[fuser]

Everyone know Judean Popular people's front is the only legitimate party, you bloody splitter.

[Decky]

You're now just defining and redefining words. Where has all the irrational prejudice and hate-filled bigotry gone?

If you are missing it that much you could always start a thread about he Welsh I suppose. It would have to be thinly disguised as a thread about political issues that are important in Wales of course but we all know where it would go before it even hit its second page.

[Goldberk]

That's a lot of writing for something much simpler. Steals to live = Lumpenproletariat, Works to live = Proletariat, Lives equitably between owned property and work = Small/Petite Bourgeoisie (and upper echelons of labor aristocracy), Lives off owned property = Big/Haute Bourgeoisie

Seems clear and correct.

What's important for the left is to use these clear definitions to combat the petty divisions of social class that divide the proletariat.

[Rei Murasame]

Steals to live = Lumpenproletariat, Works to live = Proletariat, Lives equitably between owned property and work = Small/Petite Bourgeoisie (and upper echelons of labor aristocracy), Lives off owned property = Big/Haute Bourgeoisie

I agree with this too.

[fuser]

This is indeed the simple and correct Marxist classification but I can swear that various leftist have posted this classification numerous times already on PoFo and soon after couple of months or so, it will have to be repeated again.

Marxist conception of class needs a sticky if possible.

[Dagoth Ur]

^ that. I don't know how many times I've repeated it myself let alone the many times I've seen others having to repeat themselves. There is almost a willful attempt to be confused in this regard.

[Vera Politica]

The Lumpenproletariat does not only consist of thieves/criminals. Where do we place the homeless? Those who live exclusively on welfare? Students, who've left the womb, but who survive off government-financed loans? There are members of society that are non-productive so cannot be called proletariat, but who, nonetheless, do not survive off owned property and are not criminals.

[Technology]

Semantics cancelled the revolution.

[Dagoth Ur]

The Lumpenproletariat does not only consist of thieves/criminals. Where do we place the homeless? Those who live exclusively on welfare? Students, who've left the womb, but who survive off government-financed loans? There are members of society that are non-productive so cannot be called proletariat, but who, nonetheless, do not survive off owned property and are not criminals.

Yes I know this and I only used theft for simplicity's sake. I would consider living off income that you didn't earn in any way (ie through work or ownership) is lumpen. I'm also fairly sympathetic to the lumpen for a Marxist apparently.

[Goldberk]

I think socialist attitudes to the lumpen are often problematic, they often reflect to much the liberal propaganda of the day, mixed with a paternalistic tinge.

[Dagoth Ur]

Especially by Marxists who want to look "hard on crime". Its pretty vulgar populism if you ask me.

[The Immortal Goon]

Academics usually live off their teaching wages so proletarian. I mean percentage wise how many academics are actually known for it? I'm assuming the figure is very low.

In the United States, only about 20% of academics can live off of doing academics alone with any security. The middle can expect to be there for a few years and get bennies; the increasing majority are adjuncts that make up almost 50% and have no security, no office, no bennies, and must have other jobs at the same time. It's getting worse.

Though he's deeply problematic in a lot of ways, Chomsky does have a pretty good piece about how academics is becoming "corporate." In some sense, however, I would almost say that it's almost a symptom of the last vestiges of some of the old feudal customs people were following being shaken off and capitalism infesting it. The problem is, as mentioned, the capitalist conception will mean that instead of experts at a field, things will be staffed by who can be the most controlled and the vastly increasing group of professional administrators will increase, pushing for higher costs with fewer services in order to increase their money.

But, yes. It is quite appropriate to put academics as proletarian.

[Decky]

Semantics cancelled the revolution.

[KlassWar]

The bourgeoisie believes itself so secure after the collapse of the Socialist Bloc that they've largely stopped bothering to throw bones at the Western intelligentsia. Previously they had to bribe them to prevent most of them from going commie, but now the capitalist powers just don't give a fuck. That's why the intelligentsia is being completely proletarianized without mercy, no more and no less.

[Goldberk]

Thats good though? Won't it bring more of the intelligentsia over to our cause?

[KlassWar]

From a class perspective it's clearly progressive trend in the long run. An overwhelmingly proletarian intelligentsia existing in openly proletarian class relations is better for us than a petty-bourgeois intelligentsia that might show solidarity with the ruling class at the least opportune times.

Unfortunately, in the short term (a generation), we're not dealing contending with an intelligentsia that was proletarianized to begin with and holds few illusions over their station in the relations of production: At the moment we're dealing with an intelligentsia that has lived in more or less comfortable, petty-bourgeois conditions that breed petty-bourgeois thought. And liberals have actually done an excellent job at keeping Marxist theory outside of the collective consciousness. So we gotta face the fact that many of those intellectuals that get declassed are going to believe the reactionary noise machine and yearn for a bourgeois order that still had a place for them, becoming out-and-out reactionaries.


Either we break the right-wing media hegemony NOW or the class enemy might well be able to maintain a right-wing hegemony for another generation. Unless the far left manages to jeopardize the ability of KR rats to spread ideological venom, things could get ugly very soon: Liberals are painstakingly organizing and orchrestrating the far-right resurgence in Europe and elsewhere. Right wing memes and mantras must be stopped before they metastasize.