Seriously, I am unable to really find much about them outside of short lines from Marx and Mao about their potential destructiveness among other things, but I still do not really know what that “class” is. It seems to refer to the poorest members of society that includes unemployed, criminals, homeless, etc… And are they really so incapable of being utilized in revolutionary activities as they are portrayed?

Edit: By “destructiveness”, I refer to how Marx and Mao portrayed them as people that are not considered reliable allies in any proletarian revolution (though even this understanding might be wrong because I think the explanations about them are vague).

  • davel@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    13·
    1 month ago

    The Democratic machine would have us believe that MAGA are lumpen, but they’re not. They’re petit bourgeois.

    The Nation, 2017: Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs

    But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” FiveThirtyEight reported last May that “the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000,” or roughly 130 percent of the national median. Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again, they could become the haute 
bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.”

    • Rogelio_Marciano@lemmygrad.ml
      1·
      28 days ago

      Hello Davel, I see your point. Don’t worry about my being infected with Democratic Party opinions, I don’t live in the US and I don’t care about Hillaries or Kamalas.

      But still, are there enough middle class ppl to sway elections to one side or the other? Historically, and I have Germany 1933 in mind, Hitler needed mass support which came from the working class, too. The same class who by the way provided the most corpses for the war.

      Striking closer to home: the bulk of the Spanish Falangists were working class as well. If you look at their leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, you’ll see that the leaders were haute bourgoisie indeed. But the king needs pawns to play chess, if you know what I mean.

      Of course this debate is also about what is considered middle class or not. Twice the minimum wage? One million times? There are so many problems with the self-reporting of being middle class that the concept itself is super politicised.

      Also, a general apology to anyone who thought I’m some sort of reactionary. I’m not. But I’m not perfect either. This does not warrant hurtful and agressive attitudes either (not you Davel, someone else in the thread).