>Right, this is fundamentally wrong. The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income.
I do think it's interesting to look at class from the Marxist perspective, but eh, the Marxist terminology I know is sloppy and inexact at the intersections of class; where a whole lot of the action happens.
Petite bourgeoisie refers both to me, the owner-operator of capital goods who must add his labour in order for those capital goods to produce value, as well as to those who own nothing but manage everything; managers of large companies who might not own any stock at all except for the options given as payment, people employed by the capitalist class to do the actual work of managing capital (and yes, it is complex and difficult (difficult in the sense of difficult to get right, not difficult in the sense of physical difficulty) work.)
I can not imagine two classes of people who are more different. I mean, your owner-operators? The means of production we own? we know intimately and control absolutely. Sure, we might take on apprentices from time to time, and we might delegate some of the less critical work, but room for delegation is limited, mostly because any mistake or misfortune that decreases the value of the capital good we operate generally harms us directly. I still assemble all my servers, because nobody else cares about 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 errors introduced by improper ESD control. But me? I care because I'm the one who has to get up at 4am and deal with the problem. I'm the one who has to make apologies to the customers, and I'm the one who gets to watch my customer base shrink when those sorts of problems happen. So yeah; I'm sure I could pay some kid ten bucks an hour to assemble servers... but generally speaking? I don't. I have people I trust with root that I won't let touch hardware. It's better, sometimes, to do some things yourself.
Your managers? Generally, they have much broader and shallower knowledge. They are all about delegation; not only delegating the decisions, and the work, but also delegating the risk. If a manager screws up, the worst thing that might happen is that they lose their job and any future compensation, usually not even that.
Managers? Managers control the largest corporations around. Owner-operators, usually, control very small operations.
Moreover, the Manager's customers are the owners. Really, the Manager only needs to be perceived as compitent by the capitalists that own the company; the perceptions of the employees and customers don't matter except in how they change the perceptions of the capitalist-class owners of the company.
Personally, I would argue that this manager class; those hired by the owners to manage what the owners have no time, ability, or interest in managing, are now a more powerful class than the actual owners. Mutual funds and index funds are very popular. How many here actually vote the stock they own? Not many, I'd wager. The Managers control most corporations, really, to a greater extent than the owners do. I mean, yeah, every now and again, one of the capitalists tries to fight the managers; even when the capitalist is clearly right he often loses to the manager.
> the Marxist terminology I know is sloppy and inexact at the intersections of class;
I would say that your definition of 'sloppy and inexact' is sloppy and inexact. ;) But that's slightly trolling. The definitions are pretty simple, I'd argue that you're meaning to say that you don't feel they map to today's class structure cleanly.
> I can not imagine two classes of people who are more different.
There's two things about this: 1, in Marx's time, this was generally much simpler. Things were more clear then. 2, the idea is that your incentives are the same: you'll be upholding bourgeoisie society. The whole point of the 'petite bourgeois' designation refers to the awkwardness of a group of people who _should_ be proletariat, but have juuuust enough incentive to act against that interest, because they're almost bourgeoise.
That said, point #1 is why I prefer to talk about later thinkers who have modified and extended Marxism over the years, rather than stick to Marx's teachings only.
>2, the idea is that your incentives are the same: you'll be upholding bourgeoisie society. The whole point of the 'petite bourgeois' designation refers to the awkwardness of a group of people who _should_ be proletariat, but have juuuust enough incentive to act against that interest, because they're almost bourgeoise
It's more complex than that. And the explanation I always got was that the petit bourgeois acted against their own interest because they aspired to be and thought of themselves as likely to become part of the capitalist class, not that they shared real interest with the capitalist class.
Management actively steals from the capitalist class. The last thing that management wants, for instance, is shareholder rights. In fact, they side with labour more often than they side with capital, as far as I can see. Look at Yahoo in 2008. Any fool could have seen that the Microsoft buyout offer was the best yahoo could do. And Yahoo shareholders clamoured to make the deal. But management killed the deal, siding with the employees, and destroying a great deal of value for the capitalists.
One can argue, in fact, that labour rights (which is to say, making it more complex and legally dangerous to hire or fire someone) is in the best interest of management, as it means that a Capitalist would have to learn significantly more before they could take an active role in managing what they own.
Owner-operators... culturally, you see that same aspiring up against our own interest. Our interests are aligned with the capitalists on labour issues, certainly; Much like the capitalists and unlike management, we want to be able to hire and fire without complexity, and as a class, we generally don't value job security, or really even comprehend why job security is such a huge deal to the workers. But otherwise? We have radically different interests. Owner operators are just as likely, if not more likely to need 'safety net' type social services than similarly skilled workers. One can make a good argument that owner-operators benefited more than any other class from the affordable care act.
In fact, on one of the biggest issues of the day, owner-operators have interests aligned with the workers against the capitalists: Capital gains taxes. Nearly all owner operators, outside of real-estate, pay full income taxes on most of their income; We'd be better off if the government taxed all income as income and just lowered the income tax rate to make up for it. And the difference in what you pay is huge. Like more than 50%. This is the primary reason why everyone thinks that an exit strategy is so important; building up a company that can be sold to a capitalist is the most realistic way for an owner operator to pay that lower capital gains rate. It's hugely damaging, too; it makes us act like management; like our customers are the capitalists rather than the people who buy our products or services.
Capitalists and management (through stock grants/options) get to pay the (much lower) capital gains rate on most of their income.
I do think it's interesting to look at class from the Marxist perspective, but eh, the Marxist terminology I know is sloppy and inexact at the intersections of class; where a whole lot of the action happens.
Petite bourgeoisie refers both to me, the owner-operator of capital goods who must add his labour in order for those capital goods to produce value, as well as to those who own nothing but manage everything; managers of large companies who might not own any stock at all except for the options given as payment, people employed by the capitalist class to do the actual work of managing capital (and yes, it is complex and difficult (difficult in the sense of difficult to get right, not difficult in the sense of physical difficulty) work.)
I can not imagine two classes of people who are more different. I mean, your owner-operators? The means of production we own? we know intimately and control absolutely. Sure, we might take on apprentices from time to time, and we might delegate some of the less critical work, but room for delegation is limited, mostly because any mistake or misfortune that decreases the value of the capital good we operate generally harms us directly. I still assemble all my servers, because nobody else cares about 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 errors introduced by improper ESD control. But me? I care because I'm the one who has to get up at 4am and deal with the problem. I'm the one who has to make apologies to the customers, and I'm the one who gets to watch my customer base shrink when those sorts of problems happen. So yeah; I'm sure I could pay some kid ten bucks an hour to assemble servers... but generally speaking? I don't. I have people I trust with root that I won't let touch hardware. It's better, sometimes, to do some things yourself.
Your managers? Generally, they have much broader and shallower knowledge. They are all about delegation; not only delegating the decisions, and the work, but also delegating the risk. If a manager screws up, the worst thing that might happen is that they lose their job and any future compensation, usually not even that.
Managers? Managers control the largest corporations around. Owner-operators, usually, control very small operations.
Moreover, the Manager's customers are the owners. Really, the Manager only needs to be perceived as compitent by the capitalists that own the company; the perceptions of the employees and customers don't matter except in how they change the perceptions of the capitalist-class owners of the company.
Personally, I would argue that this manager class; those hired by the owners to manage what the owners have no time, ability, or interest in managing, are now a more powerful class than the actual owners. Mutual funds and index funds are very popular. How many here actually vote the stock they own? Not many, I'd wager. The Managers control most corporations, really, to a greater extent than the owners do. I mean, yeah, every now and again, one of the capitalists tries to fight the managers; even when the capitalist is clearly right he often loses to the manager.