oftwominds | Class wars are the inevitable result of an economic system in which 'anything goes if you're rich enough and winners take most'.
The
traditional class war has been waged between wage-earners (who sell
their labor) and their employers (owners of capital and the means of production). These
classes have been assigned various names (proletariat, bourgeoisie,
capitalists, etc.) but these broad class definitions don't describe all
the class conflicts emerging in the modern U.S. economy.
Before we dig deeper, let's stipulate that ownership of various forms of capital still defines class: the wealthy live off unearned income skimmed from capital and everyone else lives off earned income from selling their labor. (Those without either source of income become dependents of the State).
What you own or don't own defines your class interests, but these have been fragmented into a multitude of sub-classes. Six years ago I took a stab at defining America's Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy (April 29, 2014), to which I would now add a tenth class, gig economy precariat, who paradoxically may own one of the means of production such as the car needed to become an Uber driver, but the precariat doesn't own the controlling means of production, which is the Uber platform.
Cell phone video
shows Kenosha Wisconsin police officers in an military vehicle telling
armed White militia members they "appreciate them being
there" and giving them bottled water; while in the background
cops can be heard ordering protestors to disperse. pic.twitter.com/73SsfCUYWj
—
Rebecca Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) August
26, 2020
As a consequence, all the profits flow to the owners of the platform. Since the gig economy is not traditional hourly employment, there is no employer-provided security at all.
My taxonomy of class in America:
1. The Deep State.
2. The Oligarchs.
3. New Nobility.
4. Upper Caste.
5. State Nomenklatura.
6. The Middle Class.
7. The Working Poor.
8. State Dependents.
9. Mobile Creatives.
To which we add a new category of the working poor who lack even the
minimal security of the conventional Working Poor (such as Amazon
fulfillment center workers):
10. Gig economy precariat.
For the purposes of today's discussion, let's focus on the conflicts between four classes:
1. The Central State, which includes the elected government, the
permanent Deep State, the Federal Reserve and and the
managers/technocrats who run the State Nomenklatura.
2. The owners of Capital and political influence (The Oligarchs and New Nobility).
3. The Upper Caste, the top 10% of the private sector.
4. The lower classes of wage-earners and state dependents.
