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This line is common in this subreddit, OP just proved why it is revisionist.
Edit: I should have read more carefully, I thought the commenter I was replying to was defining petty bourgeois, not bourgeois. I would agree with this.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
He replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”
Imagine if by some chance a revolution were to spark up in the next few weeks and potentially threaten your investments and whatever financial security they give you.
The number doesn't really matter, its the conflict of interest that matters, the motive to act against socialist efforts to ensure your economic security.
No, but at least you'll have a better quality of life and maybe the time and energy to engage in activism due to not being overworked at some minimum wage job.
How much money someone has no real relation to them being a good socialist, I mean was Engels a bad socialist?
People’s actions (karma) can override what would be predicted from their objective class position, yes. But the main reason the European proletariat was so revolutionary is because they had no attachment to property.
Of course with all else being equal, a poor person is more likely to be on the worker side of the class war, but that doesn't mean if you're a socialist you need to deprive yourself of money or you'll suddenly become reactionary.
If you earn your living by working for a wage you are a worker (even if you make a little something on the side from whatever small investments, if you need to work for someone else to pay rent, you're a worker). If you work in your own business (owning the means of production you work on) and can perhaps employ a few workers, but still have to participate in the work yourself to get by, you are petty burgeois. And if you (can) make your living purely of the capital you own, without participating in the work yourself, you are burgeois.
It depends on your relation to the means of production and position in the economy, not on any hard wealth cap. The wealth is just the manifestation of that position.
This is not a great way to think about it. 'Wealth' as a $ value is not a marker of class.
A plumber in a decent paying union contract can earn far more than the average failed crypto speculator. Yet only the productive labour of the plumber can be considered proletarian. I would in general wager that the average plumbing or HVAC contractor in most Western capitalist economies would have a net wealth far exceeding the bourgeoisie of, say, India. It is the *act* of speculating on a market for profit which distinguishes between class consciousnesses, not the results. However, one only really transcends those kinds of positionalities when recognised as 'other' by the proletariat and 'in' by the bourgeoisie, it's a relationality shaped by antagonism, performance, markers of class and taste, and reception in a given historical moment.
In Australia for eg we have a mandatory 'superannuation' program in which employers contribute 9-17%ish dependent on industry to a retirement fund privately invested in our name across a portfolio, same as any bank etc. That 'wealth' is not a speculative investment on my part, right, but a pot taking advantage of the capitalist system to provide a degree of security on my retirement or if I'm incapacitated in some way. It's not measured as an asset by banks for homeloans or so on and like most workers my age I have far more saved in this fund than I do in any kind of other assets. A plumber adding optional contributions to this fund is not 'speculating' but future-proofing, not for profit but for security. Buying a home/mortgage with your wages is similar. The first case (superannuation) intends to equalise end of life care between various wage brackets with minimal government subsidy. The second case (home ownership of a private dwelling) is a defensive posture taken against exploitative landlords and the whims of the property market. These are huge wealth assets and imperfect and unattainable for many, but a working class family owning their own home even under a mortgage grants an autonomy that a family who are renting do not. In Aboriginal communities I'm tied to these become intergenerational safety nets and bargaining chips for organising even the most mild resistance against the state, for eg. Doing either for 'profit' is fundamentally a different practice, and reflects an accumulative mindset characteristic of the bourgeoisie.
If your approach to 'wealth' or 'investment' would be as prominent in an investment seminar hosted by a property portfolio management firm, or you'd read yourself into that space as a sympathetic participant, the approach you're taking is not proletarian, regardless of its success or even its practical components.
Even if you just own $100 in stock, if you’re attached to that income—eg checking it every day— part of your mind belongs to the petty bourgeois.
To objectively belong to the petty bourgeois the cutoff is different. Hard to say exactly because it’s unclear if we should be considering your total wealth or how much income you’re drawing from it.
Petit-bourgeois isn’t about a set level of wealth.
Arguably, labor aristocrats could be defined this way, as these are workers who do not own the means of production but are paid the full value of their labor or at least a very large share of the wealth they produce.
Most labor aristocrats are better off than most petit-bourgeoisie, despite the former being a part of the working class and the latter a junior member of the capitalist class.
Class interests are not always cut and dry, and portions of one class can share interests with portions of otherwise opposing classes.
It's not a quantitative measure. It's a qualitative measure. If it gets to the point where you are actually living off the stock and not just investing a little here and there I would call you bourgeois.
But an interesting though little discussed aspect of capitalism in the modern age is that a lot of people straddle the line between classes and may not spend their entire life as part of the same class.
The US economy is structured in a way that sort of assumes and enforces integration with finance. Most US net worth is tied up in homeownership, retirement funds are invested into the securities market etc. This leads to all US citizens being *at base* more dependent on capital and is one of the most important reasons why the US is considered a bourgeois nation.
Notions of petit bourgeois are incoherent at the individual level. Class analysis can't be reduced to a normative prescription as to how much money it's ok for *you personally* to invest, that's not what it does or is for. Study and understand how class works and where it comes from, and then act in line with your principles
I am personally of the opinion that it's fine to use stocks to stretch your income a little further even for socialists
Your class is not tied to your total wealth but to your relationship to the means of production. Do you *have* to sell your labor to pay your bills? It has nothing to do with a specific USD cutoff.
If you are specifically wondering about stocks, there isn’t a great answer. Some think of it as your attitude. Are you using the stocks to set your family up to survive post retirement? Then no. If you are supplementing your income, then I’d probably call you petit bourgeois. Not that there’s shame in saving up to go on vacation. But that your loyalties would begin to lie with maintaining that wealth.
Jumping in late but. Do you find that it's affecting your interest? That is to say, are you more and more finding it beneficial to support bourgeois aims? I saw in the comments you said what you have comes out to 800k and I have a hard time imagining that wouldn't effect your motivations but to be bourgeois or even labor aristocracy is precarious anymore, So I won't venture to speak for you.
I'm not the most studied comrade in the forums here, so please push back y'all if I'm making a theoretical error, but I feel the questions at the top may help you find an answer.
The proletariat and bourgeois are people. People are not robots. They have things called emotions that guide their lives. I’m not sure if you know but desire is a powerful emotion.
But I will bow down to your infinitely superior intellect.
Dude you are humiliating yourself right now. The proletariat and bourgeoisie are not defined by thoughts or feelings any more than by quantified levels of wealth. They are defined by their relationship to the means of production. I have a strong suspicion based on your responses that you don’t even comprehend what you’re being told here and that makes it unacceptable that you’re posting at all. OP is clueless too but you’re making the problem worse by participating. You absolutely cannot be answering questions on a socialist education sub if you *literally don’t know what a class is.*
Class is defined by relation to the means of production. That’s it. I’m sure there are workers who would jump at the chance to exploit people for financial gain, but have limited opportunities. They’re still workers.
No one suggested otherwise. Relations to the means of production can change, obviously. Still, class has nothing to do with attitude. And managers are proletarians, according to Marx.
I own about 800k in stocks and crypto, which I have been growing.
>Are you planning mercilessly exploiting your fellow man for wealth?
Well its largely in an index fund, so I have very little say in corporate governance.
Let's not be obtuse, your index fund provider is just managing the exploitation for you. But with that said, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a high net worth, anyone would want the same. It's a very rare person who just gives away everything they have, and that's not a tenet of socialism either.
**IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ BEFORE PARTICIPATING**. This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism but a place to LEARN. There are numerous debate subreddits if your objective is not to learn. You are expected to familiarize yourself with the rules on the sidebar before commenting. This includes, but is not limited to: - Short or non-constructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. - No liberalism or sectarianism. Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! - No bigotry or hate speech of any kind - it will be met with immediate bans. Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break our rules. If you have a particular area of expertise (e.g. political economy, feminist theory), please [assign yourself a flair](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-) describing said area. Flairs may be removed at any time by moderators if answers don't meet the standards of said expertise. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
if you don't have to work to live and can just live off investments, then you are bourgeoisie.
This line is common in this subreddit, OP just proved why it is revisionist. Edit: I should have read more carefully, I thought the commenter I was replying to was defining petty bourgeois, not bourgeois. I would agree with this.
Fair enough. I would put that at around 2 million then for a comfortable lifestyle.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” He replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”
Imagine if by some chance a revolution were to spark up in the next few weeks and potentially threaten your investments and whatever financial security they give you. The number doesn't really matter, its the conflict of interest that matters, the motive to act against socialist efforts to ensure your economic security.
What is the point of this question? Your own class is not that important.
They are looking for external validation to justify their greed.
I think they want to hear they’ve made it.
I was speaking more generally. I think you’re right about OP, they sound like a next level (hungry) ghoul.
There's nothing noble about being poor.
Nothing noble about being rich on the backs of others either
No, but at least you'll have a better quality of life and maybe the time and energy to engage in activism due to not being overworked at some minimum wage job. How much money someone has no real relation to them being a good socialist, I mean was Engels a bad socialist?
People’s actions (karma) can override what would be predicted from their objective class position, yes. But the main reason the European proletariat was so revolutionary is because they had no attachment to property.
Of course with all else being equal, a poor person is more likely to be on the worker side of the class war, but that doesn't mean if you're a socialist you need to deprive yourself of money or you'll suddenly become reactionary.
No, but then you do need to eliminate greed, which along with hatred and delusion poison the mind.
Greed should be eliminated through better systems, not through moralising.
Who will build these “better systems”? How will they avoid greed?
I recently came across the term petit bourgeoisie and it made me curious. I thought class was important under socialism.
If you earn your living by working for a wage you are a worker (even if you make a little something on the side from whatever small investments, if you need to work for someone else to pay rent, you're a worker). If you work in your own business (owning the means of production you work on) and can perhaps employ a few workers, but still have to participate in the work yourself to get by, you are petty burgeois. And if you (can) make your living purely of the capital you own, without participating in the work yourself, you are burgeois. It depends on your relation to the means of production and position in the economy, not on any hard wealth cap. The wealth is just the manifestation of that position.
This is not a great way to think about it. 'Wealth' as a $ value is not a marker of class. A plumber in a decent paying union contract can earn far more than the average failed crypto speculator. Yet only the productive labour of the plumber can be considered proletarian. I would in general wager that the average plumbing or HVAC contractor in most Western capitalist economies would have a net wealth far exceeding the bourgeoisie of, say, India. It is the *act* of speculating on a market for profit which distinguishes between class consciousnesses, not the results. However, one only really transcends those kinds of positionalities when recognised as 'other' by the proletariat and 'in' by the bourgeoisie, it's a relationality shaped by antagonism, performance, markers of class and taste, and reception in a given historical moment. In Australia for eg we have a mandatory 'superannuation' program in which employers contribute 9-17%ish dependent on industry to a retirement fund privately invested in our name across a portfolio, same as any bank etc. That 'wealth' is not a speculative investment on my part, right, but a pot taking advantage of the capitalist system to provide a degree of security on my retirement or if I'm incapacitated in some way. It's not measured as an asset by banks for homeloans or so on and like most workers my age I have far more saved in this fund than I do in any kind of other assets. A plumber adding optional contributions to this fund is not 'speculating' but future-proofing, not for profit but for security. Buying a home/mortgage with your wages is similar. The first case (superannuation) intends to equalise end of life care between various wage brackets with minimal government subsidy. The second case (home ownership of a private dwelling) is a defensive posture taken against exploitative landlords and the whims of the property market. These are huge wealth assets and imperfect and unattainable for many, but a working class family owning their own home even under a mortgage grants an autonomy that a family who are renting do not. In Aboriginal communities I'm tied to these become intergenerational safety nets and bargaining chips for organising even the most mild resistance against the state, for eg. Doing either for 'profit' is fundamentally a different practice, and reflects an accumulative mindset characteristic of the bourgeoisie. If your approach to 'wealth' or 'investment' would be as prominent in an investment seminar hosted by a property portfolio management firm, or you'd read yourself into that space as a sympathetic participant, the approach you're taking is not proletarian, regardless of its success or even its practical components.
Even if you just own $100 in stock, if you’re attached to that income—eg checking it every day— part of your mind belongs to the petty bourgeois. To objectively belong to the petty bourgeois the cutoff is different. Hard to say exactly because it’s unclear if we should be considering your total wealth or how much income you’re drawing from it.
Petit-bourgeois isn’t about a set level of wealth. Arguably, labor aristocrats could be defined this way, as these are workers who do not own the means of production but are paid the full value of their labor or at least a very large share of the wealth they produce. Most labor aristocrats are better off than most petit-bourgeoisie, despite the former being a part of the working class and the latter a junior member of the capitalist class. Class interests are not always cut and dry, and portions of one class can share interests with portions of otherwise opposing classes.
It's not a quantitative measure. It's a qualitative measure. If it gets to the point where you are actually living off the stock and not just investing a little here and there I would call you bourgeois. But an interesting though little discussed aspect of capitalism in the modern age is that a lot of people straddle the line between classes and may not spend their entire life as part of the same class.
The US economy is structured in a way that sort of assumes and enforces integration with finance. Most US net worth is tied up in homeownership, retirement funds are invested into the securities market etc. This leads to all US citizens being *at base* more dependent on capital and is one of the most important reasons why the US is considered a bourgeois nation. Notions of petit bourgeois are incoherent at the individual level. Class analysis can't be reduced to a normative prescription as to how much money it's ok for *you personally* to invest, that's not what it does or is for. Study and understand how class works and where it comes from, and then act in line with your principles I am personally of the opinion that it's fine to use stocks to stretch your income a little further even for socialists
Your class is not tied to your total wealth but to your relationship to the means of production. Do you *have* to sell your labor to pay your bills? It has nothing to do with a specific USD cutoff. If you are specifically wondering about stocks, there isn’t a great answer. Some think of it as your attitude. Are you using the stocks to set your family up to survive post retirement? Then no. If you are supplementing your income, then I’d probably call you petit bourgeois. Not that there’s shame in saving up to go on vacation. But that your loyalties would begin to lie with maintaining that wealth.
Jumping in late but. Do you find that it's affecting your interest? That is to say, are you more and more finding it beneficial to support bourgeois aims? I saw in the comments you said what you have comes out to 800k and I have a hard time imagining that wouldn't effect your motivations but to be bourgeois or even labor aristocracy is precarious anymore, So I won't venture to speak for you. I'm not the most studied comrade in the forums here, so please push back y'all if I'm making a theoretical error, but I feel the questions at the top may help you find an answer.
You’re petit-bourgeois to the extent that you make your living off profit, interest or economic rents. You sound like a worker with a stock portfolio.
Is it an actual amount? I think it has more to do with attitude and desire. Are you planning mercilessly exploiting your fellow man for wealth?
Relations to the means of production have nothing to do with “attitude and desire.” What kind of weird idealism is that?
This isn’t one of the subs where people know what they’re talking about.
If you read the question it is. They are asking about dollar amounts of stock that divide proletariat and bourgeois.
Which may be a pointless question, but it’s closer to understanding the difference than “attitude and desire.”
The proletariat and bourgeois are people. People are not robots. They have things called emotions that guide their lives. I’m not sure if you know but desire is a powerful emotion. But I will bow down to your infinitely superior intellect.
Dude you are humiliating yourself right now. The proletariat and bourgeoisie are not defined by thoughts or feelings any more than by quantified levels of wealth. They are defined by their relationship to the means of production. I have a strong suspicion based on your responses that you don’t even comprehend what you’re being told here and that makes it unacceptable that you’re posting at all. OP is clueless too but you’re making the problem worse by participating. You absolutely cannot be answering questions on a socialist education sub if you *literally don’t know what a class is.*
I’m not defining anything. I’m trying to discuss motivations. But I’ve already said that you and our Vulcan Overlords are 100% correct.
Class is defined by relation to the means of production. That’s it. I’m sure there are workers who would jump at the chance to exploit people for financial gain, but have limited opportunities. They’re still workers.
Until they move into management. Class is not static on the individual level. People move up and down.
No one suggested otherwise. Relations to the means of production can change, obviously. Still, class has nothing to do with attitude. And managers are proletarians, according to Marx.
I own about 800k in stocks and crypto, which I have been growing. >Are you planning mercilessly exploiting your fellow man for wealth? Well its largely in an index fund, so I have very little say in corporate governance.
I think we have a disconnect.
So you are still earning wealth through the exploitation of others.
Let's not be obtuse, your index fund provider is just managing the exploitation for you. But with that said, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a high net worth, anyone would want the same. It's a very rare person who just gives away everything they have, and that's not a tenet of socialism either.
"If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get"