The author Maxim Gorky, who later became the Culture Minister of the USSR, appeared at an impromptu public rally outside the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow - a building which had already been mined with dynamite by the "workers" (who were not "workers" at all, but professional revolutionaries) intent on blowing that bastion of bourgeois privilege to the ground.

"Citizens! Don't touch a brick!  For this building is the toil of Russian labourers!" said Gorky, in his famous speech.

Thus the Bolshoi Theatre was saved from the "workers" for the nation.

Well, I don't currently know of any genuine workers' organisations who plan to blow up theatres, or advocate doing so. I can think of one composer who when younger advocated blowing up opera houses, though.....

i find the attack on ian understandable in the sense that the only attempts to apply marx in practice has been totalitarian and severely violent to large numbers of people. clearly this was not a monopoly on cruelty and other totalitarian and gangster regimes do dreadful things. i am sure that Ian is not advocating totalitarian regimes, but seeking to rescue a marxist economic analysis of social relations. this is unfortunate in quite another sense since it may be that social relations are equipotent in defining economic ones. money and the accounting for it that we conduct, is driven by a metaphor of reciprocity that has long preceded its emergence. as did rigid social hierarchy. that these social forms relate to the environmental circumstances of the social group - surplus increases hierarchical dominance and intergroup warfare in primates other than humans, there can be no doubt. but i am not sure that marx is a good enough route to such understanding, far too little history was known then. and far too little ethology.

I know that this response was not directed at me, but my answer in any case is that of course they do exist. That said, however, I'd thought that the generally accepted notion of what constitutes the "bourgeoisie" admitted of at least sufficient people and corporate entities for their total numbers to warrant a sufficient degree of significance for them to be taken as a "class"; the owners of multinational corporations, the oligarchs of present-day Russia and elsewhere and the so-called "landed gentry" added together remain very much in the minority in purely numerical terms, even though the total amount of capital over which they may have control from time to time may be considerable. So - not a "class" of many, then...

But this is surely not the central point here. Let's set aside the corporate side of things for a moment and consider the following categories of individual:

1. Those who are unemployed other than through personal choice and who are not actively seeking or desiring work
2. Those who are unemployed other than through personal choice and who are seeking work
Within these categories alone, there will be those who are avoiding work and preferring to try to manage on state handouts, those who don't want to work and can afford not to but might additionally try their luck with state benefits anyway, those who have lost work, want to find more and can't afford not to work, those who have lost work, want to find more but could manage without it - and so on and so on...
3. Those who work but who cannot manage on the pay of one full-time occupation so moonlight as well
4. Those who work who manage at least adequately on what they earn
5. Those who work by choice but who do not need to work for money
Within these categories, there will be those who are employed, those who are self-employed and those who are both; there will also be those under 5. who choose to do unpaid work
6. Those who do not work and who can manage well without having to do so.
On the face of it, only category 6. individuals come anywhere near to likely candidacy for the "bourgeoisie" tht Ian describes, yet a closer look shows that even these include financially self-sufficient disabled people who are unable to work whether or not they want to, as well as a far larger group of people who have retired from work and can manage on their income in retirement (a group sadly dwindling in number these days).

Even if we look only at individuals of what is commonly regarded as "working age" (itself an ever-increasingly woolly and dubious notion these days) who can afford not to work, it would seem that those who do not work belong to this "bourgeoisie", but what about those who still work from choice, whether paid or unpaid?

In addition, there are those who cannot afford not to work but who do paid work for the specific purpose of ensuring that those who can afford not to work and do not want to work can remain in their hallowed positions of wealthy indolence; they might be regarded by some as "working class" but does their presence in such a class bring that class into some kind of dishonour or can that be avoided by exempting them in principle from membership thereof?

The principal point about all of this is that there are so many potential "classifications" that the one called "bourgeoisie" simply has no relevance in the real world.

Another problem is that blanket classifications such as "bourgeoisie", "workers", etc. are usually intended, as I mentioned before, to be taken as fixed concepts in the sense that anyone born to one of them is supposed to remain there. If "bourgeoisie" status is to be taken as a pejorative (as Ian appears to do), does this mean that the financially poor person who begins with a low-paid job and manages, without breaking the law of the land, to work him/herself to the point of being the owner of a vast and wealthy raft of corporations and then dies and leaves his/her wealth to others thereby acquires the said "bourgeois" status and that this is a contemptible thing?

As a composer, I need to tap financial support for my work as much and as often as I can from any legal source available to me; does the fact that I don't - and cannot afford to - care whether it's charities, private individuals, licensees, private or public corporations, the government and its satellite organisations or any combination/s of these that may provide such financial support mean that I am thereby some kind of indiscriminate and unprincipled drain on the "ruling classes", the "bourgeoisie" and the "working classes" alike? If so, perhaps there ought to be an underclass of all underclasses - the "composer class".

No offence to Richard or to any other composers on here, of course!

Best,

Alistair

Yes but Ian, the message I'm getting from you is that you/Marx want to 'divide' ME from general society. Because, now, I do not 'want' to work, your ideology seeks to label me and divide me from the rest of society.

I am one of the 5. or 6. categories listed by Alistair, but to live as comfortably as we did when I was in full employment requires additional income hence I have a small business offering services, and I accept 'work' (or 'business') when it will be rewarding BOTH as experience and monetary. The services I offer, though, can be regarded as a service to local industry AND the local community, hopefully my efforts improve working conditions and even save lives. Which category am I in now? 

John W

Not in terms of the Marxist definition. There's an interview with Jacques Attali here where he suggests, using the classical Marxist definition of the term, that the bourgeoisie amount to just between 1000 and 10000 people worldwide.

To John's point: I don't want to start getting into debates to do with the class status of individual posters to this forum, certainly not with respect to a moderator.

To Alistair on musicians and their class: The following, from a footnote to Marx's Grundrisse (see here for the full (long!) text, here for the footnotes in question), might be of interest (also for the smoking thread)!

What is productive labour and what is not, a point very much disputed back and forth since Adam Smith made this distinction, [Ed.: see Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, pp. 355-85.] has to emerge from the dissection of the various aspects of capital itself. Productive labour is only that which produces capital. Is it not crazy, asks e.g. (or at least something similar) Mr Senior, that the piano maker is a productive worker, but not the piano player, although obviously the piano would be absurd without the piano player? [Ed: See Senior, Principes fondamentaux, pp. 197-206.] But this is exactly the case. The piano maker reproduces capital; the pianist only exchanges his labour for revenue. But doesn't the pianist produce music and satisfy our musical ear, does he not even to a certain extent produce the latter? He does indeed: his labour produces something; but that does not make it productive labour in the economic sense; no more than the labour of the madman who produces delusions is productive. Labour becomes productive only by producing its own opposite. Other economists therefore allow the so-called unproductive worker to be productive indirectly. For example, the pianist stimulates production; partly by giving a more decisive, lively tone to our individuality, and also in the ordinary sense of awakening a new need for the satisfaction of which additional energy becomes expended in direct material production. This already admits that only such labour is productive as produces capital; hence that labour which does not do this, regardless of how useful it may be—it may just as well be harmful—is not productive for capitalization, is hence unproductive labour. Other economists say that the difference between productive and unproductive applies not to production but to consumption. Quite the contrary. The producer of tobacco is productive, although the consumption of tobacco is unproductive. Production for unproductive consumption is quite as productive as that for productive consumption; always assuming that it produces or reproduces capital. 'Productive labourer he that directly augments his master's wealth,' Malthus therefore says, quite correctly (IX,40) [Ed: see Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, p. 47, footnote by the editor, William Otter, Bp of Chichester.]; correct at least in one aspect. The expression is too abstract, since in this formulation it holds also for the slave. The master's wealth, in relation to the worker, is the form of wealth itself in its relation to labour, namely capital. Productive labourer he that directly augments capital.

Other varieties of socialism perhaps, and I would personally subscribe to 1-2 of them myself.  But Marxism - is it really ongoing?  Except for a variety of minority magazines you can find at Bookmarks ("Marxism Today" - which really ought to retitle itself as "Marxism Yesterday") Marxism has been discredited throughout the world - in every country where the populace are not threatened at gunpoint by Marxists, that is.  Just yesterday I was at a concert in memory of the victims of Marxism (Mikhail Bronner's Stabat Mater (1996) was played, which is a gripping work... the concert will come out on disc soon, apparently).  In China every last vestige of "Marxism" has been abandoned in a dirty deal which allows the bourgeousie (who are the Communist Party Members, of course - the "new aristocracy" - stinks, doesn't it?) to run things, and "workers" live in conditions of slavery in a "Marxist" (ha!) state.  All very profitable for Mr Hu and the businessmen who "support" him.  And if the workers complain about living in a country where the State tells you what you can watch on TV, or even if you can have a dog (nb, Alistair)...  they're told they're on the Road To Socialism!!  What a crock!  And all "in the name of the workers", of course.  Fear of being locked-up for breaking the rules of a Worker's Paradise keeps the Industry bosses loyal, and the bribes roll in.

Except for certain wards of Liverpool, and in Pyongyang, Marxism really seems to have run out of steam entirely - a dogma invented to deal with entirely different world economic situations to today's.  How could Marx have forecast, in the middle of the C19th, that call-centre workers in Hartlepool might find themselves underpriced by Mumbai?  

Do you know what happened when Mongolia had a Socialist Revolution in 1924?  They rounded-up the nomadic herders in the Gobi Desert - who only had one set of clothes, and lived in a tent, and battled against wolves and rats to keep themselves alive in winters that drop below -40C -   and they SHOT them, because they were "bourgeois parasites".  Apparently they were "hoarding" sheep, and the "means of production" (the sheep & camels) had to be taken out of the hands of the "bourgeois" owners, and given to the "workers", who were... other nomadic herders.  Oh, and they shot the Buddhist monks.  All of them, around 15,000.  The shamen, of course, were also shot.

Only a Marxist could claim that a penniless nomadic herder tending 40+ sheep was "bourgeois".


The Russian oligarchs have mostly made their money in just three industries - oil, gas, and mineral extraction. All those resources existed in the USSR time, but due to the pig-headed stupidity of the brass-hat berks who ran the country (before you accuse me of insulting your dear proletarians, Gorby was the only one of the lot of them who gained a University Degree in a country where education was free to all-comers, and even his was Second-Class) these resources were never developed.  Since the day the USSR collapsed and Yeltsin took charge, Russia has become the world's No 1 oil-producer (by barrels - Saudi still leads by revenue, because Russia discounts to needy nations who can't afford full-price).  

Were it not for capital invested in exploration, drilling and extraction, socialist paradises like Belarus would now be bankrupt, because they couldn't afford oil at full-price.  

You see, Ian - the oil & gas were in the hands of "the workers".  And in their safe hands, it remained below ground, benefitting nobody, whilst the country starved.

I lived in this lovely Worker's Paradise in the 1980s too (in Leningrad, back then).  I had one pal, Lyuba Kosheleva, who worked as a Night Manager in a Hotel, and I used to give her unofficial English lessons.  Unfortunately she learnt rather too well.  I was present when an American lady approached the Reception Counter with the Berlitz Russian Phrasebook.  The scene went as follows:

American Lady:(reading from Berlitz Book) "Excuse me - Where can I buy an avocado pear?"
Lyuba: (to me, after a pause) "Druzhok, shto eto takoe avocado pear?"
Self: "Eto vid South American fruit"
Lyuba: "Unfortunately, madam, Socialism has not yet progressed to the level where we can offer such a f***ing fruit to our guests."
American Lady: (explosion)

 

When I finally packed my traps to return to Britain, the following items were on ration-card only (and foreigners had no ration-books, of course): tea; milk; sugar; fresh fruit in quantities of more than 1kg; sour cream, yoghurt, mayonnaise; jam; cheese; meat; fish and fish products.  Of course, since coffee hadn't been sold since 1966, they didn't bother printing ration-cards for that... due to the shortage of paper on which to print ration-cards.

But is mere possession of capital enough to justfy your definition and make it meaningful? What about how that capital is acquired and how it is then used? Are these two considerations unimportant and/or irrelevant?

Best,

Alistair