Greece shocks markets with referendum on austerity

[DGuller]

That was interesting.  I guess you just can't get such detail from history books.

[Capetan Mihali]

  I am bewildered.  Do you have to be the opposite of the descriptive term you're using?  If I describe someone as an athlete, do I have to be "some sort of couch potato or something"?

I mean I get the 19th century idea of a class who make money based on their ownership of capitol rather than labor or aristocratic rentiers.  But in a modern economy, particularly where such a huge percentage work in service industries, what does that refer to?  Because clearly Marty is not an owner of a factory with workers making money off their labor for him to alienate and exploit.  Does it refer to people who are above a certain education level, or who own a certain amount of property, or make a certain level of wages, or what exactly?

Yes.   

It seems reasonable to see the nature of the bourgeoisie changing alongside the radical changes in capitalism between the mid-Nineteenth Century and today.  High-end corporate lawyers facilitate the protection and entrenchment of today's complex capital interests, regardless of the consequences for the laboring population (which I agree is more and more a sort of service-sector proletariat).  And they are more than adequately compensated for their noble efforts, as Martinus never tires of telling us, alongside his enlightened classism that he contrasts with the puerile ethnic/religious prejudices of the inferior classes.  Attitudes, privileges, and, most importantly, material roles in the performance of global capitalism define the contemporary bourgeoisie to my mind.

The rise and current domination of the globalized and wishfully depoliticized bourgeoisie is one of the most significant material, social, and philosophical developments in the course of modernity.  Relying on Marx's actual texts (rather than rehashed cliches), he notes that: "Civil society as such only develops with the bourgeoisie; the social organisation evolving directly out of production and commerce, which in all ages forms the basis of the State and of the rest of the idealistic superstructure..." (The German Ideology)  Bourgeois actors may try to individualize themselves through their cultural views (gay marriage!) or consumptive habits (organic food!), but they are ultimately invested with tremendous transnational economic and political power maintained, rationally, in the interests of their own class.

As much as the Nineteenth Century's "two great classes" of the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat have disintegrated in the face of a contemporary capitalism that is unconstrained by the nation-state, rendered incomprehensible by high finance, relies on new forms of wage labor (e.g. the service sector), dictates politics in a more discreet fashion, and mystifies itself through endless ideological justifications, I think the concept of the bourgeoisie is still relevant. 

Far from being a concept held only by eggheads/idiots/reds, it has a lot of popular resonance, from David Brooks's awful books ("Bobos ["bourgeois bohemians"] In Paradise," to the pretty common put-down of calling someone "bougie."

To "update" Marx's immortal statement in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, I would write: "The postmodern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of industrial 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."   

[Martinus]

That was interesting.  I guess you just can't get such detail from history books.

[The Minsky Moment]

What? Marx defined the working class as individuals who sell their labor power for wages and who do not own the means of production. That's me, along with almost everyone else on this board.

I also do not own enough to live off the capital yet.

For someone raised in the Eastern Bloc, you seem to be woefully ignorant about terminology.

First of all, a person who owns significant property but not enough to live off of that property alone, is not a proletarian under Marx's schema, but of the petite bourgeoisie.  Second, in Capital, Marx distinguished the proletariat workers proper from those workers who exercise managerial or supervisory functions within the captialist system who have a dual (conflicted) nature.

[Tamas]

What? Marx defined the working class as individuals who sell their labor power for wages and who do not own the means of production. That's me, along with almost everyone else on this board.

I also do not own enough to live off the capital yet.

For someone raised in the Eastern Bloc, you seem to be woefully ignorant about terminology.

First of all, a person who owns significant property but not enough to live off of that property alone, is not a proletarian under Marx's schema, but of the petite bourgeoisie.  Second, in Capital, Marx distinguished the proletariat workers proper from those workers who exercise managerial or supervisory functions within the captialist system who have a dual (conflicted) nature.

[Malthus]

Is there anyone on this forum who is an honest-to-god prole in Marxist-speak? I'd have thought almost everyone here was some sort of bourgeoisie, petite or otherwise, or at least a bourgie wannabe. 

It's hard, being without any real-life proles to oppress. 

Well, except for Slargos, of course. 

[Valmy]

First of all, a person who owns significant property but not enough to live off of that property alone, is not a proletarian under Marx's schema, but of the petite bourgeoisie.  Second, in Capital, Marx distinguished the proletariat workers proper from those workers who exercise managerial or supervisory functions within the captialist system who have a dual (conflicted) nature.

I always thought petite bourgeoisie was a cop out personally.  Just a catagory to lump everybody who did not fit in one of his other catagories.

[Richard Hakluyt]

First of all, a person who owns significant property but not enough to live off of that property alone, is not a proletarian under Marx's schema, but of the petite bourgeoisie.  Second, in Capital, Marx distinguished the proletariat workers proper from those workers who exercise managerial or supervisory functions within the captialist system who have a dual (conflicted) nature.

I always thought petite bourgeoisie was a cop out personally.  Just a catagory to lump everybody who did not fit in one of his other catagories.

A typical petit-bourgeois comment 

[grumbler]

That was interesting.  I guess you just can't get such detail from history books.

You probably could have, had you not been so focused on coloring in the pictures.

[fhdz]

I have no doubt that the divinations of the haruspex were later absorbed by the College of Augurs (despite originating in different areas and thus being quite separate initially) and thus am not sure it's worth arguing about. I will say that I found this interesting reading material on the subject of augury and the College of Augurs.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Augurium.html

[jimmy olsen]

the pretty common put-down of calling someone "bougie."

Common where?

[Tamas]

the pretty common put-down of calling someone "bougie."

Common where?

hipsters?

[Grey Fox]

I'm a prole.

[KRonn]

Augurs read bird flight patterns, not entrails.

Roman augers read the livers of sacrificial animals (the auspices) as well as bird flights, meteorological and astrological phenomenon, etc .

That must have been what some of our bank, financial corp leaders and some politicians were relying on for decision making, to get us to the economic turmoil we're in.   

[Ed Anger]

I'm a prole.