it insists on this 1800s argument/fantasy about factory workers. In an age and economy where 70% of people work in the services sector.
It insists nothing of the sort. It makes no difference whether one labors for manufacturing industry wages or service industry wages. Either way one is proletariat, selling one’s labor to the bourgeoisie for survival.
I was a freelancer and went back to “selling my labor” because the accounting, customer management, marketing, etc overhead were not worth the money or the stress. I could go back anytime but prefer work/life balance and stability. Am I proletariat now?
Yes, you are proletariat now. I too have vacillated between proletariat and petit bourgeois over the years, sometimes an employee, sometimes a freelancer, and sometimes a business owner with employees. Class isn’t a measure of income or a vibe, it’s one’s relationship to capital.
Fair enough. But I also get RSUs as compensation so I own a (tiny) part of the company. And a bunch of others via ETF. So I’m part bourgeois!
I just fail to see this “we must seize the means of production” Motto being applicable to current (western) capitist countries. Plenty of people can do that just by giving their notice and registering an LLC (or SL, or GmbH, or whatever your local equivalent is).
And not only highly educated elites (which arguably in the US is quite discriminatory, in Europe we have free higher education) but plenty of working class jobs can do it.
You want to seize the means of production? Put the pitchfork down, fill form 123abc and godspeed.
It insists nothing of the sort. It makes no difference whether one labors for manufacturing industry wages or service industry wages. Either way one is proletariat, selling one’s labor to the bourgeoisie for survival.
Congratulations, you are now petit bourgeois.
As are large swaths of the population. Or can be.
I was a freelancer and went back to “selling my labor” because the accounting, customer management, marketing, etc overhead were not worth the money or the stress. I could go back anytime but prefer work/life balance and stability. Am I proletariat now?
Yes, you are proletariat now. I too have vacillated between proletariat and petit bourgeois over the years, sometimes an employee, sometimes a freelancer, and sometimes a business owner with employees. Class isn’t a measure of income or a vibe, it’s one’s relationship to capital.
Fair enough. But I also get RSUs as compensation so I own a (tiny) part of the company. And a bunch of others via ETF. So I’m part bourgeois!
I just fail to see this “we must seize the means of production” Motto being applicable to current (western) capitist countries. Plenty of people can do that just by giving their notice and registering an LLC (or SL, or GmbH, or whatever your local equivalent is).
And not only highly educated elites (which arguably in the US is quite discriminatory, in Europe we have free higher education) but plenty of working class jobs can do it.
You want to seize the means of production? Put the pitchfork down, fill form 123abc and godspeed.
You’ve solved capitalism: everyone can simply fill out a government form and become petit bourgeois.
I haven’t solved it, it was like that when I came :)