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What is the “Working Class”?
Despite obfuscation, the meaning of ‘working class’ is very straightforward: the working class is composed of everyone who works for a living. The working class is thereby distinguished from the ‘owning class’ — everyone whose property provides them enough passive income to live indefinitely off of it.
“Working class” is not a moral classification, but a matter of material incentives
Working class people are not necessarily good people. These days, most of them are “class traitors” — which is to say, most of them try to promote their own well-being at the cost of other workers in ways that ultimately mostly benefit the owning class. While this is unfortunate, it’s also predictable. Meanwhile, some members of the owning class are also “class traitors”, which is more unusual but ultimately a good thing.
The reason the distinction between working class and owning class is important has nothing to do with morality. There’s a fundamental difference in incentives, producing a conflict between these two classes: because the working class must work to live, members of the working class would generally like to work less and live more; meanwhile, because the owning class does not need to work but nevertheless depends upon the labor of others, they would like the working class to work more.
This conflict is fundamental to capitalism. Under Marxist thought, a society that…
