John Gulick wrote:
> [snip] In a nutshell, I was trying to say that an understanding
> of inter-imperialist rivalry is absent from the populist left's "globalization"
> discourse (which certainly doesn't apply to you and your cohort in Seattle,
> since your analysis of the ruling is more knowledgeable and sophisicated than
> mine).
Yes
> [SNIP]a middle class anarchist . . .working class/poor folks. . . .
Huh?
1. Are you claiming that the "poor" are not working class?
2. Middle Class? I don't understand at all.
Now there is a capitalist class, about 5% of the population (including small capitalists). (One can quibble for pages on the class position of top executives. Put them where one will, they do not make a demographic difference.)
There is a small class of petty producers, like my son-in-law, a computer consultant who has incorporated himself. Let us say (being extravagant) that they make up 10% of the population, almost certainly an over-estimation.
Then there are those who might be called honorary members of the ruling (capitalist) class: commissioned officers in the military, the permanent faculty of a very small number of private prestige universities, parts of the state bureaucracy (such as the higher levels of the judiciary), etc. etc. Perhaps 1% of the population.
Then there are the declassed (mostly from the working class): police, prison guards, perhaps "lifers" in the non-commissioned ranks of the military -- all those the Chinese called lackeys and running dogs. A few more percent.
And then there is the working class (proletariat) -- about at a minimum 80% of the population.
The "Middle Class" is a conception that almost makes one believe in conspiracy theory: it was invented for the sole purpose of confusing perceptions (both of workers and working-class intellectuals) of the class structure of capitalism. Every time the expression enters a conversation rational political analysis flies out the window.
The bulk of your "middle class anarchists" are almost certainly proletarians. Workers have as much right to be slackers or whatever as anyone else.
Carrol