• Jerkface (any/all)
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    2 days ago

    no such thing as middle class, never has been. that’s a fairy tale told by the ruling class

    • @[email protected]
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      19 hours ago

      The “middle class” is built on currency debasement and the nominal value of assets built on ever increasing debt loads. Then the scheme fails and we do ever larger bailouts until the currency fails.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 days ago

      The petite bourgeoisie is/was real. Not sure if it’s the same thing as what people refer to as “middle class,” but it is a separate “class” of people who’s interests mostly lie with the proletariat, yet their small business or whatever makes them believe and act as though they’re part of the owner class.

      • Jerkface (any/all)
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        1 day ago

        it is a separate “class” of people who’s interests mostly lie with the proletariat, yet their small business or whatever makes them believe and act as though they’re part of the owner class.

        We are saying the same thing. It is a con the ruling class run on us to make us betray our interests. It’s a lie we tell ourselves because we don’t want to believe we’re in the “lowest” class. It’s a wedge intending to cleave our solidarity.

      • @Serinus
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        52 days ago

        The merchant class was certainly a thing after the black plague.

        They had enough wealth that they had political influence.

        • @[email protected]
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          72 days ago

          here in sweden at least we specifically had 4 classes around that time: Nobility, priests, bourgeoise/merchants, and farmers. Bougies were defined by being allowed to run businesses in cities, as farmers in sweden largely kept to themselves outside of cities and basically only interacted with the other classes during specific occasions like selling/buying things in the city or doing legal stuff or more significant religious things.

    • queermunist she/her
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      182 days ago

      There’s a strata of workers in the imperial core that are elevated above other workers by the distribution of superprofits. A white collar supervisor isn’t bourgeois, but they aren’t proletarian either. Hence, middle class.

      • @LePoisson
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        92 days ago

        That white collar supervisor is part of the proletarian. They are selling their labor to make a living.

        You’re right about stratification of society based on income when it comes to us proles though. Some of us have nicer toys and living places but we still need to work to survive unlike the bourgeois that make their money by capital investment (ie: they make more money with the money they have and don’t actually need to labor).

        • queermunist she/her
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          2 days ago

          That supervisor has a distinct relationship with the means of production compared with other workers. His job (you’ll notice this strata of workers are almost always white men) is to extract the surplus value from other actual workers, and because of this he is actually being paid the full value of his labor. This makes his class position distinct from other workers.

          That’s why you don’t tell the supervisor about the union until it’s too late for him to stop you.

          • @LePoisson
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            22 days ago

            Yeah I hear you I’m just saying those dudes are part of the proles and you need necessary to buy in from them in an organization for anything to really change.

            • queermunist she/her
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              1 day ago

              They’re bourgeoisified by their relationship to the means of production. They are paid the full value of their labor through bonuses and high wages and stock option, they don’t need unions and we don’t need them.

    • @[email protected]
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      122 days ago

      Middle-class didn’t even used to be defined by wealth, it was the class of people who worked for themselves, so anyone from a blacksmith to a doctor, tradesman to professional. The idea was that they didn’t have a “boss” to report to, do they were more free to speak thier mind.