Ask Prof Wolff: Class Analysis and Classism

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "[T]he Marxist in me feels that the word 'classism' is also some kind neoliberal aerosol to make social class merely a function of prejudice or a lack equal opportunity or something. I am wondering if you could shine a more analytical light on my intuition or refute it as the case may be."

This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

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“Hennelly brilliantly analyzes our capitalist crises and how individuals cope with them, tragically but often heroically. He helps us draw inspiration and realistic hope from how courageous Americans are facing and fixing a stuck nation.” - Richard D. Wolff
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[Viroquan]

As a rural poor living in the US, I feel the sting of classism every single day.
Only Americans don’t understand which class we’re in.
When I lived in the UK - everyone knew which economic class they were in. Working class, lower middle class, etc.
Middle Class there means PMC - have power.
Americans need to know what class you’re in to know which side you are on!

[malenateves]

Thank you so much for your lectures. I found your channel from Status Coup. You explain things in a way everyone can understand. I appreciate you! You have given me hope, and that is rare these days.

[renardleblanc]

As a great thinker once said: "Be kind to people, and ruthless to systems." The problem with class isn't any one individual person in one or another other class... the problem with class is a persons relationship to the broader system.
If you can pull a lever and have 10 thousand workers fired so that you and a half dozen CEO's can claim a loss on your corporations taxes that year, the question isn;t "are you the kind of person who would pull that lever." The question should be: "WHY DOES THAT LEVER EVEN EXIST? why do we have one of those?"

[laurajames]

I wrote a paper on classism for college 20 years ago. I got a B - "there is no such word!"

[notquitedone]

I like George Carlin's definition of America's economic classes (paraphrased): the upper class has all the money, pays none of the taxes; the middle class (slowly disappearing) does all the work, pays all the taxes; the poor are there just to scare the (hell) out of the middle class, keep them going back to those (dismal, dissatisfying) jobs. He laid all that out 30 years ago. I love you, Prof. Wolff!

[JohnSmith-vmrx]

Dude your channel should be so much more popular than it is. I don’t get it.

[esego]

In the US workers are imbued with the idea that they are not working class. The myth that everyone who works hard can rise in their class status is a major obstacle to class consciousness. most people think that they are "middle class." My first experience as a paid laborer brought home to me the fact that I was cog in a vast machine beneath those who even claim to be middle class. I was a proletarian pure and simple.

[davieskelmen]

What do you think Prof. On what is going on in Kenya with the new movement developing where a popular movement is emerging breaking away from the traditional ethnic grouping to class grouping?

The ideology of this movement focuses on bottom- up approach to economic development as opposed to the trickle down economic model.

[MrDXRamirez]

Now that we have the class concept understood the struggle concept of class is the hard part that comes next.

[jessikabat]

You always share such valuable insights in your videos, thanks Professor!

[lisamay]

Then there are those of us who grew up solidly in the middle class but upon entering adulthood, found ourselves situated in the working class despite having higher education and a long career that didn't pay very well. I'm one of those people. I still consider myself middle class although my income doesn't reflect that. My upbringing taught me middle class values and I still hold on to them. Self-respect, strong work ethic, strong morals, striving to improve myself, and respect and compassion for others less fortunate. So, to which class do I belong?

[WatchfulHunter]

I am a social psychology research specialist. We need more research, movies and books on US classism in the US today. How higher education and money blocks the majority from happiness, peace, financial independence and social connections. Who owns America today?

[hilaryporter]

That explanation will certainly make me tie down the person I am speaking to and insist that they cannot use the words class system, without first defining which system they are talking about. In the UK the term is generally used in two ways. 'Birth right' (a stupid classification) and 'Money' (no matter how nefariously acquired). Way down the pecking order is 'Intellectual'. Intellectual only goes up the pecking order if it coincides with money. That lack of insight by the population is what has lead to young people having to pay for an education, something which should have been their birth right. Classification matters, but more emphasis and importance should be given to the classification that can benefit the whole of society the most. That has to be 'Intellectual' (education).

[tanujSE]

There is proletariat, middle class, rich and bourgeois
On the farm side small, middle and large farmers

[AdelSaeedPersian]

Well in fact, those who have power and not much wealth function as instruments of the wealthy "in the last analysis" / "by and large" and that disqualifies "power" as the "abstract universal". Same is true with wealth itself as only wealth which is capital in circulation "in the last analysis" the wealth that is the "abstract universal" of all wealth.
I don't understand how Marx is ambigious about Capital as the totality not power not wealth not class or other "more concretes".

[markjohnson]

There is this valley, one class of people in it decide to learn to swim. Then there is this flood in the valley. The class of people who decided to learn to swim make it out. The others do not. Natural selection or classism?

[PoliticalEconomy]

Why should the capitalist class have exclusive control over the MOP, government, the income distribution, and the social surplus? the 4 most important institutions that dictate people’s lives. These institutions should be collectively and democratically controlled for the people according to socialist principles.

[DearSX]

When you can't use the same bubbler or bathroom, that would be a caste

[khosrofakhreddini]

Who invented the social classes? Was it the landlords, slaveholders or capitalists?
A great probability, if you trace the question back to the emergence of human societies, is that those who were more muscular and stronger divided society into classes, the strong and the weak ones. Based on this division and further development of human societies, slavery, feudalism and capitalism emerged, which led and administered societies with their own rules.
The core of the marxist theory is the human being, namely "homo sapiens" and that means nothing else than "the rational human being" an assumption that today's human being in the course of his evolutionary course (homo erectus, homo neanderthalensis, homo faber etc.) and as the highest developed form of the human species, ie "the rational (or intelligent) human being".
But what is reason? Reason is nothing than the ability to distinguish between good and bad. In fact, however, reason is the rarest element on this planet, wherever you want to look for it, because if humans were gifted with reason or were at that stadium of development, the world would look completely different today.
Perhaps Marx and Engels were a bit premature in their assumption that today's human being should be classified as homo sapiens.
In addition, the goal of a communist social order is nothing other than to transfer the power of the ruling class to the producers of a society, namely the working class - meanwhile the element "power" doesn't dissolve into thin air and is retained but is only displaced and we also know that " power "is the source of deterioration and very, very abusive, although behind every law there is a cavalry, for this see also the so-called people's rule, i.e. democracies. The current state of the world, which stands on the edge, is not least the result and the effect of democratic societies - and thus creating a just society, which according to Marx himself "the history of humanity is nothing other than the history of the class struggle".
And to be honest, I don't want to give any person on this planet any privileges because he / she produces something, because even a company boss who runs his company does nothing but produce something, but that he / she gets the lion's share of the profits company claims for itself, has to do with his/her property, i.e. its capital and its interest. To eradicate this supposed injustice one would have to expropriate them and that is a long story in itself (of course I'm not talking about Bezos and a homeless American - in a society governed by reason, something like that cannot happen in principle and is excluded from the start). One has to know that American capitalism has produced far more housing in the course of its history than the marginalized homeless.
On the other hand, practical experience shows a completely different picture of reality that homogeneous societies are not good societies, see the so-called communist, nazi, muslim societies such as China, which is nothing than slavery or stone age communism armed with atomic bombs and the internet with party bosses as new rulers on the top who are nothing but the most corrupt, cruel and exploiting capitalists that ever existed, or North Korea, the islamic republic, pure barbarism and cannibalism in the 21st century etc.
One can of course roll up these briefly mentioned points and describe, criticize, analyze, discus and explain them elaborately, but that is beyond the scope of this comment and also my patience.

[throwaway]

Bezos and Musk downvoted this video HAHAHAA