Capitalism's Greatest Confidence Trick: We're All Middle Class Now

by max blunt at 03:05PM (CEST) on April 2, 2007

The ideas of the original left-wing thinkers and activists were based on the view that modern capitalist societies were unjust, since the interests of working-class people were subordinate to those of the propertied ruling class Like a dragon, which may not be real but is still a very powerful idea, the idea of class cannot be emptied of all political force and meaning simply because real-world class formations today are taken to have transcended their 19th-century origins An idea of class is part of the political inheritance of today’s left.

The ideas of the original left-wing thinkers and activists were based on the view that modern capitalist societies were unjust, since the interests of working-class people were subordinate to those of the propertied ruling class.

The only democratic thing to do about this was not to seek justice through reconciliation, in some fanciful “middle ground” between the warring classes, but rather to further the interests of ordinary working people at the expense of ruling-class interests.

The idea was to give more power to working people by taking power away from bosses and owners.
So labour got the eight-hour day, the right to strike, work-free weekends, sick pay, penalty rates, inflation-indexed wages, annual holidays and other rights and benefits (which have all since come under attack by conservatives), at the expense of capital’s interest in exploiting labour without restraint. LINK