but at any rate it does very often make real differences in the political, social, and/or economic circumstances of a society. It cannot be dismissed as marginal froth compared to any of the other things that drive such changes, such as technological progress or political leadership or religious beliefs or environmental factors or the fortunes of war. Check. > [@](#): > > And, as an afterthought that bears mentioning: > > 1. **Non-class social divisions exist.** Check. > [@](#): > > All of the above are simple statements of evident facts, and as such should be completely unobjectionable. They do not say “Four legs good, two legs bad”; they do not assert that any hierarchical class relationship necessarily involves the “exploitation” of one class by another; they do not include or imply any opinions or value judgments as to the justice or injustice of a class system; nor as to the importance of class relative to that of non-class social divisions, nor the myriad other factors that might shape a person’s life; nor as to the possibility or impossibility, or desirability or undesirability, of a classless society; nor as to class conflict as embodying any kind of Marxist dialectical process, nor any teleogical process of any kind. > > :rolleyes: And, well, every word of the above is just so fucking **obvious** that I shouldn’t even have needed to state it; it should all simply be assumed as the starting-point for a debate of this kind. > > Now, **FinnAgain,** I repeat: What would **you** consider a genuine historical instance of class struggle? You have zero credibility in this discussion until you can answer that question. Check. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/113 "2010-12-30T03:23:18Z")
I have often posted this excerpt from [_The Next American Nation,_](http://www.amazon.com/NEXT-AMERICAN-NATION-Nationalism-Revolution/dp/0684825031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293679368&sr=8-1) but it’s especially appropriate here and at this point: > [@](#): > > Understanding the white overclass requires revising the most common misconceptions about class. The discussion of social class has been confused for generations by Marxist thinkers, who made the mistake of completely identifying class with economic function. Like the Marxists, old-fashioned American liberal pluralists tend to misunderstand class. What they refer to as class is typically not a social class at all, but a mere occupational or income category, such as service-sector workers or millionaires. Meanwhile, the New Left which came to prominence in the sixties has tended to drop the idea of class altogether, in favor of race and gender. . . . In recent years, conservative ideologues have added further confusion by defining political factions and lifestyle subcultures as classes. . . . > > In order to think about class in twenty-first century America, we must first clear our minds of these Marxist, liberal, New Left, and conservative definitions of class, and return to the older notion of class found in classical and European political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu. > > A class is a group of families, united by intermarriage and a common subculture, whose members tend to predominate in certain professions and political offices, generation after generation. Note that the class – the group of similar families – has an existence independent of the offices which its members tend to hold. Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. Those who talk about “the political class” or, with C. Wright Mills, about “the power elite,” are confusing two very different things. Every modern society, even the most perfectly egalitarian, will have an institutional elite – top civilian politicians, military officers, judges, diplomats, financial and industrial executives, publishers, editors and leading intellectuals, clerical leaders, and so on. The subject of class is raised only when you examine the social origins of the particular individuals who hold office in the institutional elite or elites. Learning the organization of judicial offices in a country tells you nothing about class. However, if you find out that most of the judges tend to come from old-money families in a particular region of that country, and that most attended one of half a dozen schools, then you have learned something important about that country’s class system. > > The United States at the end of the twentieth century has both an institutional elite and a dominant social class. The institutional elite is composed of upper-level officials in the federal and state governments, plus executives and professionals in the concentrated private sector and foundation and university executives (low-level government officials and small business owners are not part of the institutional elite). Almost all of the members of the American institutional elite also happen to be members of a single social class: the white overclass. To put it another way, the labor pool from which most elite positions are filled is the white overclass. The overlap is not complete. Though most members of the institutional elite belong to the white overclass, most members of the white overclass are not part of the institutional elite (since the overclass greatly outnumbers the elite); and – though this is uncommon – a person can become a high-ranking politician, military officer, judge, CEO, foundation president, or university president in the United States without having been born into the white overclass. It is possible to imagine a United States in which most members of the institutional elite did not have similar class origins. But that is not the country in which we live. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/114 "2010-12-30T03:29:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I have often posted this excerpt from [_The Next American Nation,_](http://www.amazon.com/NEXT-AMERICAN-NATION-Nationalism-Revolution/dp/0684825031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293679368&sr=8-1) but it’s especially appropriate here and at this point: This is News? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/115 "2010-12-30T03:34:17Z")
And this from Paul Fussell’s [_Class:_](http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293679942&sr=1-1) > [@](#): > > My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows: > > ## Top out-of-sight Upper Upper middle > > ## Middle High proletarian Mid-proletarian Low proletarian > > Destitute > Bottom out-of-sight > > **One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these classes. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money.** > > * * * > > Not that the three classes at the top don’t have money. The point is that money alone doesn’t define them, for the way they have their money is largely what matters. . . . The main thing distinguishing the top three classes from each other is the amount of money inherited in relation to the amount currently earned. The top-out-of-sight class (Rockefellers, Pres, DuPonts, Mellons, Fords, Vanderbilts) lives on inherited capital entirely. . . . > > “When I think of a really rich man,” says a Boston blue-collar, “I think of one of those estates where you can’t see the house from the road.” Hence the name of the top class, which could just as well be called “the class in hiding.” Their houses are never seen from the street or road. They like to hide away deep in the hills or way off on Greek or Caribbean islands (which they tend to own), safe, for the moment, from envy and its ultimate attendants, confiscatory taxation and finally expropriation. . . . > > * * * > > The next class down, the upper class, differs from the top-out-of-sight class in two main ways. First, although it inherits a lot of its money, it earns quite a bit too, usually from some attractive, if slight, work, without which it would feel bored and even ashamed. It’s likely to make its money by controlling banks and the more historic corporations, think tanks, and foundations, and to busy itself with things like the older universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Committee for Economic Development, and the like, together with the executive branch of the federal government, and often the Senate. . . . And secondly, unlike the top-out-of-sights, the upper class is visible, often ostentatiously so. . . . When you pass a house with a would-be impressive facade visible from the street or highway, you know it’s occupied by a member of the upper class. . . . > > * * * > > We now come to the upper-middle class. It may possess virtually as much as the two classes above it. The difference is that it has earned most of it, in law, medicine, oil, shipping, real estate, or even the more honorific kinds of trade, like buying and selling works of art. Although they may enjoy some inherited money and use inherited “things” (silver, Oriental rugs), the upper-middles suffer from a bourgeois sense of shame, a conviction that to live on the earnings of others, even forebears, is not nice. > > Caste marks of the upper-middles would include living in a house with more rooms than you need, except perhaps when a lot of “overnight guests” are present to help you imitate upper-class style. . . . This class is also the most “role-reversed” of all: men think nothing of cooking and doing housework, women of working out of the house in journalism, theater, or real estate. (If the wife stays home all the time, the family’s middle-class only.) Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you’ll have inferred already, that it’s in large part the class depicted by Lisa Birnbach and others’ Official Preppy Handbook, that significantly popular artifact of 1980. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/116 "2010-12-30T03:39:14Z")
havesandhavenots? Pure class structure. IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/117 "2010-12-30T03:58:32Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > With massive displacement during depressions - notably during the 1930s. > > The middle class doesn’t die, but it can, and does, get the living shit beaten out of it on occasion. Welcome to the floor. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/118 "2010-12-30T04:22:52Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But, Marxism is non-testable and non-falsifiable on its face unless stated much more rigorously than Marx did. I mean, what data can you think of, which, if observed, would falsify Marxism? Off the top of my head - capitalism finding a way to avoid economic crises permanently. This is one of, if not _ **the** _, main thrusts of Marx’ analysis of the system. And to be more specific re: my earlier question, what are the social origins of the American bourgeoisie? Which class did they arise from, if not the class that made the Revolution? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/119 "2010-12-30T04:26:43Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > And to be more specific re: my earlier question, what are the social origins of the American bourgeoisie? Which class did they arise from, if not the class that made the Revolution? Some from that class, some from energetic farmers, etc. But, “arose from” != “equates to.” If a 19th-Century industrialist happened to be a lineal legitimate descendant of Lord Cornwallis, that would not make Lord Cornwallis bourgeois. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2010, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529/120 "2010-12-30T04:55:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Some from that class, some from energetic farmers, etc. But, “arose from” != “equates to.” If a 19th-Century industrialist happened to be a lineal legitimate descendant of Lord Cornwallis, that would not make Lord Cornwallis bourgeois. Call me bourgeois. A habitual comfort creature. :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-marx-right/565529.md?page=7)