Question about Marxist Analysis of Class Consciousness

[HondurasKeiser]

Freddie deBoer, a socialist that I regularly read, wrote something today that made me think:

The fundamental problem with Elon Musk lies in his structural class position, in his status as a member of the bourgeoisie. His position in the class structure compels Musk to wield his immense wealth to reproduce that structure. He would do the same even if he spent all his time singing the Internationale and kissing puppies.

The point, in other words, is that Twitter used to be owned by someone from a particular economic class, and should Musk get tired of his new toy he’ll sell it to people from that same class. What I’m complaining about in the essay is not that Musk is being criticized but rather that the criticism leaves off the hook the rest of the ownership class that previously owned Twitter, such as the Saudis. (That is, an autocratic theocracy that beheads people for being gay.) The basic contention of the essay is that Marxist class analysis teaches us that the ownership class as a class is our enemy, and that moralizing about individual members of that ownership class is not a Marxist project. That he is the world’s wealthiest person does little to distinguish himself from the rest of the ownership class, and nothing to change the basic class analysis; he’s no better but not particularly any worse. The argument was never that Musk was good. The argument was that grownup left analysis (and specifically Marx) teaches us never to believe that there is such a thing as a good capitalist. They oppress by their class nature, not by their individual choices, and particularly not because they annoy you on Twitter.

I understand the class consciousness concept taught by Marx and I understand at a basic level the concept of
1. Bourgeoisie/Owner-Class = Bad
&
2. Proletariat/Worker-Class = Good

The question I have, and I'd love to ask Mr. deBoer directly but alas, I fear he may not answer me for the fact that it's a textbook example of 'false consciousness' or as others like to illustrate 'a fish unable to see the water': 'In what way am I oppressed by Mr. Musk?' or if that's too specific and thus the wrong question as Mr. deBoer seems to want to suggest...in what way does the Owner-Class oppress us the Worker-Class simply by 'being' the Owners and independent of any individual choices they make?

Any thoughts?

P.S. - I don't want this to be a rancorous debate about Communists/Marxists/Socialists or Capitalist Fat Cats...I'm just curious about this point of Marxist thinking.

P.P.S. - I think it should be clear, but just to clarify: I am not a Marxist.

[Ken]

Freddie deBoer, a socialist that I regularly read, wrote something today that made me think:

The fundamental problem with Elon Musk lies in his structural class position, in his status as a member of the bourgeoisie. His position in the class structure compels Musk to wield his immense wealth to reproduce that structure. He would do the same even if he spent all his time singing the Internationale and kissing puppies.

The point, in other words, is that Twitter used to be owned by someone from a particular economic class, and should Musk get tired of his new toy he’ll sell it to people from that same class. What I’m complaining about in the essay is not that Musk is being criticized but rather that the criticism leaves off the hook the rest of the ownership class that previously owned Twitter, such as the Saudis. (That is, an autocratic theocracy that beheads people for being gay.) The basic contention of the essay is that Marxist class analysis teaches us that the ownership class as a class is our enemy, and that moralizing about individual members of that ownership class is not a Marxist project. That he is the world’s wealthiest person does little to distinguish himself from the rest of the ownership class, and nothing to change the basic class analysis; he’s no better but not particularly any worse. The argument was never that Musk was good. The argument was that grownup left analysis (and specifically Marx) teaches us never to believe that there is such a thing as a good capitalist. They oppress by their class nature, not by their individual choices, and particularly not because they annoy you on Twitter.

I understand the class consciousness concept taught by Marx and I understand at a basic level the concept of
1. Bourgeoisie/Owner-Class = Bad
&
2. Proletariat/Worker-Class = Good

The question I have, and I'd love to ask Mr. deBoer directly but alas, I fear he may not answer me for the fact that it's a textbook example of 'false consciousness' or as others like to illustrate 'a fish unable to see the water': 'In what way am I oppressed by Mr. Musk?' or if that's too specific and thus the wrong question as Mr. deBoer seems to want to suggest...in what way does the Owner-Class oppress us the Worker-Class simply by 'being' the Owners and independent of any individual choices they make?

Any thoughts?

P.S. - I don't want this to be a rancorous debate about Communists/Marxists/Socialists or Capitalist Fat Cats...I'm just curious about this point of Marxist thinking.

P.P.S. - I think it should be clear, but just to clarify: I am not a Marxist.

I wouldn't say that you are particularly oppressed by Musk specifically.

I would say that you live in a society where the extremely wealthy pay a vanishingly small portion of their income and wealth in taxes which means that the rest of us have to pick up the slack. I don't know about Musk specifically, but that is certainly true of many tech billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerberg.

And you also live in a society in which their outsize wealth gives them inordinate influence over the very policies that reinforce and perpetuate that sort of inequality.

I personally don't begrudge Musk his wealth. But I don't think it should give him such an outsize influence over American policy and society. And I think the same for every multi-billionaire in our midst.

[Josh]

Freddie deBoer, a socialist that I regularly read, wrote something today that made me think:

The point, in other words, is that Twitter used to be owned by someone from a particular economic class, and should Musk get tired of his new toy he’ll sell it to people from that same class. What I’m complaining about in the essay is not that Musk is being criticized but rather that the criticism leaves off the hook the rest of the ownership class that previously owned Twitter, such as the Saudis. (That is, an autocratic theocracy that beheads people for being gay.) The basic contention of the essay is that Marxist class analysis teaches us that the ownership class as a class is our enemy, and that moralizing about individual members of that ownership class is not a Marxist project. That he is the world’s wealthiest person does little to distinguish himself from the rest of the ownership class, and nothing to change the basic class analysis; he’s no better but not particularly any worse. The argument was never that Musk was good. The argument was that grownup left analysis (and specifically Marx) teaches us never to believe that there is such a thing as a good capitalist. They oppress by their class nature, not by their individual choices, and particularly not because they annoy you on Twitter.

I understand the class consciousness concept taught by Marx and I understand at a basic level the concept of
1. Bourgeoisie/Owner-Class = Bad
&
2. Proletariat/Worker-Class = Good

The question I have, and I'd love to ask Mr. deBoer directly but alas, I fear he may not answer me for the fact that it's a textbook example of 'false consciousness' or as others like to illustrate 'a fish unable to see the water': 'In what way am I oppressed by Mr. Musk?' or if that's too specific and thus the wrong question as Mr. deBoer seems to want to suggest...in what way does the Owner-Class oppress us the Worker-Class simply by 'being' the Owners and independent of any individual choices they make?

Any thoughts?

P.S. - I don't want this to be a rancorous debate about Communists/Marxists/Socialists or Capitalist Fat Cats...I'm just curious about this point of Marxist thinking.

P.P.S. - I think it should be clear, but just to clarify: I am not a Marxist.

I wouldn't say that you are particularly oppressed by Musk specifically.

I would say that you live in a society where the extremely wealthy pay a vanishingly small portion of their income and wealth in taxes which means that the rest of us have to pick up the slack. I don't know about Musk specifically, but that is certainly true of many tech billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerberg.

And you also live in a society in which their outsize wealth gives them inordinate influence over the very policies that reinforce and perpetuate that sort of inequality.

I personally don't begrudge Musk his wealth. But I don't think it should give him such an outsize influence over American policy and society. And I think the same for every multi-billionaire in our midst.

Your commentary has zip to do with HK’s question.

[Ken]

Freddie deBoer, a socialist that I regularly read, wrote something today that made me think:



I understand the class consciousness concept taught by Marx and I understand at a basic level the concept of
1. Bourgeoisie/Owner-Class = Bad
&
2. Proletariat/Worker-Class = Good

The question I have, and I'd love to ask Mr. deBoer directly but alas, I fear he may not answer me for the fact that it's a textbook example of 'false consciousness' or as others like to illustrate 'a fish unable to see the water': 'In what way am I oppressed by Mr. Musk?' or if that's too specific and thus the wrong question as Mr. deBoer seems to want to suggest...in what way does the Owner-Class oppress us the Worker-Class simply by 'being' the Owners and independent of any individual choices they make?

Any thoughts?

P.S. - I don't want this to be a rancorous debate about Communists/Marxists/Socialists or Capitalist Fat Cats...I'm just curious about this point of Marxist thinking.

P.P.S. - I think it should be clear, but just to clarify: I am not a Marxist.

I wouldn't say that you are particularly oppressed by Musk specifically.

I would say that you live in a society where the extremely wealthy pay a vanishingly small portion of their income and wealth in taxes which means that the rest of us have to pick up the slack. I don't know about Musk specifically, but that is certainly true of many tech billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerberg.

And you also live in a society in which their outsize wealth gives them inordinate influence over the very policies that reinforce and perpetuate that sort of inequality.

I personally don't begrudge Musk his wealth. But I don't think it should give him such an outsize influence over American policy and society. And I think the same for every multi-billionaire in our midst.

Your commentary has zip to do with HK’s question.

Sigh...HK's question was:

'In what way am I oppressed by Mr. Musk?' or if that's too specific and thus the wrong question as Mr. deBoer seems to want to suggest...in what way does the Owner-Class oppress us the Worker-Class simply by 'being' the Owners and independent of any individual choices they make?

My response was directly on point. To the extent that the moneyed class "oppress us" they do so by using their wealth to manipulate the political and economic system in their favor. They don't oppress us simply by their existence. If they sat quietly away and enjoyed their money without engaging in influencing politics and society to a greater extent than the average non-rich person then no one would much care.

[Bootstrap]

I understand the class consciousness concept taught by Marx and I understand at a basic level the concept of
1. Bourgeoisie/Owner-Class = Bad
&
2. Proletariat/Worker-Class = Good

The introduction to the Communist Manifesto says this:

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

[Bootstrap]

The question I have, and I'd love to ask Mr. deBoer directly but alas, I fear he may not answer me for the fact that it's a textbook example of 'false consciousness' or as others like to illustrate 'a fish unable to see the water': 'In what way am I oppressed by Mr. Musk?' or if that's too specific and thus the wrong question as Mr. deBoer seems to want to suggest...in what way does the Owner-Class oppress us the Worker-Class simply by 'being' the Owners and independent of any individual choices they make?

It's interesting that both Marxists and MAGA populists see elites and the educated establishment as an enemy. And it's interesting to see people who say they hate elites treat certain elites as celebrities that they identify with.

Modern America is a very different time and place than what Marx knew. The rise of a middle class, much better living and working conditions than he knew, broader access to education, the rise of democratic governments ... I wonder what Marx would say after spending 5 years in modern America.

We definitely have economic and educational classes in America. And income inequality is a problem. But Marxism failed. When I lived in Berlin, I always knew if I was in East Berlin or West Berlin. It was pretty easy to see which side was doing better.

[Josh]

Getting back on topic,

P.S. - I don't want this to be a rancorous debate about Communists/Marxists/Socialists or Capitalist Fat Cats...I'm just curious about this point of Marxist thinking.

Marxist thinking is a bit stunted in that it has no framework to view good vs evil outside of a class struggle specifically between a labouring class and an owning class - which is understandable, since that seemed to be all the world he lived in had. Burnham's The Managerial Revolution describes a new class which sprouted in the 20th century: the "managerial" class, who did not own the means of production, but worked for the owners, and seemingly are able to exercise more power than the owners themselves could. They very much started to replace the owner-worker dialetic with owner-as-oppressor with the new paradigm of manager-as-oppressor.

And new classes have since emerged. One of the more interesting classes we have in the present era is that of people who are not owners nor labourers - they do not work - they live off of government largess. They are paid (at gunpoint) by labourers who do work. Marx completely missed this phenomenon emerging.

In short, the Marxist analysis is simply laughably simple, and the old school of socialists treats early Communist writers (your Trotskyites or classical Marxists) almost as some sort of gospel, and thus is unable to deal with anything that has happened in the 20th century. Attempts to actually implement socialism have resulted in "socialism in one country", or "socialism with Chinese characteristics", or "the Juche idea".

[Josh]

It's interesting that both Marxists and MAGA populists see elites and the educated establishment as an enemy. And it's interesting to see people who say they hate elites treat certain elites as celebrities that they identify with.

Marxists and other populists might be right about that, though. The elites in America seem to have spent the last crisis enriching themselves, whilst doing absolutely nothing to reduce widespread homelessness, drug addiction, a growing gap between the rich and the poor, and a shrinking middle class.

It's been well-documented that increases in worker productivity have not been paid to workers in the form of better wages since the 1960s. Almost all of the increase in wealth in America has gone to the top 0.1%. (Some of these top 1% are politicians such as AOC or Nancy Pelosi, who mysteriously are worth millions of dollars, all earned while they were supposedly public servants serving as congressmen.)

Modern America is a very different time and place than what Marx knew. The rise of a middle class, much better living and working conditions than he knew, broader access to education, the rise of democratic governments ... I wonder what Marx would say after spending 5 years in modern America.

He'd probably be disappointed at how expensive it is to hire a housekeeper vs the one he had on staff whom he underpaid.

If you want an idea of why people think the elites are their enemy, Bootstrap, these are the same elites who are jacking up everyone's rents to the point the average/median American rent is $2,500. Do you have some kind of strong defence for why a tiny fraction of the population should get to demand most of the productivity of the American economy in the form of things like rents just so people can have a roof over their head?

[Neto]

I tend to have an understanding of this that will appear very simplistic, and maybe it is. You all tell me.
I think that it all comes back to the same basic idea as is referred to as "Limited Good" in anthropological descriptions of folk societies, and in some tribal societies. I think you are familiar with this idea, but in short, it assumes that there is only so much "good" in the world, and in this case, this refers to wealth. So the fact that Mr. Musk has so much of it means that he has deprived you personally of your share. The only way to fix this is for the 'poor' to take their rightful share back from those who have more than their rightful share.

[Most alarmingly to me is how I have seen this same idea adapted to missionary involvement, where an underlying presupposition is revealed that states that there is a limited amount of Holy Spirit power available, and as this power is used in missionary efforts, the fact that a greater percentage of foreign missionaries are 'Westerners' automatically means that non-Westerners are not able to become involved in the work of the Holy Spirit in the world. They of course did not say it so clearly as this, but rather said something to the effect that "we (Westerners) must decrease in order for our non-Western brothers & sisters to increase." (Nice Biblical ring to it, huh?) The error is this, to my thinking, is that first of all, there is NO limit to the power of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, it creates a 'them' and 'us' division where none exists. We are the Body of Christ - ALL of us, together. And I would add that we can ONLY do it if we are ALL involved. But I digress from the topic here. As my grandson used to say when he was younger, "My pogies" (apologies).]

[wesleyb]

I tend to have an understanding of this that will appear very simplistic, and maybe it is. You all tell me.
I think that it all comes back to the same basic idea as is referred to as "Limited Good" in anthropological descriptions of folk societies, and in some tribal societies. I think you are familiar with this idea, but in short, it assumes that there is only so much "good" in the world, and in this case, this refers to wealth. So the fact that Mr. Musk has so much of it means that he has deprived you personally of your share. The only way to fix this is for the 'poor' to take their rightful share back from those who have more than their rightful share.

The thing is, some things are truly limited (hours in a day, the amount of fresh water in my town, untapped reserves of fossil fuels). Not that all these have been fully utilized, but there are hard limits. Other things are unlimited, or nearly so (new ideas, stories, imagination). Our economy is a complicated mix of the two.