Was Marx right?

[RickJay]

@Olentzero

I missed this the last time around and it is worth a few lines of consideration.

No, self-employed people are not another class. They straddle the line, for the most part, between working class and petty bourgeois; which side of the line they fall on depends on whether they do all the work themselves…

Perhaps it is worth a moment’s reflection to think about whether a theory that insists on dividing and definition every single person living in an economy and state of unparalleled complexity and social mobility into one of two classes, whether they are on one side of a “line” or another, is the ultimate answer to all sociopolitical truth.

[Olentzero]

@BrainGlutton

So who’s the prole and who’s the bourgeois – the lawyer or her nanny?

Nanny? Prole. Lawyer? Depends. Your point being?

@RickJay

Perhaps it is worth a moment’s reflection to think about whether a theory that insists on dividing and definition every single person living in an economy and state of unparalleled complexity and social mobility into one of two classes, whether they are on one side of a “line” or another, is the ultimate answer to all sociopolitical truth.

OK.

…Yes.

[XT]

@Olentzero

Nanny? Prole. Lawyer? Depends. Your point being?

Certainly. The point being that using your rigid system, you have a lawyer making over a million a year being a prole, while a nanny with her own business (and controlling her own labor) would be a capitalist/bourgeoisie, even if her business only brought in $40k/year. Ironic, no?

Basically, Marx is irrelevant today because the situation that exists today was beyond his ability to envision or make non-predictions about.

-XT

[Olentzero]

I said earlier income had nothing to do with it, and even quoted the same phenomenon you did using a freelance translator and a home repair company owner. Post #176. Sorry, XT, that petard won’t hoist.

[XT]

I’m sorry, Olentzero, but your flat out assertion does not make it fact. Hell, I doubt Marx would even agree with you that income has nothing to do with class or class struggle.

-XT

[Olentzero]

@xtisme

I doubt Marx would even agree with you that income has nothing to do with class or class struggle.

Got cites for that?

[XT]

You want a cite for my opinion? Ok…my post is my cite. Since Marx is too dead to ask, I guess that leaves us simply looking at what he wrote. Considering that his class setup doesn’t really fit into how things are today, we would have to extrapolate on what Marx would think if asked if a lawyer, doctor, movie star, professional athlete, etc who makes millions a year would be a prole, while one of his exploitative capitalists could be a woman with a maid service and a few employees barely scraping by. Personally, I think seeing how things actually worked out would blow his mind…and would certainly cause him to go back and re-think his ‘scientific’ theories.

YMMV and all that.

-XT

[BrainGlutton]

@Olentzero

OK.

…Yes.

Hmm. Tough case. Let’s see . . . OK, try another moment’s reflection, but his time hold your breath and put your head between your knees. Sometimes that helps. If not, at least you might get a good headrush after.

[RickJay]

@Olentzero

OK.

…Yes.

Faith-based arguments don’t get very far on this message board.

[Olentzero]

@xtisme

Since Marx is too dead to ask, I guess that leaves us simply looking at what he wrote.

That’s a step in the right direction. Do you plan on taking it?

[XT]

Since you are the bible literalist here I’ll leave it in your capable hands.

-XT

[BrainGlutton]

The important question is not “Was Marx right?” but “What of value can we learn from Marx?”

Something, I should say. Nobody takes Aristotle’s whole system seriously any more, but there are still things we can learn from him.

[Lumpy]

@BrainGlutton

The important question is not “Was Marx right?” but “What of value can we learn from Marx?”

Something, I should say. Nobody takes Aristotle’s whole system seriously any more, but there are still things we can learn from him.

In particular Marx asked some very insightful questions about the interrelationship of economics, politics and society. That the answers he proposed to those questions were mostly wrong doesn’t mean that they weren’t good questions. The same can be said about Nietzsche. He did a superb job of thinking out the logical ramifications of total amorality, the results of which have to be taken into consideration in any further discussion of the subject; none of which means that he was right.

[BrainGlutton]

@Lumpy

The same can be said about Nietzsche. He did a superb job of thinking out the logical ramifications of total amorality, the results of which have to be taken into consideration in any further discussion of the subject; none of which means that he was right.

Interesting. I have never before seen Nietzsche credited with thinking out the “logical ramifications” of anything, and I have sometimes wondered why he is ranked as a “philosopher” at all. He is to a logician as a meth-fueled gang-rape is to a Unitarian church service. (This simile should not be taken as implying that the church service has the advantage of the comparison.)

[Olentzero]

@xtisme

Since you are the bible literalist here I’ll leave it in your capable hands.

-XT

That’s an intellectually lazy attitude. Were I to come in to a discussion about Adam Smith and started spouting off, clearly never haven even cracked The Wealth of Nations, I would rightfully be called on it and be told to go read it. As it is, you can’t even muster a halfway coherent argument on the subject and instead resort to snide comments about Bible literalism.

So be it. From now on, if you want me to respond to your posts in any discussion of Marx, you better come with direct quotes from Marx himself, with a cite of the relevant work. I have no tolerance for intellectual laziness like yours.

[Olentzero]

I predict, however, that no such thing is ever going to happen.

[BrainGlutton]

@Olentzero

That’s an intellectually lazy attitude. Were I to come in to a discussion about Adam Smith and started spouting off, clearly never haven even cracked The Wealth of Nations, I would rightfully be called on it and be told to go read it.

Or the Cliffs Notes. Any reasonable Doper would be satisfied if you based arguments on condensed summaries and secondary sources, so long as there are no obvious grounds to suspect such of malicious misrepresentation of the original text. In discussing Marx in particular, this complaisant attitude is indispensable. How many Communists have ever read Das Kapital?!

[XT]

@Olentzero

That’s an intellectually lazy attitude. Were I to come in to a discussion about Adam Smith and started spouting off, clearly never haven even cracked The Wealth of Nations, I would rightfully be called on it and be told to go read it. As it is, you can’t even muster a halfway coherent argument on the subject and instead resort to snide comments about Bible literalism.

If you had indeed never even opened it an knew absolutely nothing about it, that might be the case. However, if you had read it but simply didn’t have it memorized and indexed 50 different ways, then perhaps not, if you could discuss it in a rational way.

I have zero intention of slogging back through Marx collective works with you, since obviously your interpretation is your own, and you will parse it into myriad NTS interpretations. Since you took exception to my own condensed interpretations and assertions it would behoove you to point out WHY you think they are wrong…not to simply tell me to slog through his collective works to find exact quotes by him to questions that weren’t even relevant in his day. In Marx day he posited that there were only two important classes in the supposed struggle between the classes…the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. The Capitalists vs the Workers. Here is the definition of both (not quoted from Marx):

a. Bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie or capitalists are the owners of capital, purchasing and exploiting labour power, using the surplus value from employment of this labour power to accumulate or expand their capital. It is the ownership of capital and its use to exploit labour and expand capital are key here. Being wealthy is, in itself, not sufficient to make one a capitalist (e.g. managers in the state sector or landlords). What is necessary is the active role of using this wealth to make it self-expansive through employment and exploitation of labour.

Historically, the bourgeoisie began cities of medieval Europe, with the development of traders, merchants, craftspersons, industrialists, manufacturers and others whose economic survival and ability to increase wealth came from trade, commerce, or industry. In order for each of these to expand their operations, they needed greater freedom to market products and expand economic activities. In the struggle against the feudal authorities (church and secular political authorities) this class formed and took on a progressive role. That is, they helped undermine the old hierarchical and feudal order and create historical progress. For a segment of this class, wealth came by employing labour (industrial capital), for others it came through trade (merchant capital), banking and finance (finance capital), or using land in a capitalist manner (landed capital). It was the industrial capitalists who employed labour to create capital that became the leading sector of the bourgeoisie, whose economic activities ultimately changed society. In Britain, this class became dominant politically and ideologically by the mid-nineteenth century. By employing workers, industrial capital created the surplus value that could take on the various forms such as profit, interest and rent.

b. Proletariat. The proletariat are owners of labour power (the ability to work), and mere owners of labour power, with no other resources than the ability to work with their hands, bodies, and minds. Since these workers have no property, in order to survive and obtain an income for themselves and their families, they must find employment work for an employer. This means working for a capitalist-employer in an exploitative social relationship.

This exploitative work relationship recreates or reproduces itself continually. If the capitalist-employer is to make profits and accumulate capital, wages must be kept low. This means that the proletariat is exploited, with the surplus time (above that required for creating subsistence) worked by the worker creating surplus products. While the worker produces, the products created by this labour are taken by the capitalist and sold – thus producing surplus value or profit for the capitalist but poverty for workers. This occurs each day of labour process, preventing workers from gaining ownership of property and recreating the conditions for further exploitation.

The antagonistic and contradictory nature of this system is evident as capitalists attempting to reduce wages and make workers work more intensively, while workers have exactly the opposite set of interests. Work and the labour process in the capitalist mode of production are organized so that workers remain propertyless members of the proletariat. The surplus products and value created by workers turns into capital, which is accumulated.

Historically, the proletariat emerged as the aristocracy began to suffer financial difficulties in the later middle ages. Many of those who were supported by working for the aristocracy lost their livelihood – the “disbanding of the feudal retainers and the dissolution of the monasteries.” Using enclosures, changing the conditions of production in agriculture, and denying peasants access to common lands and resources, landowners transformed land into pasture land for raising sheep, or sold land to farmers who began to develop grain and livestock production. People who had subsisted on the land were denied the possibility of making a living on the land, and they become propertyless. Population growth was also considerable, and in some areas forced labour (slavery, indentured servants, poor, prison) was used. While some people subsisted in rural industry and craft production, factory production began to undermine these as well in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Together these changes created a large class of landless and propertyless people who had no choice but to become members of the proletariat – many working in factories. These people became free wage labourers, free from feudal ties and free from a source of livelihood. Today we still talk of free labour markets and the dual meaning is much the same.

While the relationship between workers and capitalists, or between labour and capital may appear to be no more than an economic relationship of equals meeting equals in the labour market, Marx shows how it is an exploitative social relationship. Not only is it exploitative, it is contradictory, with the interests of the two partners in the relationship being directly opposed to each other. Although at the same time, the two opposed interests are also partners in the sense that both capital and labour are required in production and an exploitative relationship means an exploiter and someone being exploited.

This relationship is further contradictory in that it is not just two sets of interests, but there is no resolution of the capital-labour contradiction within the organization of capitalism as a system. The contradictory relationship has class conflict built into it, and leads to periodic bursts of strikes, crises, political struggles, and ultimately to the overthrow of bourgeois rule by the proletariat. Class conflict of this sort results in historical change and is the motive force in the history of capitalism.

Marx clearly never envisioned a society such as ours, with a very large middle class who owned more than their labor and their minds. While it’s true that he made allowances for sub-classes, clearly he didn’t think they were important. Land owners, for instance, he felt were a dying class who would simply convert their land wealth into capital wealth or simply die off. Didn’t happen.

c. Landlords. In addition to the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, Marx discussed a number of other classes. First, Marx mentions landowners or landlords as a class in Britain. While these were historically important, and many still retain their wealth even today (e.g. the Royal Family), they were considered by Marx to be a marginal class, once powerful and dominant but having lost their central role in production and the organization of society. In order to retain their wealth, some of these landowners were able to transform their wealth in land into landed capital. While this constituted a somewhat different form than industrial capital, this meant that the land was also used as capital, to accumulate. Labour may not be directly employed by landowners, but the land is used as a means by which capital can be expanded.

On the Middle Class:

Note on the Middle Class. The issue of the middle class or classes appears to be a major issue within Marxian theory, one often addressed by later Marxists. Many Marxists attempt to show that the middle class is declining, and polarization of society into two classes is a strong tendency within capitalism. Marx’s view was that the successful members of the middle class would become members of the bourgeoisie, while the unsuccessful would be forced into the proletariat. In the last few years, many have argued that in North America, and perhaps on a world scale, there is an increasing gap between rich and poor and there is a declining middle.

While there have been tendencies in this direction, especially among the farmers and peasantry, there has been no clear long run trend toward decline of the middle class. At the same time as there has been polarization of classes, there have been new middle groupings created. Some of these are small business people, shopkeepers, and small producers while others are professional and managerial personnel, and some intellectual personnel. Well paid working class members and independent trades people might consider themselves to be members of the middle class. Some segments of this grouping have expanded in number in recent years. While it is not clear that these groups hold together and constitute a class in any Marxian sense of being combined in opposition to other classes, they do form a middle grouping. Since Marx’s prediction has not come true, sociologists and other writers have devoted much attention to explaining this middle grouping – what is its basis, what are the causes of its stability or growth, how it fits into the class structure, and what are the effects of its existence on proletariat and bourgeoisie.

A large percentage of people who live in western nations fall into this ‘middle class’…yet Marx didn’t predict it or clearly understand it.

Other classes Marx considered marginal:

e. Lumpenproletariat. Marx also mentions the “dangerous class” or the social scum. Among the members of this group are “ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds … pickpockets, brothel keepers, rag-pickers, beggars” etc. (Bottomore, p. 292). This is the lumpenproletariat. He does not consider this group to be of any importance in terms of potential for creating socialism, if anything they may be considered to have a conservative influence. Other writers and analysts have considered them to have some revolutionary potential. One of the main reasons for mentioning them is to emphasize how capitalism uses, misuses and discards people, not treating them as humans. Today’s representative of this class of lumpenproletariat are the homeless and the underclass.

f. Peasantry and Farmers. Marx considered the peasantry to be disorganized, dispersed, and incapable of carrying out change. Marx also expected that this class would tend to disappear, with most becoming displaced from the land and joining the proletariat. The more successful might become landowners or capitalist farmers. With respect to family farmers as a group, much the same could be said. However, Marx was not really very familiar with these as a group, and had little to say about these. The various analyses of the role of farmers in the Prairies constitute a more adequate view of what may be expected from this group. They could be considered to form a class when they act together as a group. In the early days of Prairie settlement, farms were of similar size, farmers had generally similar interests, and the farm population acted together to create the cooperative movement and the Wheat Board. More recently, Prairie farmers are often considered to be split into different groups or strata, dependent on type of farming, size of farm, and whether or not they employ labour. Farmers have not been able to act together as a class in political and economic actions in recent years. Lobbying by some farm groups have been successful, but these do not usually represent farmers as a whole.

I do concede that this “I doubt Marx would even agree with you that income has nothing to do with class or class struggle” was wrong, since I was misremembering that Marx grouped everything into classes and not individuals. However, I doubt there is anything in Marx writings that predicts or gives any insight into the current situation in most western nations today where a large percentage of the population seems to cross between being a Capitalist and being a Worker, having aspects and attributes of both. The very meaning of what ‘class’ is today (in the common usage) is different to the way Marx looked at class and the dynamics of the supposed struggle between them.

At any rate, I’m not going to slog through Marx collected writings, so you might as well ignore this post and move on, unless you want to start quoting some Marx that you think are important to the discussion. To me this is like a discussion about the bible. I read the bible when I was a kid so I have some recollection of the work as a whole and can make some vague comments about it. It’s also vaguely interesting to me so some light weight discussion (what you rightfully call ‘an intellectually lazy attitude’) is about what I’m up for. However, I’m not a believer, and think that most of the bible is bunk, good only for some of the historical references (and even then it’s suspect) and interesting only in how it has shaped human thought. The same goes with Marx. I thought it was bunk when I read it, when I wrote papers about it, and I think it’s bunk now. It’s interesting only as a foot note to history or in how it’s shaped human thought, and mainly there in how it’s distorted it and lead it down pathways that have been pretty universally grim.

-XT

[Olentzero]

All right, now that’s what I’m talking about. And I have been pointing out why I think your earlier analyses were wrong, you just chose to interpret them as ‘Bible literalism’ and ‘NTS interpretations’.

Quick skim of the definitions of bourgeoisie and proletariat spark no major issues, except for the last paragraph of the definition of proletariat. Class struggle does not ‘ultimately’ lead to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, it only creates the potential for that to happen. Marx understood that social progress through class struggle wasn’t always linear and progressive (which is how we ended up going from the relative enlightenment of the Greek and Roman civilizations into the Dark and Middle Ages), so he never said communism was the logical outcome of the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Just one of the potential outcomes.

All right, so. Landlords. Here I’m taking a couple of direct quotes from the Grundrisse, written in 1857 and 1858 as a prelude to Capital and as an expansion on the arguments presented in the Manifesto:

We therefore always find that, wherever landed property is transformed into money rent through the reaction of capital on the older forms of landed property… and where, therefore, at the same time agriculture, driven by capital, transforms itself into industrial agronomy, there the cottiers, serfs, bondsmen, tenants for life, cottagers, etc. become day labourers, wage labourers, i.e. that wage labour in its totality is initially created by the action of capital on landed property, and then… by the proprietor of the land himself.

Cottiers, serfs, and the like were ancient forms of production by which labourers worked the land and turned over all or part of the product directly over to the landlord, either in exchange for rights to part of the product for their own consumption, and the right to reside on the land (if they were a cottier) or because the landlord owned them (if they were serfs). This way of life had almost completely disappeared by Marx’ time, and with it disappeared the independent power of the landowners as a class. They had to convert their land into capital, that is, use it to generate profit, and the former cottiers and serfs became wage labourers, producing in exchange for wages with no control over the product at all (they had to go buy it later if they wanted to eat it).

The ancient proprietor of land, if he is rich, needs no capitalist in order to become the modern proprietor of land. He needs only to transform his workers into wage workers and to produce for profit instead of for revenue.

In other words, if he had the money himself he could afford to keep the land, but he still transformed himself into a capitalist instead of remaining a feudal landlord. If he didn’t have the money himself he either got loans in order to convert, or he sold off the land to those who had the means to convert the land into capital. Either way, the feudal landlord class disappeared. And this had already happened by the time Marx wrote about it; the Industrial Revolution had largely completed the process. Yes, there are still landlords, but not in the way they used to be prior to the Industrial Revolution. They are capitalists, using their land to generate a profit and hiring wage labor to do the work. As an independent class with a separate role in production, they have ceased to exist.

The middle class. Even your source there waffles on this one:

While it is not clear that these groups hold together and constitute a class in any Marxian sense of being combined in opposition to other classes, they do form a middle grouping.

And he refers to what members of this group ‘consider themselves’ rather than any hard objective economic position, unlike what he did for pretty much every other group. Rather neatly, I think, he actually groups the various sections into roles clearly defined by bourgeois and proletariat.

small business people, shopkeepers, and small producers

are people who, in his own words,

are the owners of capital, purchasing and exploiting labour power, using the surplus value from employment of this labour power to accumulate or expand their capital.

Certainly not on the same scale as the rich bourgeoisie, but they are doing the same exact thing (hence petty, or petit, bourgeoisie). On the other hand,

professional and managerial personnel, and some intellectual personnel

are the

owners of labour power (the ability to work), and mere owners of labour power, with no other resources than the ability to work with their hands, bodies, and minds.

They have no resources they can use as capital, regardless of how well paid they are. This is not to say that the class boundary is a rigid, impenetrable barrier, but in today’s society there is no other place to be than one one side of it or the other. Even the farmers are subject to this, as your source notes that one of the ways in which they are classified is ‘whether or not they employ labour’ (see the definition of bourgeoisie above). And Marx didn’t need to predict managers, shopkeepers, intellectual workers and the like because even in the 1850s they already existed. He did, however, make a distinction between productive and unproductive labor that is relevant here:

The fact is that these workers, indeed, are productive, as far as they increase the capital of their master; unproductive as to the material result of their labour.

What they do - supervise other workers, crunch numbers, compile sales reports - help their boss make money, but they don’t actually produce anything for actual consumption. Nevertheless, they’re still workers, regardless of how much they make.

It’s late here and I’ve been on the road for eleven hours, so I need to get to sleep. I’ll try to address Marx on the lumpenproletariat in a later post, but I think your source exaggerates his attitude, bordering on misrepresentation.

[XT]

I’m also in-between meetings and won’t be around much tonight. Hope you get some sleep.

One quick thing for you to think about tomorrow or whenever you get back on:

@Olentzero

Class struggle does not ‘ultimately’ lead to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, it only creates the potential for that to happen. Marx understood that social progress through class struggle wasn’t always linear and progressive (which is how we ended up going from the relative enlightenment of the Greek and Roman civilizations into the Dark and Middle Ages), so he never said communism was the logical outcome of the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Just one of the potential outcomes.

However, from The Communist Manifesto

“What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

Doesn’t this indicate to you that he was in fact predicting that fall of the bougeoisie and the victory of the proletariat? And that he’s predicting it as ‘inevitable’? Granted, something might be getting lost in the translation here, but ISTM that this is indeed what he’s doing here.

Also, this seems pretty firm here:

“In place of the bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, shall we have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Considering that the revolutions that have happened came mainly in agrarian countries and mainly by the peasant class (a class Marx seems to think was of little importance), I thought this was interesting as well:

“Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.”

Just quickly, some other things from your post:

They have no resources they can use as capital, regardless of how well paid they are.

But that’s the point…they do actually. It’s pretty common for such people to receive or own stocks in their companies (or to simply buy stocks in companies). People aren’t just paid in money today (or for some time now)…many are paid in a stake in the company itself. Others have, as part of their retirement, some stake in the company. Still others invest their capital (which is simply the money they are paid in) in everything from housing to automobiles to stocks, bonds, T-Bills or IRAs. This isn’t just for the well paid manager types…even blue collar workers can and do own and invest in things like this, and far from being discouraged it’s encouraged to do so. No everyone does, of course, but there isn’t anything preventing even the poor from doing so if that’s what they want to spend their money on. My family, for instance, was about as poor as it could be and yet my grandfather invested a portion of his money into stocks and bonds.

This is not to say that the class boundary is a rigid, impenetrable barrier, but in today’s society there is no other place to be than one one side of it or the other.

I disagree. I think today that the distinctions you are trying to make have become so blurry as to be nearly meaningless. When workers can own a stake in the companies they work for, or in companies that they don’t work for, then the distinction between those owning the means of production and those who are pure labor start to seriously blur. That’s why class distinction based solely on income and assets are used more today than archaic notions about who is a worker and who is a capitalist. Upper class, middle class and lower class with refined distinctions between each is more meaningful today than worker verse capitalist.

And Marx didn’t need to predict managers, shopkeepers, intellectual workers and the like because even in the 1850s they already existed.

But the point is he considered them to be a minor group, unimportant in the greater scheme of things, while in fact today they make up the overwhelming majority of the population. In fact, the pure worker class today, by Marx’s definition, hardly exists anymore. You’d be hard pressed to find many people who have zero investments or actual stake in their companies.

Nevertheless, they’re still workers, regardless of how much they make.

Again, I disagree, as I disagree with your assertion that managers do nothing but make money for ‘the boss’. IT professionals, for instance, are ‘workers’…but they are highly paid (in some cases), and many of them have stakes in their companies. Even if they don’t, that ‘high pay’ gives them opportunities to invest their extra capital into a myriad of things. This would, IMHO, be completely bewildering to Marx, since there was no wide spread analogue to this in his day (there were some stocks and similar things in his day, but it wasn’t widely available to just anyone…afaik, no publicly traded stocks at all that just anyone could buy if they had the money).

The thing is, today, ‘how much you make’ is VERY important, as the more you make, regardless if you are the capitalist ‘boss’, the more opportunities you have to invest or expand your real wealth. That’s a key difference between Marx time and philosophy and how things actually panned out today, IMHO anyway…and one, again, that he didn’t anticipate and would be disbelieving of how it worked out.

Anyway, I have to bolt as well, so I’ll leave it at that. Thanks for the reply.

-XT