“Middle class” is a term made up by the owner class to make parts of the working class feel like they’re above other parts of the working class.
It shows workers a cliff they can fall down if they don’t work hard enough, and tells them they have more to lose than their chains if they organise and revolt.If you work for your living, you are part of the working class, and if you work for someone else who owns the company and doesn’t share its profits equally with you, you are being exploited.
1 dayThis is oddly specific and oddly vague at the same time. Also “middle class” is ill-defined and means different things to different people.
Do they have investments and own property? Then they’re bourgeoisified, they materially benefit when the stock market rises and property values go up. In this way their class position is muddled and they benefit from capitalism even as they are exploited by it.
- 1 day
we are all forced to do unethical jobs to survive because capitalism itself is unethical
And yet that does not absolve us from all personal responsibly.
If someone has two otherwise equal job opportunities, one at a local nonprofit that provides eldercare assistance, and the other at a fortune 500 (two extreme examples to serve the point), I think they should choose the former.
I understand that not everyone has or is able to get these opportunities. But this is effectively the “all consumption under capitalism is unethical” argument, which some people use as an excuse to unnecessarily choose unethically.
- 22 hours
yeah, I mean I can’t say I consider an oil exec picking new places to exploit to be on the same level as the local car salesperson. Still, the question was ultimately about socialists’ positions on middle class insurance salesmen as a category.
- 1 day
To be honest, I don’t think these types of questions serve to do anything but alienate ppl. It doesn’t really matter if you are a concrete pourer or an upper echelon administrator. As long as you realize what side of the class divide you’re on, then how you “feel” about certain workers is completely irrelevant.
“middle class” is a meaningless distinction at best applied in ignorance and at worst an intentional effort at fragmenting the non-ownership class further.
Pretty much every job but “cop” is excusable in the western world if you have to work to survive.
- freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish1 day
They feel like they want to liberate them from wage slavery and join with them in proletarian solidarity to replace the leadership of their nation with a party organized to meet the needs of the insurance sales man, and their family, and bring about a sustainable future human society hand in hand with them
