Who Counts As Working Class? | Jacobin Show

Every Wednesday at 6 PM ET, Jen Pan, Ariella Thornhill, and Paul Prescod will host a new episode of The Jacobin Show, offering socialist perspectives on class and capitalism in the twenty-first century, the failures of liberalism, and the prospects of rebuilding a left labor movement in the US.

Our guest is David Calnitsky, assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Western Ontario.

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[carissaguadron]

This is the best show on YouTube right now. Hands down.

[markandresen]

There's no question that employers have too much power over employees lives, which are, effectively, powerless.

[evederooy]

Thank you, this episode really moved the needle ito understanding the relational class dynamics.

[rickmolina]

I love listening to these two intelligent ladies. :)

[fahadsajid]

Enjoyed David's other Jacobin talk on viable designs of political-economy institutions under socialism, but a bit disappointed in this to be honest. Not only was this a lot longer than it needed to be, there was no discussion whatsoever of the composition or boundaries of the "working class, " making the title click-baity. For anyone interested in a smart and accessible discussion on the constitution of the "working class, " I would highly recommend Peter Meiksins 1986 article in The New Left Review entitled "Beyond the Boundary Question." It's probably behind a paywall, so reach out, I guess, if you'd like me to send it to you. But one thing that we didn't get from this presentation is that David seems to subscribe to Erik Olin Wright's view on the question, which doesn't consider a two-class understanding of class structure to be very relevant or useful in post-Fordist economies. Meiksins has a thoughtful response to Wright's work, so, an unpacking of that debate would've been helpful.

[avedoncarol]

Wow, that was smashing! Some terrific framing just for a start. And the bit about the Shmoos kinda blew my mind. I vaguely remembered them but I think I wasn't really reading the funnies much at the time and I didn't notice what he was doing. And now that you mention it, I'm shocked that all this was happening right there in the funny pages. And Al Capp, of all people! Just... wow.

[bradkohl]

We need a 2, 000 dollar a month UBI period!

[dannyketch]

Not that much of the show actually dealt with the question "Who Counts As Working Class?"

[levileveridge]

Watch Sorry We Missed You and I, Daniel Blake - pretty much any Ken Loach movie. Watch Michael Apted UP series, which follows a group of people every 7 years from when they were 7 through to latest installment of 63 years old, then you see how class unfolds over a life time.

[anonosaurus]

As a right winger, I like this show, but I have one comment. How about hosting someone who does genuinely hard or dangerous work? One of my criticisms of the western Left is that there are too many academicians and professors who a big megaphone, and not nearly enough garbage workers, pipefitters, electricians, waitresses, janitors, landscapers, ironworkers, retail workers, gravediggers, etc., etc., . who are the faces and the voices of the Left in the US, Canada, the UK, etc.,
Let's hear from these people. Let's hear what they want. Fewer theories. More real-life issues.

[tidakada]

No actually, disappeared or murdered native men are statistically less likely to have their cases looked at and solved. Thanks.

[patrickholt]

Already in the Bible you have a two-class class analysis with classes which are correlational: rich and poor. Neither exists except in comparison to the other, and throughout the text it is made clear that the processes which create the one class also create the other. Some are rich through the relative impoverishment of the rest, and the characteristic attitudes and behaviours of the rich, as well as those economic and political processes which create and deepen inequality are all included in the Biblical term "wickedness", which is applied to nothing else. As Jose Porphirio Miranda detailed the Biblical explanation of inequality and poverty is spoliation, primarily through profit on transactions including the hire of labour, money-lending at interest (usury, regardless of the rate of interest), and the renting out of land as well as sale of goods. Poverty is also created by primitive accumulation, notably the stealing of land rights from widows and orphans, hence the well known Biblical concern for both. Marx adopted the same two-class analysis in his economic modelling, which works using that assumption, that there are only two economically effective classes, those who produce and those who appropriate and control the distribution of the surplus value produced. This is not to say that there aren't other classes, the intermediary classes, and variants of bourgeois, as for example rentiers, industrial bourgeois and merchant capital. But the identity of the proletariat is rather simple - everyone, regardless of the kind of business or even whether the employer is public or private sector, who has to work for someone else for all or the bulk of their income, and who isn't part of management or married to the business owner. It isn't restricted to mines and manufacturing plants, it isn't just unskilled workers, and it is always threatened with reduction of income in the absence of strong and militant unions and left parties due to the requirements of surplus value extraction. Complicating the question only helps to hide from working people their potential power as the vast majority, which they need to be able to recognise to find the hope and courage to take up the common struggle against the otherwise all powerful capitalist ruling class.

This seemed to be pitched at an undergraduate level, which isn't necessarily the best thing for promoting socialist thinking outside academic circles. Overall I find myself agreeing with other commentors that this betrays the distance between the academic left and the working class, in which the latter tend to become a "they" who "we" have to obtain "help" for. Whereas the whole point is to subordinate ourselves to facilitate workers to obtain power in the workplace and politically, which is the only way to secure working class interests. Middle class liberal-leftism looks to me like a variation of the ostentatious bourgeois charity that Republicans like to practise, which requires the perpetuation of pitiable conditions so that public honour can be purchased by public "charity work" and benefaction. Liberal-leftists get to practise their charity and purchase honour on the back of pitiable conditions by benefaction through public policy, so long as workers are kept disorganised and demobilised so that the working class cannot be its own uppitty collective agent and can continue to be treated, as the left of the Democracts do, as clients rather than their political masters. The right of the party openly serves capital and scorns labour, and seeks to lose working class votes.

[Jivansings]

Good god in the 70’s the path to buying a house was clear and well lit, it was inevitable to millions of workers. Working today, these same millions of workers, are balancing how to eat and still pay rent. So from nearly certain home ownership to “not dying” is one way to plot the movement of America from the 70’s for the exact same workers.

[iculus]

Maybe we could take all the money given to the corporate and financial sectors in COVID relief bills and give it to service sector folks who are truly effected by COVID circumstances. Then we could pass the hat for all those suffering financial and big business actors. You like that idea, Kamala?

[bing]

Jacobin is by far the most revolutionary wing of the US state department 🤣😂🤣

[charlierodriguez]

People who shower after work is an appropriate example.

[electrohousemusic]

The working class is simply the section of working people who dont make or barely makes a profit from their labor. The majority of the working class make a profit from their labor, therefore, they dont consider themselves to be exploited, nor do the have a proletariat consciousness, nor do they care about having worker control and socialism.

[ericdecker]

‘The problem in the US is NOT classism.’

Is that so, Jen? I guess if you think classism is individualized prejudice between members of different social classes. I hope everyone sees this is the same logic that allows liberals to ignore systemic racism. The antagonism of capitalists towards labor rights, fair and equal housing, progressive income and wealth taxes is absolutely classist. The ruling class belongs to the bourgeoisie and world their power to the detriment of the proletariat.

Classism is by no means the only problem but to dismiss it entirely is shortsighted and frankly unsupported by any evidence.

[chriswalker]

Thanks. This was interesting. Got a little wierd, in a good way... I'm not above being held by the hand and walked through explanations with simple stories (Einstein took the same approach to get to his theory of relativity afterall) - I think sometimes it is helpful to ask simple questions that get to the core of issues that people can often mistakenly think we already have correct answers to.

I've been learning about Marxism just by myself the last two years (so it can be done that way I guess?). I'd got a basic 101 understanding pretty quickly, but I tried to get deeper than that. For example - whether this is truly too abstract to be helpful or not? - in the end for me, I understood The Labour Theory of Value - at least the controversy about it compared with The Subjective Theory of Value - by using a simple analogy of a market place of computers cracking encryption codes (made of primes). The argument then is "are primes independant of time?" - classic.

But I guess the main thing (as I understand) I got is Marx is saying that the market acts 'like' the previous feudal exploitaton - and I thought it was interesting to understand how the market does this (through all the ways Marx explains - or at least the introductory books, texts, audios and videos I've consumed explain it).

I'm intersting in looking into 'field theories' (I've seen these in connection with Marx's economics), which may end up being too complex for me (as a lay person). But I think they are relevant for how 'exploitation' and 'oppression' intersect with each other. I've come across field theories before with physics (not an expert on) - here we have the problem of basically micro theories (perhaps similar to idealistic micro economic theories as opposed to materialist macro economic theories?) giving wildly different answers for the expansion rate of the universe compared with macro observations of the universe itself. Relates to complex questions about 'emergence' and 'causality'. But anyway.

Before getting into Marx I'd gotten into existentialism first. Mainly through Heidegger, with his catergories in 'being and time' of 'present' and 'ready' - where 'present' would feed into a perspective that could account for 'oppression' based on the colour of someone's skin for example, and 'ready' would feed more into 'relational' accounts between people: basically the swamp scene from The Empire Strikes Back where Yoda talks about the force as being a macro relation between ourselves and the tree and the rock, not about some micro attribute of 'crude matter'.

But before even getting into existentialism I had been going through the controversial issue of transgender, which I explored the 'neuroscience of transgender' pretty deeply - reading lots of papers on the subject.

Now I am coming full circle by thinking about how arguments that fail to convince people about economic anti-austerity share parallel's with arguments that fail to convince people to respect trans people.

My 101 take on transgender uses a model based on furniture vs a room (which does map onto what was being said about with 'oppression' vs 'exploitation'): basically that sex (either 'physical', 'biological', or even 'sexual attraction') is like the furniture in a room, while gender is like the room the furniture is in. The argument for trans people is that it doesn't make sense for a room to be a dining room just because it has dining furniture in it if it is upstairs and nowhere near a kitchen. With transphobes basically saying that a room is a dining room because it has dining furniture in it - end of story, don't oppress my freeze peach.

So the 'room' is basically relational and marco - relating to gender identity. While the 'furniture' is basically 'objective' and micro - relating to 'sex'. So logically from this, I'd be saying that gender is a means through which people get 'exploited' (for example 'gender roles') while 'sex' is a means through which people get 'oppressed' (for example sex based violence against women). The pickle for trans people is they don't have a refuge from exploitation into the oppressed camp and vice versa - but this is true for everbody at some level. The 'bathroom bill' is a good example of this - how are trans people supposed to be able to work if they can't even use the bathroom?

btw the divisions I used where based on neuroscience (as I understood it): basically relating to objected orientated 'fear' (i.e. furniture - sex) or space orientated 'anxiety' (i.e. room - gender). Or gender in relation to our motor sensory cortex (in the dorsal brain) vs sex in relation to our perceptions (like colour perception int he ventral brain). LOL - I even directly related bathroom oppression to biology and transgender. This is all science that is open to be used for or against people - I'd speculate that trans people are being used (like other minorities before them) in an insidious and diliberate way by people with full knowledge of how to protect their own interests in the complex web of 'oppression' and 'exploitation' based on decades of scientific research.

In terms of economics we have micro idealistic 'household' narritives of the economy ('tighten the belt') used to push for austerity. While we have macro materialistic 'national' narratives of the economy (stimulus and welfare) used to push against austerity. [How far does 'gender' reach into the macro? And how narrow does 'sex' confine ourselves into the micro?]

[levileveridge]

Bourdieu gets class - it’s habitus. It’s in your body, in your language, in your consciousness. I think tying it to socio-economic factors is wrong. You have to have grown up poor and have experienced lack in order to be shaped by it. It’s a different thing to have received a good education and had enough coming up, but then to fall on difficult times. This is the déclassé experience of thwarted expectations.