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new class analysis just dropped
Blue Collar Class - construction, trades, janitors, truckers etc., people who work their bodies hard and will "burn out" in their 50s due to accumulated injuries, don't typically work a set 9-5 but instead do shift work
White Collar Class - people who work that there 9 to 5, biggest deltas between working and office class folks is the set schedule and work that doesn't really take a toll on the body
Professional Class - execs, doctors, law partners, etc. - people who amass wealth in a way that white and blue collar folks do not, have multiple homes, and can fund their kids education without debt, and can pay for extracurriculars to get their kids into elite institutions to try and keep that professional class status in the next generation
The Neogentry - the feudal lords of America, they own dealerships, a chain of franchise stores, locally important businesses, and are big fish in a big town but unimportant in a city or populous state. Wealth is intergenerational, but they are more locally/state focused. they probably have a relationship with their congressional rep, and definitely have a number of state govt members who know them on a first name basis
Blue Bloods - the Johnsons etc., high-3 and 4 comma club families with money managers who have real elite pull in society. They can meet with their senators, their governor, and may be able to get the President's attention on key issues
The only thing they've possibly identified here are the ones who own vast franchises, car dealerships, and local businesses usually have undue political influence on local governance. That's a real thing, but it's no different than saying there are small, regional bourgeoisie who exert influence within the framework of larger, international bourgeoisie who exert dominance over finance.
The other things this person says are just muddying the waters. Furthermore billionaires aren't even brought up, like they don't matter.
One of my favorite paradigms for The 2016 election and the rise of Trump, is this regional/nationalist versus global capitalist divide.
The person who owns a couple car dealerships, who owns a couple restaurant franchises, who owns a successful furniture chain, is statistically more likely to vote conservative and support Trump. In this paradigm they represent regional or national capital. A powerful group of class interests, but a group of class interests focused on the local state and national level. The person who owns a couple successful car washes, is opposed to NAFTA, doesn't care about maintaining the empire, but has a very strong opinion on socialized health care or the minimum wage.
The person who is on the board of a multinational pharmaceutical company, the person who is on the board at a defense contractor, is probably more likely to be an anti Trump conservative, or "liberal". In this paradigm they represent global capital, they can support things like a higher minimum wage, or mildly socialized health care, but always with the rationale of making America more competitive in the international marketplace. This is the group of capital most invested in maintaining empire, who have the most to gain from agreements like NAFTA. This is the segment of the bourgeoisie most opposed to someone like Trump.
In America we have two parties, both representing the bourgeoisie, one representing a localized bourgeoisie aligned with socially regressive groups, and the other representing a globalized bourgeoisie aligned with American empire. Both agree on 90% of issues.
Yeah this is how I've been talking about it as well. We've ended up with regional capitalists who intuit a conflict with international finance capitalists. They'll throw around the term globalist because they don't quite understand what classes are, or where they belong. And since economic politics are paralyzed, they instead fight over differences in manners, they fight over how much racism a person is allowed to express verbally.
One of the central claims of Mao Zedong thought is that regional capitalists are not necessarily antagonistic to the working class if a socialist revolution is occuring. I have to wonder how that would play out in the USA, because our domestic capitalists are by and large the most reactionary contingent of the country. And they're not satisfied being personally reactionary, they're the ones funding things like PragerU, or the Daily Wire, or whatever other fascist rag. They're actually organized and have goals against the working class. I really do wonder what Mao would have done with these jetski dealership owners, or these Texan oil shit heads
Mao believed the national bourgeoisie could collaborate with the other classes of China because of the particular historical conditions of China as a country that had been exploited by western imperialism. In other words the primary contradiction was (is still, I'd say, until US led capitalist bloc is no longer a global menace to the third world and socialism) imperialism, and the national bourgeois has a part to play in combating it. Once that contradiction is resolved, the primary contradiction in is likely to be the bourgeois v proletariat class struggle, but the good news on that front is that the proletariat via the Communist Party already controls the state and all the power that comes with that. The bourgeoisie are not the ones with their hands on the levers of power.
None of this is applicable to the United States. The US is the imperial superpower, the national bourgeoisie of the US has no progressive historical role to play and is in fact reactionary as you say.
I really do wonder what Mao would have done with these jetski dealership owners, or these Texan oil shit heads
Undoubtedly something very cool.
It's the "just one more lane" but for class relations
one more class bro, just one more class it'll fix this, please bro
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