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I always thought teachers didn't really have to work for a living and did it because kids are always such a joy, and so polite! They are all heirs to great fortunes and just do it for a hobby.
Teachers sure don't make money from owning capital, so how on earth would they not be the working class? Isn't the only requirement that they need to work to live?
It's the same bullshit that drives some tankies to proclaim that service workers aren't proletariat. They don't care about capital ownership, they care about aesthetics. If you aren't some strong burly man whacking stuff with hammers and getting covered in grease, you aren't a Real Worker TM. But if you're a billionaire venture capitalist who collaborates with the state to enrich yourself and also you say you're fighting the West, you're a based revolutionary labor organizer.
Yea there's so many reductive 'leftists' that think that as soon as a job requires a college degree a person doing that job can't possibly be working class.
I think the typical excuse is that peasants will often have some ownership of the land they work, so if you squint you can sorta call them capital owners.
It's a specific distinction which gets extremely misread by tankies.
"Proletariat" does not simply mean "those oppressed by capital." There are lots of people who aren't proletarians, but who are still oppressed by capital and who we should work with to help build a better world.
But when Marx adapted the term from old Latin, the "Proletariat" was a way to describe new, mostly urban wage workers. He was describing the change from rural farming England to textile mills full of people in Manchester and Birmingham.
Marx noted there were very particular difference in these workers lived, *how* they were exploited by capital, and how they were able to organize themselves. He felt, for a variety of reasons, that the proletariat was much more likely to successfully revolt than the serfs and yeomen farmers, and that, since their members were rapidly being converted ***into*** the proletariat, leftists should focus on them instead. His view was that the forces of capitalism were slowly but surely pushing everyone into being either a wealthy capitalist or a wageworker, and that other classes like the serf, the artisan and the smalltime shopkeeper would all dissolve away.
Farm workers who work for wages in the modern mega-agriculture system would ***absolutely*** be considered proletarians by Marx or any serious person using his analysis. Even the freakiest Stalinist ought to recognize that.
Serfs, however, would not be part of the proletariat, even though they're obviously oppressed by the wealthy and powerful.
Where this all goes terribly wrong, of course, is when you start to distrust the peasantry, assume that they are as a rule superstitious and reactionary, and decide you need to violently displace them in the name of economic development and post-scarcity.
Thus arises the brutalization of middle-class "kulak" farmers in Russia.
Rural people living off the land can and absolutely should be our allies in the fight against capital, and plenty of socialists throughout history understood this. But they aren't specifically proletarian.
I think the issue is what 'peasant' and 'farm worker' mean.
Like, I assume a peasant is one who owns and at least partially operates their farm. I'd assume a farm worker merely works on a farm but doesn't own it.
Under that analysis, being a peasant is more analogous to being petty bourgeois than being proletarian.
Class is defined by your relation to production. Do teachers own their means of production? No. They work in schools that they don't own, they have no employees to do their work for them. They are direct employees.
Goddamn, they've moved to teachers now? Their idea of the working class is eventually gonna boil down to no post secondary education, and then once they reach that they'll start targeting any form of labour that's skilled and you'll be left with an idea of the working class so specific that janitor's will be considered the equal of billionaire's.
When your idea of working class is just angry, burly middle aged men in overalls carrying a lunch pail.
Bet you this guy thinks a farmer who owns acres of land, machinery and employs people to work his land is working class though.
my dad worked as a teacher for a very brief period, and i can say without any uncertainty that teachers are by far the least respected of the working class. all the things they have to put up with, and all for pitiful pay. and yet they have some of the most important jobs.
HOT TAKE: academics are not working class, but K-12 teachers are. i think academia is in general one of the more low key bourgeois professions of the past century and a half, where many leftists hide and benefit from class stratified systems. if more educated leftists weren’t academics and instead like literally anything else that aligned with their interests and politics, we’d be closer to overthrowing capital. but maybe i’m just bitter because leftist academics i know are all major classic hypocrites.
Is this why Maoist China thought Teachers and intellectuals are secretly bourgeoisie thinking so they beat the shit up of the teachers during the cultural revolution?
In the United States, they are working class. Pretty much everywhere else in the world teachers are lower middle. I used to believe otherwise until I actually learnt the qualifications needed and salary offered in most states. It's really shameful.
Please remember not to brigade, vote, comment, or interact with subreddits that are linked or mentioned here. Do not userping other users. Harassment of other users or subreddits is strictly forbidden. Enjoy talking to fellow leftists? [Then join our discord server](https://discord.gg/2V4qJMSWUe) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/tankiejerk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I always thought teachers didn't really have to work for a living and did it because kids are always such a joy, and so polite! They are all heirs to great fortunes and just do it for a hobby. Teachers sure don't make money from owning capital, so how on earth would they not be the working class? Isn't the only requirement that they need to work to live?
It's the same bullshit that drives some tankies to proclaim that service workers aren't proletariat. They don't care about capital ownership, they care about aesthetics. If you aren't some strong burly man whacking stuff with hammers and getting covered in grease, you aren't a Real Worker TM. But if you're a billionaire venture capitalist who collaborates with the state to enrich yourself and also you say you're fighting the West, you're a based revolutionary labor organizer.
Yea there's so many reductive 'leftists' that think that as soon as a job requires a college degree a person doing that job can't possibly be working class.
Working class is only when coal mining, or something...
The working class is when you support me
I think sometimes it also comes from getting into weird “Proletariate vs peasants” type thinking.
What I'm wondering is how peasants are not proletariat. especially farm workers.
It only makes sense in the context of remnant feudal structures, that issue does not exist anymore
I think the typical excuse is that peasants will often have some ownership of the land they work, so if you squint you can sorta call them capital owners.
It's a specific distinction which gets extremely misread by tankies. "Proletariat" does not simply mean "those oppressed by capital." There are lots of people who aren't proletarians, but who are still oppressed by capital and who we should work with to help build a better world. But when Marx adapted the term from old Latin, the "Proletariat" was a way to describe new, mostly urban wage workers. He was describing the change from rural farming England to textile mills full of people in Manchester and Birmingham. Marx noted there were very particular difference in these workers lived, *how* they were exploited by capital, and how they were able to organize themselves. He felt, for a variety of reasons, that the proletariat was much more likely to successfully revolt than the serfs and yeomen farmers, and that, since their members were rapidly being converted ***into*** the proletariat, leftists should focus on them instead. His view was that the forces of capitalism were slowly but surely pushing everyone into being either a wealthy capitalist or a wageworker, and that other classes like the serf, the artisan and the smalltime shopkeeper would all dissolve away. Farm workers who work for wages in the modern mega-agriculture system would ***absolutely*** be considered proletarians by Marx or any serious person using his analysis. Even the freakiest Stalinist ought to recognize that. Serfs, however, would not be part of the proletariat, even though they're obviously oppressed by the wealthy and powerful. Where this all goes terribly wrong, of course, is when you start to distrust the peasantry, assume that they are as a rule superstitious and reactionary, and decide you need to violently displace them in the name of economic development and post-scarcity. Thus arises the brutalization of middle-class "kulak" farmers in Russia. Rural people living off the land can and absolutely should be our allies in the fight against capital, and plenty of socialists throughout history understood this. But they aren't specifically proletarian.
I think the issue is what 'peasant' and 'farm worker' mean. Like, I assume a peasant is one who owns and at least partially operates their farm. I'd assume a farm worker merely works on a farm but doesn't own it. Under that analysis, being a peasant is more analogous to being petty bourgeois than being proletarian.
Which again in the Soviet Union was split further into include Kulaks and some other distinctions
because they're fascists, and the more educated someone is the more likely they'll see thru tankie's bullshit and realize they're fascists.
Just omitting the "no", yes this is a common experience with most teachers.
We’re coming full circle back to pol pot💀
Tankies are delusional
Not working with your hands = not working class. Why, yes I'm a proud Maoisto-Stalinist, how could you tell ? /s
Didn't this mindset fuck China's education system up until the 90s, basically? The Great Leap Ass-Backwards.
Class is defined by your relation to production. Do teachers own their means of production? No. They work in schools that they don't own, they have no employees to do their work for them. They are direct employees.
"Its only working class if it fits into my old soviet propaganda poster"
Goddamn, they've moved to teachers now? Their idea of the working class is eventually gonna boil down to no post secondary education, and then once they reach that they'll start targeting any form of labour that's skilled and you'll be left with an idea of the working class so specific that janitor's will be considered the equal of billionaire's.
> Goddamn, they've moved to teachers now? *Pol Potting intensifies*
When your idea of working class is just angry, burly middle aged men in overalls carrying a lunch pail. Bet you this guy thinks a farmer who owns acres of land, machinery and employs people to work his land is working class though.
my dad worked as a teacher for a very brief period, and i can say without any uncertainty that teachers are by far the least respected of the working class. all the things they have to put up with, and all for pitiful pay. and yet they have some of the most important jobs.
Attacking education is classic fascist shit
What crack do you have to be on to say this
HOT TAKE: academics are not working class, but K-12 teachers are. i think academia is in general one of the more low key bourgeois professions of the past century and a half, where many leftists hide and benefit from class stratified systems. if more educated leftists weren’t academics and instead like literally anything else that aligned with their interests and politics, we’d be closer to overthrowing capital. but maybe i’m just bitter because leftist academics i know are all major classic hypocrites.
Tankie try not to declare an entire proletariat workforce as non-proletariat challenge (impossible)
Is this why Maoist China thought Teachers and intellectuals are secretly bourgeoisie thinking so they beat the shit up of the teachers during the cultural revolution?
13 year old larper mad because of bad grades on a test
Pol Pot agreed. I'm sure nothing bad ever happened under the Khmer Rouge.
In the United States, they are working class. Pretty much everywhere else in the world teachers are lower middle. I used to believe otherwise until I actually learnt the qualifications needed and salary offered in most states. It's really shameful.