My name’s Lilly Wachowski.

I’m out here on the picket line to support my fellow union, brothers, sisters, and siblings, for better wages, for a better future. And I’m also here because I think that this is a microcosm of a much larger issue.

There’s a correlation between what’s happening here and what’s happening in the world in terms of the flow of wealth in the world. It’s like the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is getting squeezed out, and a lot more of them are living on the margins of society than ever before.

If we can start pushing back on these oligarchs, we can start to rearrange how, not just in this industry, but all industries, are ordered.

  • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I understand the sentiment, and I’m the first to challenge the use of social classes as rather meaningless in everyday conversation. People tend to be far too loose with their concepts and ‘middle class’ doesn’t have much explanatory power. But with this limitation in mind, it can be useful shorthand, especially when it is understood that there are relatively few of the proletariat in the global north – some might say none.

    In many cases, the better off workers are labour aristocrats(LA) or petite bourgeois (PB) (which is true of a significant proportion in the global north). Those who identify as middle class tend to be LA/PB. Their interests are more broadly aligned with the haute bourgeoisie, too. Not so much as their interests are aligned with other LA/PB but, often, more than they are aligned with the world-proletariat. Enough to make them fear losing their privileges and to fight for capital.

    Almost anyone with a pension, for example, is in a real bind. They most likely invest in fossil fuels (and possibly arms, tobacco, alcohol, patents, pharmaceuticals, etc). As much as they may fear climate change, they also fear having no pension after contributing for a lifetime. Faced with this contradiction, their motives are only fundamentally opposed to those of even fossil capital some of the time.

    I agree that in many cases, the purpose of using the ‘middle class’ as a concept is to conflate several materially distinct classes. But the conflation of better-paid workers with LA/PB is accurate more often than not, in the global north. When middle class does equate to LA/PB, is functionally to exploit the proletariat, even if they are not really in control of the way that they do so.

    • steelsorcerer@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I’m no expert, but in my opinion the middle class is really defined by owning your home but still working for a wage.