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0:00
You’re probably familiar with the mainstream conception of social class that separates people into lower-class, middle-class, and upper-class, based on certain income levels. For example, we might think of someone who makes €20,000 per year or less as lower-class, or working-class; €40,000 per year as middle-class; and €100,000 per year as upper-class. It doesn’t matter how you make that money – according to this bourgeois conception,
0:24
the determining factor in deciding your class is the quantity of money received. But let’s consider two cases of people making €20,000 per year. One is a factory worker, and the other is a small-time landlord who owns a house that they rent out. The factory worker makes their money through working and receiving an hourly wage, while the landlord makes their money from the labour of others (extracted through rent payments).
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By the earlier mainstream analysis, both should be seen as working class due to the identical income level of €20,000. But when we move to socialism, a society led by and in the interests of the working-class, only one of these people is significantly going to benefit – the factory worker. The landlord, on the other hand, is in trouble, because landlordism ends as we progressively abolish private property under socialism, meaning our former landlord is gonna have
1:07
to go get a job like everyone else. This shows that these two people – the worker and the landlord – have two very different sets of material interests based on how they make their money, despite having identical income levels. The worker is materially incentivised to bring about socialism, drastically improving the conditions for the working-class. The landlord is materially incentivised to maintain capitalism, because it’s the only
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way for them to continue to own private property and exploit workers, which is the source of their income. In fact, these two people are not members of the same class. One of them – our factory worker – is a member of the working-class, while the other – our modern landlord – is a member of the capitalist class. Let’s find out why. Welcome to Socialism 101: a series designed to help educate people with no prior knowledge
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on the basics of socialism and communism from an explicitly Marxist-Leninist and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist perspective with short and easily-digestible videos. Usually. If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and hit subscribe and turn on the notification bell below. Please share this video around on social media, Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc. as the YouTube algorithm is, to speak frankly, thoroughly fecking me over at the moment.
2:15
Today, we’re gonna talk about social class, first looking at the proletariat, then the bourgeoisie, then the petty-bourgeoisie. But I wanna give a quick heads-up; I’ll be providing quite strict definitions of the different classes here. For more advanced viewers who’d like to know why, I’ll be explaining this after the main video is finished – which is why you’ll see that this video is significantly longer than most of the other videos in this series. Okay, so what is a social class?
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“Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing
3:04
to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.” When we talk about class, we’re returning to that part of the Mode of Production called the “Relations of Production”, which you may remember from the second video in this series. Class is determined by our concrete relations to the means of production, which leads to certain roles that we fulfil within the productive processes in a given society.
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Under capitalism, the two main ways that we relate to production are as workers or as capitalists – workers and capitalists being those main roles. And this separates us into the two main classes: 1) the working-class, or proletariat; and (2) the capitalist class, or bourgeoisie. Now let’s consult our old friend Friedrich Engels to put some concrete definitions on these two classes; “By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern
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capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.” That’s it! If you own the means of production and the main way you make your money is through purchasing other people’s labour power (though wage labour), then you’re bourgeois.
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If, conversely, you don’t own the means of production, and the main way you make your money is through selling your labour power (either through an hourly wage or a salary), then you’re proletarian. Simple! At least it’s simple until we try to apply it to the real world and see that it’s not quite as black-and-white as it first might seem. As you can imagine, there’s a significant difference between a grocery shop worker who
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receives €20,000 a year from their job and a software developer who receives a salary of €80,000 per year. However, the difference between them is quantitative (that is, it concerns the quantity of money they receive) rather than qualitative (in that they both share the qualities of not owning the means of production and selling their labour power to survive – and therefore both fit Engels’ definition of the proletariat).
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While the grocery shop worker is a standard proletarian, there are also various sub-classes, or strata, within the proletariat to reflect the different conditions of its members. The software developer, like all high-earning professionals who get to enjoy a life of relative luxury under capitalism, belongs to a higher-up sub-class (or stratum) within the proletariat called the “labour aristocracy”. Now, that’s the high end of the proletariat.
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At the low end, we have what’s called the “lumpenproletariat” – which includes people who own no means of production, but are often unable to even sell their labour power legally and often end up resorting to a life of petty-crime. Think those who have to resort to robbery, low-level illegal drug-dealing, and so on in order to survive. So, that’s the proletariat, now let’s move onto the owning class: the capitalists, or the bourgeoisie.
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The bourgeoisie refers to those who own the means of production and employ wage labour which generates the majority of their income. Think medium-and-large business-owners who make most of their money from other people’s labour, not their own. Now, there’s a variety of strata within the bourgeoisie that relate quite differently to the global capitalist-imperialist system (some gain from it and support it - such as
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the imperialists themselves and the comprador bourgeoisie - while others see international capital as a threat to their local business and their livelihoods – such as the national bourgeoisie). But we’ll have to return to this topic at a later stage after we’ve covered imperialism as the current highest stage of capitalism in order to develop a stronger understanding of what this all means. So, this understanding of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie all maps on relatively
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easily to the popular ideas of the rich versus the poor, the 99% versus the 1%, and so on. But there’s also a group in the middle – between the average proletarian and the average bourgeois. This group is called the “petty-bourgeoisie”. For examples of this, think of a small business-owner or an independent tradesperson who makes most of their money through their own labour. And this causes all kinds of headaches for us as Marxists, because they own some small
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quantity of means of production, but the majority of their income doesn’t come from them purchasing others’ wage-labour, but rather from their own labour. And, with these characteristics, this group doesn’t quite fit Engels’ definition of either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. In fact, it occupies a qualitatively unique position of possessing elements of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, without fully satisfying the requirements for either one.
7:15
Let’s put a more concrete definition on it: “The petty bourgeoisie is that class which survives primarily by their own labor using their own small means of production. They do not sell their labor power to the capitalists, but neither do they (at least for the most part) exist by hiring wage labor” This would apply to a small business-owner who works in their own shop; to a small handicraftsman who sells the products he creates.
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It would also apply, for example, to a doctor with their own private practice. Remember, the main source of income for each of these is their own labour, rather than the hired wage-labour of others - though there may be a small amount of that involved, too, like if the doctor with the private practice has a hired secretary. Okay, so those are the main classes of capitalism. Today we’ve looked at class, or social class, particularly as it presents under capitalism.
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Of course, different systems have different relations of production and consequently different classes (such as feudalism’s peasants and landlords). But under capitalism there are two main classes; the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, as well as the petty-bourgeois class occupying an unusual position between the two. Within the proletariat, there are also notable sub-classes like the lumpenproletariat at the bottom-end, and the labour aristocracy at the top.
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Within the bourgeoisie, the most notable most notable sub-groups are the national bourgeoisie, the comprador bourgeoisie, and the full-blown imperialist bourgeoisie. It’s also important to note that while capitalism dominates the world right now, there are also still remnants of feudal relations of production, which is why you’ll still see peasants in many parts of the world. Next up, we’re gonna zoom out a bit and answer the question “What Is Marxism?”
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Thank you for watching this video – hopefully you’ve found it useful. I’m struggling financially at the moment, so please consider donating a euro or dollar per month on Patreon, or a once-off donation on Ko-Fi. Links in the description box below. Thank you to Rare Hero, Cormac Ó Broin, Dan Hunter, Red Corridor Raya, Christian Nipales, Daniel H., MLMinPractice, Roja, Libertarian Stalinist, Comrade Romano, Jason, Michaela
9:11
Schmid, Mammarius Hex, Ryan Hodgson, Donal O Coisdealbha, Gabriel Bailey, lepanneän, Hugh Jass, the rjienrlwey condition, Jess, Ian McShea, soup, Pontus, Hagen Michels, Evan Crossland, and Boricua Guerilla. Cheers, everyone agus slan go foil. … Okay, for those still here, the beginner’s Socialism 101 part’s over. From here on out, things are gonna get slightly more jargony and a lot less aesthetically focused.
9:35
But here’s some footage of dogs to visually occupy things while I talk, because who doesn’t love dogs? I want to quickly address some potential concerns that some may have, specifically around how I used the term “petty-bourgeois”, the lack of discussion of the “semi-proletariat”, “the Professional-Managerial Class”, and so on. I suspect some may argue that the class analysis put forward in this video is quite narrow – and maybe a bit mechanical.
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I’m gonna take a moment to explain why these are the positions I’ve put forward here in anticipation of some of the responses this video is likely to elicit from some of the more seasoned comrades in the audience. First and foremost, I‘ve been an active Marxist for about five years now, and over that time I’ve been wrong over and over again about many different things. I fully accept that I may be wrong about this, and I welcome criticism to help correct this,
10:17
addressing errors and blind spots so that we can collectively develop the correct position together. But this is where I’m at right now after studying and engaging with this topic with many comrades who are far smarter than me over the years. So, keeping that in mind, I want to explain why I omitted the larger and more expansive definition of the petty-bourgeoisie that includes highly-paid salaried professionals, many of those with state jobs, people in managerial positions, etc.
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We can see this definition on Marxists.org (which I’ll shorten for brevity’s sake): Petty-bourgeois 1) “The class of small proprietors (for example, owners of small stores), and general handicrafts people of various types.” This definition maps onto the definition of Petty-bourgeois proposed earlier in this video, so we’re in line so far. However, then Marxists.org gives a second definition of Petty-Bourgeois that I specifically
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didn’t put forward in this video: 2) “[The Petty-bourgeoisie] Also refers to the growing group of workers whose function is management of the bourgeois apparatus. These workers do not produce commodities, but instead manage the production, distribution, and/or exchange of commodities and/or services owned by their bourgeois employers. While these workers are a part of the working class because they receive a wage and their
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livelihood is dependent on that wage, they are seperated (sic) from working class consciousness because they have day-to-day control, but not ownership, over the means of production, distribution, and exchange.” There are a few serious issues with this definition. It appears to erroneously make “consciousness” the determining factor of a person’s class, completely overriding their objective material relations to the means of production.
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This definition concedes that they are workers and are part of the working class, but we don’t consider them working-class because somehow their subjective consciousness separates them from the rest of the proletariat (which stems from the privilege they experience relative to other workers as a result of having some measure of control over the means of production, though not ownership of the means of production).
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This poses a problem for Marxists as materialists, because this appears to be a philosophically idealist understanding of class. Class here is being determined more by one's thoughts and consciousness rather than their objective material conditions. It places primacy on the ideas, rather than on the material. For while the individuals in these positions may be more prone to being ideologically aligned with the bourgeoisie, they are still materially proletarian – as this definition even concedes.
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And we are materialists, so we have to try our best to begin our analyses with material reality, rather than on one’s notions about themselves which may lead to false consciousness. As Scott Harrison says in his essay, Comments on the Term ‘Petty Bourgeoisie’, when writing about this very topic, “there is blatant confusion between the petty bourgeois ideology of one section of the working class with what actual social class they should be considered to be objectively a part of.
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[…] The MLM goal, at least, is to define social classes on the basis of the different and distinct relationships that specific groups of people have to the means of production. Thus, as the proletariat (working class), bourgeoisie (capitalist class), and petty bourgeoisie (sometimes incorrectly identified with what is currently known as the “middle class”) should be properly defined, each is quite distinct and separate from the others.
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Yes, individuals may be part of one of these classes in some respects and part of another in other respects. (A worker may own some small number of shares of stock, for example.) But the classes themselves must be different and distinct and their definitions must not overlap. And specifically, those in each class should share a common relationship to the means of production that is not included in the definitions of other classes.
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If this condition is abandoned, social classes lose most of their analytical usefulness, as indeed has happened to the quintessential bourgeois term ‘middle class’.” If we return to Engels’ definition of the proletariat put forward earlier on, “the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live” (Engels, 1888), we can see very clearly that
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all of the people who are considered petty-bourgeois employees, such as public-school teachers, supervisors, etc., 100% meet these criteria. They don’t own the means of production and they’re forced to sell their labour power through wage labour in order to survive. Conversely, they don’t have anything to do with the definition of the bourgeoisie as “the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor” – they are none of those things.
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They aren’t the exploiters, although it is true that some of them (including supervisors and managers) play a role in increasing the level of exploitation that occurs in order to maximise profits for the capitalists. So, I argue that we need to have a clear and concrete definition of classes that’s rooted primarily in material reality. And this isn’t to deny the importance of understanding how some sections of the proletariat
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may be more amenable to revolutionary ideology, while others may be more prone to identifying with reactionary bourgeois ideology or harbour bourgeois consciousness. We absolutely need to study all of these phenomena in great depth. But our analysis must always, as materialists, be primarily rooted in material reality, and as such our analysis must begin with one’s objective material conditions – one’s concrete relations to the means of production.
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And from there, we can build on that and develop a deeper understanding of false consciousness and how bourgeois ideology has penetrated many strata of the proletariat. But as materialists we need to be able to clearly delineate between people’s ideologies and consciousness on one hand, and their objective class position based materially on their relations to the means of production on the other. I want to take a moment to say that this question of whether or not these workers are part of
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the proletariat is of great importance to us as socialists. Under the transition period of socialism, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, one of our main tasks is to abolish the bourgeoisie – to assimilate them to the proletariat. As everyone is then proletarian, there’s no longer class distinction, and the proletariat thus abolishes itself as we reach the classless society of communism. Now, under the socialist transition period, categorising teachers and doctors and other
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professionals as bourgeois or petty-bourgeois causes us an immediate problem, because our task as the dictatorship of the proletariat would then be to abolish them with the rest of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. As we can imagine when we think this through to the socialist transition period, it’s quite detrimental to the development of socialism to identify them as bourgeois or petty-bourgeois. Simply put, using one concrete example; we need doctors – we most definitely should
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not be trying to abolish them. Now, regarding the so-called Professional-Managerial Class, or PMC, I made a video about this some time back laying out many of the problems that have been discussed here (namely that it’s just not a class from a Marxist, materialist perspective – while still accepting that we do need to understand the unique features of these groupings as part of the proletariat). As for the “semi-proletariat”, I don’t see the necessity of this term.
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To the best of my knowledge, it appears to refer mostly to the lowest sections of the petty-bourgeoisie, who are themselves deeply exploited and in many cases in worse-off positions materially than the average proletarian. And this state of being deeply exploited is suggested to give these people a kind of “proletarian consciousness”, meaning their interests more closely align with the interests of the proletariat than the bourgeoisie.
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This falls into the same trap mentioned earlier where better-off sections of the proletariat are considered “petty-bourgeois” based on their consciousness, their ideology, and their political inclinations. And, though in reverse this time, this still gives primacy to ideas and consciousness over material reality. This group is objectively petty-bourgeois, in that they (to return to the earlier definition) survive primarily on their own labour, using their own small means of production, they
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don’t sell their labour power to the capitalists, nor do they exist for the most part by hiring wage labour. Nonetheless, they are extremely exploited in various ways. I would therefore suggest it’s better that we can clearly delineate their objective position as part of the petty-bourgeoisie, while also acknowledging that they are extremely likely to have what we might call “proletarian consciousness”, and are consequently very likely to be allies to the proletarian revolution.
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Okay, so those are my positions. Hopefully that explains my thinking a bit and helps to clarify why I left these categorisations out of the initial Socialism 101 part of this video. However - and this is important - people far smarter and more well-read than I do sometimes use these more expansive categorisations; people who are actual authority figures in the international communist movement. Mao, for example, can be seen referring to the “semi-proletariat” in Analysis of
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the Classes in Chinese Society. In the same text, he also calls primary and secondary school teachers petty-bourgeois. You can see that he uses a more expansive definition of petty-bourgeois than I used in the initial video here, so the comrades who argue in favour of this expanded definition will find justification for doing so among the greats. However, hot take coming here, the fact that one of the great communists said this doesn’t
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necessarily make it objectively true for us as scientific socialists – to claim that it does would be to treat these figures theologically, and would certainly be falling into the trap of dogmatic book worship. So, in that spirit, we should be open to respectfully disagreeing with these figures if we ever feel they are incorrect, or perhaps if their analysis was correct for the particular time and context in which they were writing but is no longer true or applicable to the modern world.
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Scott Harrison’s essay touches on this a bit more, so I’d strongly recommend if comrades are interested in the arguments that I’ve been putting forward in the latter section of this video, then they should absolutely read that essay and engage with it more there. Again, before we wrap up, I want to stress that I may be wrong about this. It may be the case that in a few months or a year, comrades will help me to realise the
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errors in this analysis, in which case I’ll make a Part 2 to this video correcting those mistakes. I want to give a massive thanks specifically to MLMinPractice for talking me through this conversation in depth, offering that alternative expansive perspective. I suspect this fantastic comrade will at some stage make a “Paul Morrin Is Wrong About Class” video to rival the mighty work of Premier Liles – and I very much look forward
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to continuing the conversation on this topic and developing a clear analysis collectively. I also want to thank Ryeemir, Vucko, and The Peace Report for sending on materials which have helped to expand my understanding of this topic, whether or not we’ve necessarily come to the same conclusions on it. I especially welcome all of your contributions and criticisms of this video. Thank you, comrades. Cheers everyone, agus slán go foil.
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