The same person can be a customer at Walmart, a worker at Walmart, and a shareholder/owner at Walmart. Class as a Marxist concept maybe made sense when you could only be a worker or an owner. But it doesn’t work in a world where you can seamlessly switch between categories, or be all of them at the same time.

Marxists when the Walmart greeter shows them his penny stocks (he is bourgeois now)

The same person can be a customer at Walmart, a worker at Walmart, and a shareholder/owner at Walmart. Class as a Marxist concept maybe made sense when you could only be a worker or an owner. But it doesn’t work in a world where you can seamlessly switch between categories, or be all of them at the same time.

these people have rocks in their skulls

The same person can be a customer at Walmart, a worker at Walmart, and a shareholder/owner at Walmart. Class as a Marxist concept maybe made sense when you could only be a worker or an owner. But it doesn’t work in a world where you can seamlessly switch between categories, or be all of them at the same time.

How can you write so many words when you clearly don't understand what class even is.

I can buy penny stocks in a company where I am a wage slave, therefore no class

How have we not considered the complexities of real life?

aimixin:

Marxism is dialectic, it rejects absolute pure categories. Things sort of exist on a spectrum but sort of don't. The way Marxists use categories is to understand that everything is connected to each other through a series of quantifiable interconnected steps, but that something is always dominant, and this dominant aspect is what determines the overall quality of the thing in question.

If you're trying to shove everything into a pure category of absolutely worker, absolutely capitalist, then this is just a useless endeavor. When we talk of "worker" or "capitalist," we don't mean it as if these are pure categories, where a worker can't ever own capital, or that a capitalist can't ever do labor. They may do these things, they may exist somewhere in between. But clearly at some point, certain characteristics become dominant over others. Clearly Jeff Bezos's class interests are not the same as a minimum wage worker, as the latter likely has next to no capital while the former has far more capital than he could ever, by his own labor, afford.

There is no reason to try and shove this person you're describing into a specific absolute box. If they're a salaried worker who runs some very small business / self-employment on the side as supplemental income, you could just say they're a worker with petty bourgeois characteristics. You don't have to say they're absolutely "petty bourgeois" or a "worker". You can just describe that they have characteristics of multiple categories. No reason you cannot do this.

Notice that none of them have read Marx. They've just found a secondary source they choose to believe. One that aligns with their baby political biases.

a whole subreddit of people who can't take a scientific theory (that was meant to change and evolve) and apply it to current day. also you can tell most of them read the Manifesto at most.

Real question, if these dorks don't believe classes exist, what do they think the function of a state is? Is there some other conflict within humanity that states mediate? It's probably some kind of dogshit like that racism simply happens for no reason, or criminality just comes from nowhere.

What is supposedly the reason states exist within a neoliberal framework? Because if classes aren't something that are real, why is a state even there? Capitalism can't chug along without one?

The meaning of classes has been almost completely destroyed by a bunch of people who would be in debt if they missed a paycheck not wanting to admit they're working class.

There's no class solidarity among the working class because people who make 50k a year wanna feel superior to people who make 20k who wanna feel superior to people on medicaid.

Meanwhile rich liberals know not to do too much to rock the boat and won't actually meaningfully oppose the oppressive system that made them rich.

Capital, Volume III introduces some analysis on this topic, but Marx's conclusion seem to imply that if you have a single dollar in 401(k), you are bourgeois, but CEO without company shares is class-traitor worker.

Marx failed to consider the 401(k)

You'd have to wonder how they don't simply self combust from cognitive dissonance when worshipping models like the laffer curve that have the scientific rigour of 'it came to me in a dream' while trying to nitpick shit like this. Capitalism didn't come fully formed with a neat date, so Marx is full of shit actually

Oh you own 1/10000000 of a company? Guess you're in the owner class :shrugs:

W-2 vs Form 8949 and Schedule D (Form 1040) this shit ain't hard

Either you make your living thru wages and salary or capital gains, if you do both then you're a failed capitalist or a lucky gambling worker

For 99% of us tho, it's either W-2 or Schedule D

Every day we get more and more proof why free speech was a mistake

Marx literally addresses this. Neo Marxists have taken the concept further by considering the polarisation capital causes on a global scale through imperialism.

Are you directly profiting from the labour of others? You are bourgeois.

Are you not? You are proletariat.

(this is an oversimplification and might be wrong)

The Best and the Brightest, everyone.

...

These people are so fucking ignorantly smug

Virgin hexbearist marxist vs Chad redditeur deboonker

What sort of a question even is that? If you need to work to make a living, you're the working class, you're a worker. If you own so much you don't need to work, you're some form of bourgeoisie.

Yes, there are some edge cases and outliers. But anyone claiming that's somehow not "a thing" is bizarre, it's just a very basic process of labelling.