[lbo-talk] What is the working class?

[brad bauerly]

>
> "ownership" is determined by class, not vice-versa.  Capitalists as
> such do not "own" means of production--there is usually nothing among
> means of production about which a capitalist can say "this is my own"
> in the way many workers can say that about their tools or houses and
> all of them can say about their bodies and their skills.  Capitalists
> typically own "*capital*,"  stocks and bonds and money, all
> representing their shares in the collective class property in the
> means of production and their title to participate in appropriation of
> the surplus-value collectively produced by exploitation of the working
> class.
>
Well, yes and no. The owning and the class position are mutually
constitutive.  Having one means you have the other.  The bourgeoisie owns
the contract to the MOP and the legal right to the surplus it can create
when mixed with labor, which in contemporary society is the same as owning
it.


>   "middle management," the Dilberts of this
> world, are squarely within the nonproductive majority of the working
> class.  But there is nothing to suggest that they sense any sort of
> solidarity with each other, or will ever be organizable.
>

Well we need to figure out how to organize this strata.  Especially if they
are increasing as a share of the population as you state.

Brad