It's Heating Up ( is "class" in the US today a meaningful concept for analysis and organizing?)

[Max Sawicky]

. . . it's the various marxist supra "classes" of "proleteriat" vs.
"capitalist",
"slave" vs. "master", "worker" vs. "owner", "wage value" vs. surplus value",
etc. that confound me.  e.g., 50% of US citizens are reputed to own company
stock.  what "class" are these mini-owners by marxist definitions?
norm

Beats me.  Some time ago here or on another list,
I offered the following criterion for defining
the privileged versus the many, strictly from a
narrow financial standpoint.  (as you noted,
privilege also goes to gender, race, etc.)

An advantaged person is one whose lifetime
income (a more informative measure than wealth)
permits him or her to enjoy a high level of
consumption over their lifetime notwithstanding
the capacity of such a person to refrain from
working for an appreciable part of their prime-
age period (18-60 or so).  in other words,
a significant part of such a person's above-
average consumption is financed by financial
income, and the person can sustain this
consumption indefinitely without the need
to work for much of the time.

Such a person is not necessarily "rich," nor
possessed of great political power.  That
would be a much smaller elite.

mbs