/meta/ - Ruthless criticism of all that exists (in leftypol.org)

>>35573
Uncontroversial ones:
material reality -> reality
material analysis -> analysis
materialist explanation -> explanation

"Middle-class" in marxism is literally the same as "petit-bourgeois" and "working class" just means anyone working for a wage, proletarian or not.
Stop being American.

Previous thread at >>26927
zoomer -> Zoomer
vegan -> zoophile
(the) natural -> ye olde
>>35574
This but reversed

this is dumb because when most people (especially those who haven't read Marx) say "middle class" what they mean is the upper strata of the proletariat. or sometimes just the middle strata. but if you're going to add a filter anyway then

middle class > proletariat
working class > proletariat

is more sensible. but also incredibly annoying

>>35583
There's no "upper/middle strata of the proletariat", what the fuck are you even talking about?

>especially those who haven't read Marx
Like you?

>>35585
NTA
Better paid proletariat. It is a word that means something very different than what it used to. Something like 80+% of Americans consider themselves middle class. I just pulled the statistic out of my ass but the point is that people misuse this term or use it to mean something else.

>>35587
Well, the majority of the US and most developed nations, including China, is indeed middle-class. Even Marx correctly predicted centuries ago that the middle-class would grow as capitalism develops.
Also, if a worker is paid handsomely enough that they could invest it to increase their reserves then they clearly aren't a proletarian who by definition is immiserated and lives paycheck to paycheck. That most instead use their disposable income in increasing their consumption habits doesn't make them not middle-class, by the way, as marxism isn't concerned with such arbitrary notions.

>>35585
Marx uses the word "strata" in Capital many times. call it what you will, but there is a non-class stratification within each class. hence why we have words like petty, middle and haute bourgeoisie, and the lumpenproletariat
>>35589
>a proletarian who by definition is immiserated
no they aren't. wtf do you think the proletariat is? you can be well-paid and still be a prole. what characterizes the proletariat is that they sell their labour power for a wage. there's no requirement that they live paycheck to paycheck

>>35590
>wtf do you think the proletariat is?
You can't cite Marx and then pretend both Marx and Engels don't regularly refer to the proletariat as impoverished, propertyless, reserveless, etc. You simply can't be well off and proletariat, lmao. You overestimate how much of the developed world is living on the line and/or you're privileged and living in a bubble.

>what characterizes the proletariat is that they sell their labour power for a wage
Oh my fucking god, have you actually read Marx despite quoting him so much? Workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your home, your savings, your high-paying job, your house, and so on.

I hate to always go "Marx or whoever said so and so" but it's the only way to have a remotely meaningful discussion here sadly. Anyway… Marx says the proletariat has nothing to sell but their labor, so no, not everyone who is paid a wage is proletarian. It's literally impossible.
A proletarian is someone who is reserveless, whose very life and death depends on the momentary changes in demand for their labor. This is what makes them a revolutionary element within bourgeois society. By contrast, wage worker is a broad category that can embrace anyone from a capitalist who draws wages for supervisory work to a petit-bourgeois who works a job on the side, etc. Meanwhile the middle-class, if ousted from its more or less cushy jobs, simply joins the proletariat. The proletariat has no such luxury!

US soldiers > terrorists
IDF > ZOF
Israel > zionist entity

>>35594
where are these passages from?

>>35594
>>35597
they don't show up on google, so…. sus

>>35600
I also can't find any texts that contain the quoted paragraphs. what's even more telling is the first one, because it talks of the Roman concept of the proletariat, not the Marxian one. it's basic fucking Marxism that the proletariat do have one commodity to sell: their labour power. whereas in Roman texts, the proletariat (proletarii) refers to that section of Romans who live in absolute poverty, who have nothing to give Rome but more Romans, more offspring (proles). the modern term for this is of course the lumpenproletariat
how a factory worker would seize to be exploited just because they own a house I don't see. if this is the case with factory workers in general in some region then it probably just means that the value of labour power is higher there. this also sounds awfully close to the un-Marxian notion of unequal exchange

>>35603
>how a worker would seize to be exploited just because they own a house I don't see
I'm not talking about exploitation. Having reserves you can sell such as a house when times are dire literally means you aren't at the whim of the fluctuations of demand for labor. The delaying of the process enables them to stay in a position of comfort because they have something to fall back on, they can look for another job and not have to fear for being kicked onto the street.

>this also sounds awfully close to the un-Marxian notion of unequal exchange
Completely unrelated. This is simply stating their relation to capital (why people say "means of production" instead and then take it literally is beyond me). If you have property or reserves you can avoid being at the mercy of derived demand.

< The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.
< There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians, any more than there has always been free unbridled competitions.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
It's honestly silly and pretentious to act like Marx said that everyone who is not a capitalist is proletarian.

Also, just so you know I absolutely do not take the position that the 'third-world' forms some uniform revolutionary mass against capital. A small-holding farmer in the 'third-world' is just as petit-bourgeois and just as reactionary as any Western middle-class employee.

What actually remains? Anything that provides them security, in contrast to the reserveless i.e. proletariat, instantly removes them from such category. Even wealthy managers or programmers are technically selling their labor, but you can't equate them with the proletariat.
This is the reality: you can label them as proletariat if you like, but they're essentially the middle class, always swinging between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Any semblance of stability compared to the proletariat renders them ineffective. Even when they're forced into a proletarian condition (proletarianized), they scramble to reclaim their former status rather than challenging the social relations that put them there in the first place, especially in the absence of a strong proletariat.
Because of this they cannot be a "class for itself"/revolutionary proletariat. The fear of losing one's property is typical of the middle class. For the proletariat, it turns into a drive to rebel.

>>35605
I suppose this makes sense for the super alienated, but from what I've seen these wealthy proles have reserveless prole friends they give some of their reserves, momentarily disributing this comfort more evenly, but accellerating their decent into reservelessness. My dad had a flatbed trailer, gave it to his broke bandmate that needed one, and now both of them are doing prole jobs.
Could be I'm overestimating how common that occurs, underestimating alienation.

>>35604
that link doesn't contain the quotes from here >>>/meta/35594 so I guess it is safe to assume you were lying by implying those texts were from him

>>35589
Maybe you shouldn't give your opinion about things you don't know anything about. Just an idea.

>>35604
>Having reserves you can sell such as a house when times are dire literally means you aren't at the whim of the fluctuations of demand for labor
yes you are. you may have more time to react, but you still need to work for a living
it is also important to define what is meant by "owning" a house. plenty of people who own houses haven't actually paid off the loans attached to them. therefore, being forced to sell at a bad time might mean realizing a loss that a renter would not have to deal with. so a homeowner may actually be in a worse situation than a renter
both Marx and Engels talk about the existence of "middle classes". do they by this mean the colloquial, Weberist meaning of the world "middle class"? almost surely not, from what I recall
also you have not supplied a source to the quotes in >>35594

'The small proprietor who is a farmer belongs to the same class as the manufacturer, or the small proprietor who is an artisan, and as the small proprietor who is a shopkeeper; there is no class distinction between them, they are distinguished only by their occupations.' Lenin.

Requesting filter:
interracial -> stupid sexy racism
bbc -> british broadcasting company (state-sponsored news)

>>40118
genius, mods do this, make every BNWO chud seethe

discourse such as "the superior race"(but black) is the same discourse as aryan race discourse.

>>40212
aryan -> hillbilly

word filter anarkiddie to principled marxist leninist and tankie to ungovernable anarchist

>>40218
tankie -> Thomas the Tank

uyghur -> Ferdinand Lassalle
Nazi -> National Zionist
anti campist -> bitchless

>>40218
>>40219
tankie -> communist

>>40220
Stalin -> SocDem
Mao -> SocDem