The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income.
I understand what you mean. I can see how that relationship might be important to the theory. But what I said about "classes" (bad word: s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true. So if we're going to discuss whether, in fact, workers lost more wealth than capitalists (or, s/capitalists/correct terminology/), those empirical issues should still be addressed.
For example, I may be a "worker bee" consultant at IBM, but holding stock factually altered my exposure to wealth shocks.
You wouldn't even understand an answer I'd give you, because it'd be in Marxist terminology. Maybe Oscilliscope will be willing to explain their comment, I don't care to at this time.
> But what I said about "classes" (bad word, s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true.
It is true within the framework you have set up to analyze the situation. One of Marx's theses is that that analysis is not adequate to explain capitalism's tendancy towards crisis, the falling rate of profit, the alienation of the worker, and many of its other features.
You're saying "but no, it's true that you can measure things in degrees" and Marx is saying "my theories and equations are all using radians."
Right, but you have a chart that only takes into account wages which ignores things like 'wars' and 'embargoes' and 'happiness index' and doesn't even cite its numbers, and a vague hunch about relative values of securities. Really, all of this is far too muddy on both of our sides, combined with said terminology gap.
I really should be coding, not typing on HN, so I'm going to gracefully bow out of this conversation, but thank you for continuing it, you've been great. Two thoughts as I leave you: 1. the fact that many people have things like stocks in their 401Ks is one of the reasons that I think Marxist theories need updated, though I think of them as generally sound. Luckily, many people have since Marx's time (First Lenin, then Mao, and many, many others) and 2. Marxism is really about a methodology than a strict set of answers: you use the tools of dialectics and historical materialism to produce a scientific analysis. That applies to Marxism itself as well, and like any science, its theories will come and go, be made stronger or weaker as history marches on. That's not a flaw, it's a strength, and it's why Marxist analyses have been used across a variety of fields, not just economics.
Thank you for this break as I work on the documentation for the impending Rails 4 release.
=) You're welcome. Have fun and I'll get back to work as well. I agree that stocks and mortgages don't capture happiness, wars, and so on.
For anyone who cares to pick up the thread, steveklabnik has left you with:
Marxism is really about a methodology than a strict set of answers: you use the tools of dialectics and historical materialism to produce a scientific analysis
I understand what you mean. I can see how that relationship might be important to the theory. But what I said about "classes" (bad word: s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true. So if we're going to discuss whether, in fact, workers lost more wealth than capitalists (or, s/capitalists/correct terminology/), those empirical issues should still be addressed.
For example, I may be a "worker bee" consultant at IBM, but holding stock factually altered my exposure to wealth shocks.
You wouldn't even understand an answer I'd give you, because it'd be in Marxist terminology. Maybe Oscilliscope will be willing to explain their comment, I don't care to at this time.
Fair enough.