I’ve been having trouble explaining to liberal co-workers that there isn’t really an “Upper” or “Lower” working class. They insist that class as a relation to means of production is outdated and it makes more sense to measure it by income. What’s the most effective way to explain to them why this doesn’t work?
Talking about relations to means of production becomes a lot more difficult and abstract in a post-deindustrialization society where the majority of the proletariat work in service jobs. This is the main hurtle to overcome.
I wouldn’t argue that an upper and lower working class don’t exist. Instead, I would try to illustrate how these subclasses fit into a taxonomy where at the root, the very first split, we still have the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The difference between a line cook and a surgeon is very apparent. Despite their shared class position they often find each other at odds due manifold contradictions in society. On the surface, a surgeon making 200k a year might seem very similar to a landlord netting 200k a year. They might even live across the street from each other, drive the same model car, rent the same timeshare.
Though they may dress in the same clothes, the means by which they come across their wealth is diametrically opposed. The workers, whether they’re shopping cart collectors and grocery baggers (who literally produce no commodities) or machinist and carpenters, create value through their labor. The owners leech from that value through landlordism and through the capture of surplus value by underpaying their workers.
The owners, whether they run a failing restaurant or an international telecommunications monopoly rule like kings. Now, there might be some benevolent, philosopher kings out there, but who is going to win in the long run? We have a global market where services and commodities are exchanged. Whoever can produce those services and commodities for the lowest cost is going to drive the market. Given enough time, the the most ruthless firm will always triumph.
The majority of the world’s proletariat do not work in service jobs. They are still involved in direct production of commodities for exchange. A small minority of the world’s workers do work in service, but they are not the source of surplus value in the modern day: super-exploited global south proletarians, producing commodities for exchange on the market, are.
A good introduction from John Smith on the GDP illusion, and three global commodities: coffee, tshirts, and smartphones.
Of course, this was my approach at first as well, explain the difference in how the income is acquired to begin with. But I was hit with the idea that class as a concept has evolved past its relation with the means of production and now has more to do with your income. But since they live in a service sector heavy economy where nearly everyone they know come from the same well off background it becomes hard for me to explain that their notion of class mobility as income percentiles is dependent on exploitation of those less well off than them. It is a tough thing to pull off without making them go into defense liberal mode where they take offense to the notion that they’re benefitting from the existence of an impoverished proletariat that in any fair assessment should be the ones getting the wealth of the income in their society.
In this case, it might make sense to try a different approach and return to the nature of class divisions after making some headway. It sounds like they’re either committed to the idea that meritocracy is a real thing, or that wealth, status, and power just kinda, do that. There is little systemic analysis going on.
It might make sense to start discussing ideas like what really even is the goal of politics, and how can these goals be achieved. Most of us (in the Great Satan) begin with idealist conceptions about this. That victories are gained through awareness and clever rhetoric. That politics isn’t inherently about conflict, but compromise. That in the end, justice prevails because good ideas are inherently more powerful than bad ideas. All of this needs to be broken down and discarded. Replaced with a more realistic understanding about how struggles against oppression function. Get them to understand first that politics is about conflict, then start building the case for class conflict. After all, if they are still operating in a framework that politics is about compromise, then the result will inevitably be class compromise.
Do you have any good book recommendations?
Liberals are so used to being the “good guys” because they’ve been propagandized to believe so that they have trouble seeing objective processes as anything but moral condemnations of themselves. When they are confronted with objective realities like their parasitic relationship with workers in the global south, they take it as a moral judgement on their individual existence.
It’s definitely a mental hump they have to work through not to take theory so personally. We all are forced to live in this system and seek happiness for ourselves and our loved ones to best of our ability while reducing harm where we can. Merely existing in this shitty system doesn’t make someone a “bad” person and liberals on the cusp of a breakthrough need to be reminded of that.
That idea may be tempting, but it’s wrong. Class is entirely a question of one’s relation to the means of production. Trying to sidestep the nature of class by “backing into it” via income percentiles is an exercise in futility.
I’m well aware. My issue wasn’t that they were convincing me, it was that this was their response to my explanations, and its one that is quite vague and difficult for me to actually break down in terms they could comprehend. The entire framing of what they understood class to be is flawed, how does one actually put into perspective something so essential to even having such discussions?