I think the categorization of “class” used in this article was not very useful. Income, in particular, is not a very useful defying factor differentiating classes.
I don’t have the data to make a proper analysis of the 2024 Presidential election, but using this method might have yielded interesting results.
I think the categorization of “class” used in this article was not very useful. Income, in particular, is not a very useful defying factor differentiating classes.
I don’t have the data to make a proper analysis of the 2024 Presidential election, but using this method might have yielded interesting results.
The way I understand it, "class" describes one's relationship to the means of production.
I know an electrical contractor who, year and and year out, makes the kind of money that a Goldman Managing Director makes. I can also tell you that this contractor is treated very differently than the guy from Goldman would be treated.
The problem with using “ one's relationship to the means of production” is that everyone who has a job is producing. That is one of the many reasons why the Marxist view of class is not useful.
If you read the linked article, and particularly the first graphic, you will see a more useful definition.
Production should be understood in terms of producing a surplus. Society produces a surplus and then uses that surplus, investing it in developments and luxuries and so on. For example, this is how we know that Roman peasants were exploited. The empire just took their grain. The grain surplus then fed the city. Was this a mutually beneficial relationship? Sometimes, but the ball got rolling because, a few thousand years ago, a bunch of assholes started figuring out that you could steal people's food, and then use that stolen food to feed an army. Then, your big dumb army can go out and steal even more food. This onset of class rule and the state was hardly a charitable act. The abuses of it continue to this day.
It is about your proximity to capital. Capital investment and capital return is not the same thing as productive labor. Like a landlord doesn't have to work hard to have tenants pay their bills, in fact this the entire draw of being a landlord - convert your property into capital and accrue a passive income. Unsurprisingly, we find society divided into two dominating poles, those with a lot of capital, who are in the commanding heights of our economy, and those who can only give their labor, who must take orders. The PMC is a middling layer, like a gentry.
Profits go to the top and then they pay off the government. That's class rule. Denying it is akin to asserting a flat earth! Not good!
Did you read the linked article? It does not appear so.
I never denied class. That is why I have written multiple articles on the topic... which you apparently did not bother to read before you told me that I was wrong.
I think that my articles give a much more sophisticated view of class than yours.
The problem with your analysis is that it neglects individuals and how much youths made life decisions that affect their life outcomes. You also neglect the critical importance of age. Twenty-something’s are all “poor,” but the vast majority move up into the Top 20% later in life.
Very few people are born with "capital investment" and they still have a very high standard of living compared to virtually every person in world history.
The vast majority earn their money by work, savings and investment. Today, over 10% of the American population is a millionaire, and among retirees, it is far higher.
You also neglect who similar those with lots of capital are with PMC and college-educated people. It is all one class. Their similarities in attitudes are far bigger than their differences.
I never denied class. I am just arguing that the classic Marxist understanding of class is near useless (and yours sounds an awful lot like his). There is a reason why Marx's predication were completely wrong. It was that his assumption were incorrect. Do not make the same mistake.
Marx was not wrong. He predicted that commodity production based on exchange value would break down, and it did, we have been on a fiat economy for the last few decades - which is a political dollar and not a value dollar - which, seemingly, is the only way through which profits can still be extracted. Modern economies are more akin to a demented socialism-for-the-rich compared to what Marx understood as capitalism. This is the rise of national capitalists, also predicted in Marxist theory. The collapse of exchange value was predicted (or hoped) to lead to an immediate political struggle to seize power, and sure, this was in error. In America, the capitalist class outflanked this, with the New Deal. Ultimately, I believe the balance of forces played out in this manner owing to imperialism - which is when nations enter into a class relation. You are probably sitting on 500 little trinkets in your room that were all made in Mexico India Pakistan China, and you go to the grocery store in winter and buy avocados but you know the guy who plucked them sure as shit doesn't have his own avocados to buy for himself in the winter. America did not having nothing left to lose but their chains, but saw a world which we could rope into chains, and over the next few decades, this was successfully accomplished. I believe we are in a declining or decaying period and this is reflected in near-universal public sentiment that our nation is on the wrong track (something like 80% when polled).
Appealing to age does not sway me much. Money makes money, and this results in an extreme explosion of concentrated wealth, which is the capitalist class. They have excessive power that is used to secure personal interests that are choking us as a social whole, and yes, this extends not only at the tippy top but radiates outward as decreasingly less power as you go down the totem pole. Cars are an example of this, first, a toy for the rich, imposed on all of us, now, all of us have to live this way, with our personal tanks, it is an enormous drain on our production, horrible for the planet, horrible for developing authentic and vibrant communities, but we atomized, and trapped, stuck in traffic, hating traffic. Land ownership is another example of this, we need massive infrastructure revolutions - high speed rail, and massive constructions of housing, we are being left in the dust technologically and crushed under eyewatering prices, but a million petty fiefdoms are all out here to scream "Me! Me! Me!" and we all suffer for it. I don't see how we get out of this, there is a mass construction of housing we would need would to decrease prices, but the economy of housing treats it as an investment which can only ever appreciate in value, which is insane, but if you want a roof over your head, you have to play the game, or shell out big rent money to those who got in before you. And, obviously, this is resulting in an increasing share of people who don't have a stake of land, and are paying more money out of their pocket to get by as a punishment for daring to breath.
Anyone who starts with “ Marx was not wrong” cannot be taken seriously. You obviously do not know the basics of Marxist theory. You are only stringing together words that you think make you sound like it.
Even doctrinaire Marxists realized that he was wrong in his predictions over a century ago. Just read critiques of Marx during that time period.
Making an honest statement to someone is not “unkind.” Particularly coming from a person who is going around defending Marxist ideology, which was the moral basis for murdering roughly 100 million people. That might be a little more "unkind" than being honest.
Pointing out an obviously incorrect statement is also not “unkind.”
Telling people that they are wrong without even reading what they said is far worse.
If you are not interested in reading my article on what I believe is a more useful perspective on class, fine.
Just do not respond that I am wrong, when you are obviously not interested in what I actually wrote, and then claim that I am the one who is “unkind.”
Colonial forces have ravaged humanity far more than those who have seeked to put an end to the despicable idea - that one human life could be worth more than another human life. And yet the comparative cost is never established - just hyperbolic proclamations of extreme communist criminality contrasted against, supposedly, a world full of liberal kindness and market kumbayah. But how does the balance of accounts appear when we include the partitions of the Arab world, the plunder against Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the mass cannibalism of WW1? What of the human cost for the slaughters to clear this land we write to each other within?
Look to how the class relationship applies itself between America and Mexico, to the detriment of us all - the malaise and poverty of our system collapsing under drug addiction and landlessness, such purchases - the only dopamine some people can get - fueling the cartels abroad with cash, who then use this cash to purchase guns from our advanced production. Drugs pour one way, guns pour the other, raising such incredible violence and corruptio, in many places like Mexico this is central in driving emigration, which, for those suffering from the colonial mindset, appears as a "migrant horde" threatening your rights to Pax Americana - the class relation appears as a national necessity, Deport Thy Neighbor!, through which Americans will fail to address the root cause of our concerns, because we are in an era where circling the wagons around our own cartels, imperial cartels, only wraps and tightens the noose around your own neck - for the great benefit of Wall Street and the political swamp creatures in Washington, who are happy to dominate an increasingly smaller and increasingly shittier empire of dirt now matter how much we all suffer for it.
"Telling people that they are wrong without even reading what they said is far worse" - I have read every word you have written in this chain. You are the one who has made the decision to dismiss presented material without address. If I want you to consider something, I'm going to spell it out for you, because what kind of ego must one possess to act entitled in substack comment section, I'm sorry, I am never going to consider the Total Collected Works of Michael Magoon (Vol 1). If I have missed this article you keep speaking of, it would be good to see it again, I scrolled through many of your articles on your profile and did not find anything relevant.
Marx was an excellent classical economist and critic of capitalism -- there can simultaneously be things about which he was wrong and other things about which he was not.
Marx was a political philosopher, not an economist.
And I was reacting to the comment "Marx was not wrong," which clearly implies that the commenter thought that Marx was correct in all his predictions. That is clearly not true.
I read the article. Everyone with a job may be producing, but how they produce can be very different, as can their expected outcomes from such production.
Your model has some compelling arguments, but has one glaring flaw. It assumes a far higher degree of permeability and mobility than actually exists. It assumes that one’s life choices, especially during schooling years, is practically the sole determinant of one’s eventual “class” placement.
Thousands of studies over time have borne out how much influence your family and community have over one’s financial outlook. If you’re born working class or lower class, chances are you’ll always be there, sheerly by dint of circumstances.
Upward mobility exists, surely. Some manage to claw their way up or simply get lucky. But if you’re lucky enough to be born into an affluent family, you’re far LESS likely to loose your status. You have layers upon layers of privilege and protection lower classes can’t even imagine.
You and those “thousands of studies” are missing the powerful effect that genetics has on individuals' abilities and preferences. And those genetic traits are highly heritable. It is not privilege and protection that accounts for lower than "ideal levels of social mobility", it is genetics.
I argue that we need to acknowledge those inherent differences and try to leverage them into material progress and upward mobility.
And don’t forget that two of the three critical life choices are full-time work and marriage. Those are two choices where the vast majority of humanity have been able to make the right choice. Even medieval peasants, who were clearly not privileged.
I forced myself to read your link because you have written so many comments in this thread. Your diagram is useful as far as it goes, but putting the offspring of all three classes in one box probably doesn't map onto any reality I have encountered where either the opportunities afforded nor the constraints upon subsequent "life choices" are concerned.
I think the categorization of “class” used in this article was not very useful. Income, in particular, is not a very useful defying factor differentiating classes.
I don’t have the data to make a proper analysis of the 2024 Presidential election, but using this method might have yielded interesting results.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-class-in-american-society
The way I understand it, "class" describes one's relationship to the means of production.
I know an electrical contractor who, year and and year out, makes the kind of money that a Goldman Managing Director makes. I can also tell you that this contractor is treated very differently than the guy from Goldman would be treated.
The problem with using “ one's relationship to the means of production” is that everyone who has a job is producing. That is one of the many reasons why the Marxist view of class is not useful.
If you read the linked article, and particularly the first graphic, you will see a more useful definition.
Production should be understood in terms of producing a surplus. Society produces a surplus and then uses that surplus, investing it in developments and luxuries and so on. For example, this is how we know that Roman peasants were exploited. The empire just took their grain. The grain surplus then fed the city. Was this a mutually beneficial relationship? Sometimes, but the ball got rolling because, a few thousand years ago, a bunch of assholes started figuring out that you could steal people's food, and then use that stolen food to feed an army. Then, your big dumb army can go out and steal even more food. This onset of class rule and the state was hardly a charitable act. The abuses of it continue to this day.
It is about your proximity to capital. Capital investment and capital return is not the same thing as productive labor. Like a landlord doesn't have to work hard to have tenants pay their bills, in fact this the entire draw of being a landlord - convert your property into capital and accrue a passive income. Unsurprisingly, we find society divided into two dominating poles, those with a lot of capital, who are in the commanding heights of our economy, and those who can only give their labor, who must take orders. The PMC is a middling layer, like a gentry.
Profits go to the top and then they pay off the government. That's class rule. Denying it is akin to asserting a flat earth! Not good!
Did you read the linked article? It does not appear so.
I never denied class. That is why I have written multiple articles on the topic... which you apparently did not bother to read before you told me that I was wrong.
I think that my articles give a much more sophisticated view of class than yours.
The problem with your analysis is that it neglects individuals and how much youths made life decisions that affect their life outcomes. You also neglect the critical importance of age. Twenty-something’s are all “poor,” but the vast majority move up into the Top 20% later in life.
Very few people are born with "capital investment" and they still have a very high standard of living compared to virtually every person in world history.
The vast majority earn their money by work, savings and investment. Today, over 10% of the American population is a millionaire, and among retirees, it is far higher.
You also neglect who similar those with lots of capital are with PMC and college-educated people. It is all one class. Their similarities in attitudes are far bigger than their differences.
I never denied class. I am just arguing that the classic Marxist understanding of class is near useless (and yours sounds an awful lot like his). There is a reason why Marx's predication were completely wrong. It was that his assumption were incorrect. Do not make the same mistake.
Marx was not wrong. He predicted that commodity production based on exchange value would break down, and it did, we have been on a fiat economy for the last few decades - which is a political dollar and not a value dollar - which, seemingly, is the only way through which profits can still be extracted. Modern economies are more akin to a demented socialism-for-the-rich compared to what Marx understood as capitalism. This is the rise of national capitalists, also predicted in Marxist theory. The collapse of exchange value was predicted (or hoped) to lead to an immediate political struggle to seize power, and sure, this was in error. In America, the capitalist class outflanked this, with the New Deal. Ultimately, I believe the balance of forces played out in this manner owing to imperialism - which is when nations enter into a class relation. You are probably sitting on 500 little trinkets in your room that were all made in Mexico India Pakistan China, and you go to the grocery store in winter and buy avocados but you know the guy who plucked them sure as shit doesn't have his own avocados to buy for himself in the winter. America did not having nothing left to lose but their chains, but saw a world which we could rope into chains, and over the next few decades, this was successfully accomplished. I believe we are in a declining or decaying period and this is reflected in near-universal public sentiment that our nation is on the wrong track (something like 80% when polled).
Appealing to age does not sway me much. Money makes money, and this results in an extreme explosion of concentrated wealth, which is the capitalist class. They have excessive power that is used to secure personal interests that are choking us as a social whole, and yes, this extends not only at the tippy top but radiates outward as decreasingly less power as you go down the totem pole. Cars are an example of this, first, a toy for the rich, imposed on all of us, now, all of us have to live this way, with our personal tanks, it is an enormous drain on our production, horrible for the planet, horrible for developing authentic and vibrant communities, but we atomized, and trapped, stuck in traffic, hating traffic. Land ownership is another example of this, we need massive infrastructure revolutions - high speed rail, and massive constructions of housing, we are being left in the dust technologically and crushed under eyewatering prices, but a million petty fiefdoms are all out here to scream "Me! Me! Me!" and we all suffer for it. I don't see how we get out of this, there is a mass construction of housing we would need would to decrease prices, but the economy of housing treats it as an investment which can only ever appreciate in value, which is insane, but if you want a roof over your head, you have to play the game, or shell out big rent money to those who got in before you. And, obviously, this is resulting in an increasing share of people who don't have a stake of land, and are paying more money out of their pocket to get by as a punishment for daring to breath.
LOL
Anyone who starts with “ Marx was not wrong” cannot be taken seriously. You obviously do not know the basics of Marxist theory. You are only stringing together words that you think make you sound like it.
Even doctrinaire Marxists realized that he was wrong in his predictions over a century ago. Just read critiques of Marx during that time period.
We should always take a step back and remember that nothing good in the world comes about through unkind words aimed at fellow citizens.
Making an honest statement to someone is not “unkind.” Particularly coming from a person who is going around defending Marxist ideology, which was the moral basis for murdering roughly 100 million people. That might be a little more "unkind" than being honest.
Pointing out an obviously incorrect statement is also not “unkind.”
Telling people that they are wrong without even reading what they said is far worse.
If you are not interested in reading my article on what I believe is a more useful perspective on class, fine.
Just do not respond that I am wrong, when you are obviously not interested in what I actually wrote, and then claim that I am the one who is “unkind.”
Colonial forces have ravaged humanity far more than those who have seeked to put an end to the despicable idea - that one human life could be worth more than another human life. And yet the comparative cost is never established - just hyperbolic proclamations of extreme communist criminality contrasted against, supposedly, a world full of liberal kindness and market kumbayah. But how does the balance of accounts appear when we include the partitions of the Arab world, the plunder against Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the mass cannibalism of WW1? What of the human cost for the slaughters to clear this land we write to each other within?
Look to how the class relationship applies itself between America and Mexico, to the detriment of us all - the malaise and poverty of our system collapsing under drug addiction and landlessness, such purchases - the only dopamine some people can get - fueling the cartels abroad with cash, who then use this cash to purchase guns from our advanced production. Drugs pour one way, guns pour the other, raising such incredible violence and corruptio, in many places like Mexico this is central in driving emigration, which, for those suffering from the colonial mindset, appears as a "migrant horde" threatening your rights to Pax Americana - the class relation appears as a national necessity, Deport Thy Neighbor!, through which Americans will fail to address the root cause of our concerns, because we are in an era where circling the wagons around our own cartels, imperial cartels, only wraps and tightens the noose around your own neck - for the great benefit of Wall Street and the political swamp creatures in Washington, who are happy to dominate an increasingly smaller and increasingly shittier empire of dirt now matter how much we all suffer for it.
"Telling people that they are wrong without even reading what they said is far worse" - I have read every word you have written in this chain. You are the one who has made the decision to dismiss presented material without address. If I want you to consider something, I'm going to spell it out for you, because what kind of ego must one possess to act entitled in substack comment section, I'm sorry, I am never going to consider the Total Collected Works of Michael Magoon (Vol 1). If I have missed this article you keep speaking of, it would be good to see it again, I scrolled through many of your articles on your profile and did not find anything relevant.
Boy, you just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper.
Marx was an excellent classical economist and critic of capitalism -- there can simultaneously be things about which he was wrong and other things about which he was not.
Marx was a political philosopher, not an economist.
And I was reacting to the comment "Marx was not wrong," which clearly implies that the commenter thought that Marx was correct in all his predictions. That is clearly not true.
I read the article. Everyone with a job may be producing, but how they produce can be very different, as can their expected outcomes from such production.
Thanks for taking the time...
Yes, and my class categories are based on "how they produce" and "their expected outcomes” plus other factors like marriage.
Your model has some compelling arguments, but has one glaring flaw. It assumes a far higher degree of permeability and mobility than actually exists. It assumes that one’s life choices, especially during schooling years, is practically the sole determinant of one’s eventual “class” placement.
Thousands of studies over time have borne out how much influence your family and community have over one’s financial outlook. If you’re born working class or lower class, chances are you’ll always be there, sheerly by dint of circumstances.
Upward mobility exists, surely. Some manage to claw their way up or simply get lucky. But if you’re lucky enough to be born into an affluent family, you’re far LESS likely to loose your status. You have layers upon layers of privilege and protection lower classes can’t even imagine.
Thanks for taking the time to read my article, and I appreciate the reply.
No, my model makes no assumptions on the "degree of permeability and mobility that actually exist.”
I go into more detail here about why social mobility is often an illusion.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/social-mobility-vs-upward-mobility
You and those “thousands of studies” are missing the powerful effect that genetics has on individuals' abilities and preferences. And those genetic traits are highly heritable. It is not privilege and protection that accounts for lower than "ideal levels of social mobility", it is genetics.
I argue that we need to acknowledge those inherent differences and try to leverage them into material progress and upward mobility.
And don’t forget that two of the three critical life choices are full-time work and marriage. Those are two choices where the vast majority of humanity have been able to make the right choice. Even medieval peasants, who were clearly not privileged.
You have an interesting take in this Note - almost like we read two different Notes.
I forced myself to read your link because you have written so many comments in this thread. Your diagram is useful as far as it goes, but putting the offspring of all three classes in one box probably doesn't map onto any reality I have encountered where either the opportunities afforded nor the constraints upon subsequent "life choices" are concerned.
Thanks for taking the time to read. I am not sure what you mean by:
"putting the offspring of all three classes in one box"
In the diagram one class corresponds to one class.
I don't understand the rest of your comment either. If you are referring to social mobility, I deal with that in this article.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/social-mobility-vs-upward-mobility