This is my reading digest from my Critical Social Theory Week 1 (dated 3 October 2006). I thought I’d go ahead and post this and my subsequent reading digests on my blog, despite (or perhaps because of) their exploratory nature.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Manifesto of the Communist Party,“ 1888 edition, edited by Friedrich Engels. in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 469-500. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
Marx, Karl. “The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution.“ 1872. Translated by Saul K. Padover. in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 522-524. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
In class last week, we discussed the definitions of proletariat and bourgeoisie as classes, and came to the conclusion that the bourgeoisie is the class that owns the means of production (meaning factories, companies, and the ilk), and that the proletariat is the class that sells its labor and is exploited by the bourgeoisie. Someone in the class asked about a lawyer, and we determined that a lawyer who is working for a firm is proletariat, but one who owns the firm is bourgeoisie.
What I don’t feel is fully resolved are people on the borders: can someone be both proletariat and bourgeoisie? Is this possible? Perhaps we could ask if this is possible in the context of Marx’s work (mid nineteenth century) and in the context of late capitalism. Someone suggested that a lawyer could start out as proletariat, but if he/she/ze is successful and well-liked, the lawyer might become a partner, thus becoming bourgeoisie. Is it possible, though, during this transition, to be both a proletariat and a bourgeoisie? I don’t think I know enough about the partnering process to understand this particular situation (my primary knowledge of the partnering process in lawyer firms comes from reading The Firm in junior high a dozen years ago), but I will try to explore this question.
Obviously, someone can be both an oppressor and of the oppressed simultaneously. An individual can be among the oppressing class of white men but be queer, and therefore also suffer institutional oppression. Arguably, also, class distinctions and performances (by class here I do not mean Marx’s concept of class, but rather class as in a group of people — e.g., women, men, genderqeer, and so forth, or classes of race) can be fluid, and one can move between classes (e.g., alterations in gender performance, moving from one situation to another where one is raced differently) or even be in two conflicting classes at the same time (I have felt so classed as both middle class and working class so that I felt simultaneously a member of both and neither class at the same time; Gloria Anzaldúa makes a strong case that she is both woman and man).
To return to Marx’s concept of class: Obviously, the lawyer can move from proletariat to bourgeoisie. Indeed, the lawyer’s firm could go under and he/she/ze could be forced to enter wage labor and the proletariat class again, so class switching can happen in either direction. But I haven’t even begun to address whether someone can be simultaneously of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie classes. Ideologically, the proletariat identifies with the bourgeoisie in that it is the bourgeoisie’s ideology that is accepted and imposed upon the proletariat’s consciousness (the oppressed must always be able to identify with the ideology of the oppressor). In this way, the proletariat is a part of the bourgeoisie in mentality, but not in power.
I think I might consider a situation I am very familiar with: that of my father. My father owns a farm and works it with my grandfather, raising cattle, corn, beans, alfalfa, and hay. The farm has been in my family for over 100 years, and my grandfather owns over 1000 acres and 300 head of cattle. This is a fairly large family-owned farm for rural southwest Iowa. My grandfather and father have even hired people for labor, including my younger brothers and a few other young men or family friends in the community. I would argue that with this evidence, they are petty-bourgeoisie, in that they own means of production but have relatively little exploitation of the proletariat. Marx writes that the petty-bourgeoisie is
fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen. (“Manifesto“ 492-493)
Indeed, my father is being forced into the proletariat class by competition (and other economic factors), and while continuing to farm, he has taken on three part-time jobs. He is, in effect, both proletariat and petty-bourgeoisie.
However, the petty-bourgeoisie is not of the same class as the bourgeoisie. In fact, why the hell would someone in the bourgeoisie be proletariat? They have power, and any attempt to sell their labor to someone else isn’t a choice imposed upon them, but rather one they make for themselves. This would be a fundamental difference between the two that goes back to the difference in power that I mentioned before. While both might believe (the bourgeois ideological dogma) that their job is a choice, really it would only be for the bourgeoisie who can actually choose to take on a job.
So, to wrap up, I think I’ll tentatively decide that it is possible for a blurring between proletariat and petty-bourgeoisie, but that blurring decidedly less possible (if not impossible) between proletariat and bourgeoisie. I feel really uncomfortable making this statement, though, because of my belief that most taxonomies are false, that there are cases that show a blurring between two classes that show that those classes are in fact social constructed and not as demarcated as we had expected and thought.
