What is the working class

Traditionally, social democracy is an ideology of the working class, and social democratic parties are working-class parties. The working classes (especially those organized into trade unions) are the social base of this ideology, its pillar. The support of the working classes is the foundation of the success of social democracy; without this support, this ideology cannot win elections or carry out revolutions. This has been the case since the 1830s, when the socialist intelligentsia, observing workers’ uprisings, decided to lead them in order to act at their head and build a society that would implement the interests of workers and improve their lives specifically.

However, much has changed since then. In the modern world, we observe extremely few spontaneous uprisings of specifically factory workers and artisans, partly because violence in politics has been condemned by many (even by many social democrats). In addition, technological revolutions have led to the fact that the percentage of traditional factory workers and artisans in the overall share of the working class among citizens has fallen sharply, much like the percentage of peasants did in its time. This has led to the obsolescence of traditional social democratic propaganda with its imagery of a factory worker with a hammer in hand and classic texts (the same holds true for communists). A significant portion of people from the modern working classes do not associate themselves with these images. Service sector workers, office workers, programmers, marketers — all of them are part of the working classes, but today the question of what the working class actually is and which social groups belong to it is extremely poorly developed, and this is one of the main reasons why these groups do not connect themselves with the working class.

At the same time, far-right and right-wing populist forces have once again staked their claims on the working classes, trying to convince society that the working classes are not about demanding fair pay and working conditions, social justice, and employer obligations toward employees, but about drinking beer, addressing gay people with obscene terms, beating one’s wife, being racist, living in poverty, and being proud of such a lifestyle. Left-wing populists offer to accept this image created by reaction and adapt to it, glorifying all these features and “understanding” them, building their propaganda based on this, and aiming to please the working class that has fallen under right-wing propaganda (thereby spreading such an understanding of the working class).

Of course, this image is created for a reason, but to turn the working classes into a stupid, easily manageable herd that is easy to rob and that will not fight against such a state of affairs. After all, working classes that are proud of their poverty, divided, and ignorant do not want to rebel against such an order, nor do they know how. Sharing and promoting this image as the norm for the working class is a direct betrayal, a service to reactionary forces.

Given all this, we must work through the question of what the working class is today without turning into flunkies of the right, creating an image for modern ideological work, helping the working class navigate modern society, and understand who its allies are and who its opponents are.

Exploitation today

First of all, we must note that the structure of society is much more complex than a simplified “workers vs. capitalists” opposition, and always has been. Even in the 20th century, nobility persisted somewhere, “extracting” money from peasants. Mikhail Voslensky also described in detail why in an authoritarian state the exploiting class is the nomenklatura. And, of course, we will not forget about that reactionary part of big capital that attempts to intensify the exploitation of its workers, and which becomes more reactionary as democracy weakens. But the matter is even more complex.

As Nobel laureate in economics Daron Acemoglu and his co-author James Robinson described, two types of institutions exist in society — inclusive (creating opportunities for the well-being of all members of society) and extractive (serving the task of “extracting” funds in favor of a certain social group). We wrote about this in detail in this article. Extractive institutions and practices can be used by representatives of various social groups, whether an entrepreneur or the nomenklatura.

They can be used by organized crime or even some groups of formally hired employees (like “superstar” football players), making it extremely difficult to isolate a single group. It is simpler, first of all, to designate that in every social system there are two main component parts — the producing system and the extractive system. The extractive system is a set of extractive institutions and practices directed toward the redistribution of wealth in favor of the leisure class (we will talk about it below). That is, unfair remuneration, unfair taxes, deception — there can be a large number of them, but they share a common essence — redistributing funds so that the leisure class ultimately receives more resources for its activity than this activity would be valued from the standpoint of fairness and the labor market.

Let us note here that the question of fairness is a subject not of scientific, but of philosophical study; therefore, fairness cannot be universal and objective. On average, the left and the right, the working classes and the leisure class, have different views on what can be considered fair. From the perspective of the left, a situation where a certain person, even if hardworking and possessing unique talents, receives thousands of times more than an average worker is abnormal. Reasonable inequality, as we wrote in the relevant article — is fair, and necessary. High inequality is radicalism, just like the “egalitarianism” of the most extreme communists.

Regarding ideas of justice, probably the most authoritative work is John Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice” (written in 1971), which stands at the center of modern discussions on this issue¹. According to Rawls, “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged” (the difference principle) and “attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity” (the principle of fair equality of opportunity)². In a just society, according to Rawls, property would be fairly distributed, and those in the worst position would be sufficiently provided for to be economically independent.

Of course, as we have already said, the idea of justice is subjective and can change, but from the point of view of the working classes, a situation cannot be fair where their representative cannot provide themselves with basic goods (for example, their own home) despite the work they perform, while a representative of the leisure class acquires a fiftieth or hundredth residential property. If such a situation seems fair to them — this person does not realize and does not express their own interests, that is, is inadequate; their consciousness has been substituted through deception. As the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen established, “Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good”³. If such distinctions do not bring benefit to the working classes — they are unfair distinctions from their point of view. Therefore, there are at least two fairnesses — the fairness of the working classes and the fairness of the leisure class.

In the social democratic societies of Northern Europe, the concept of justice is inseparable from the concept of “Lagom” — a Swedish term that means “not too little, not too much, just enough”⁴, and signifies a rejection of both poverty and excess or ostentatious consumption. The state of lagom is ecologically rational and concerns all aspects of life — from culture to food consumption (we don’t buy extra, and whenever possible, we don’t throw away food)⁵. This is a normative attitude through which a fragile balance between individualism and collectivism is created. This principle is the foundation of that social model that was created in Sweden⁶.

Swedes cannot stand boasting, and this is again due to the moderation of lagom, which balances people in society according to the principle “no one is better, no one is worse”. Parading one’s successes, wealth, and any kind of superiority is not just uncommon — it is condemned⁷. The state of lagom reflects the interests of the working classes, while those who seek to violate this state through immoderate consumption (which requires appropriating significantly more funds than others) are violators of social justice. Justice from the perspective of the leisure class, on the other hand, is the possibility of maximum satisfaction of one’s desires if one is strong and successful enough, while the interests of the majority can be disregarded altogether.

In an ideal society, each of its participants would be so conscious in terms of understanding the true value of their services and the value of the services of those around them that the people who currently constitute the leisure class would receive only as many resources as their services would objectively cost on the labor market (either due to their own consciousness, or due to opposition from conscious representatives of the working classes who fight for better working conditions for themselves). However, their income is often determined not by the labor market, but by themselves. For example, a businessman who collects all the revenue determines for himself how much to pay employees (and whether to raise their wages), how much to reinvest, and how much to keep for himself. Since he himself determines how much to keep for himself, his income is determined not by the market, but only by himself. In an ideal society, in the event of an increase in income, he would spend it not on ostentatious consumption, but on reinvesting and raising wages for his employees. The same goes for the nomenklatura. But since we are far from such a situation, they, as a rule, receive much more, thanks to which situations are created where people who spend most of their lives in entertainment have millions of dollars and euros, while a person working in the mines or an office for a full workweek receives a low wage, or a small entrepreneur receives an extremely small income, risking losing all invested funds due to competition with big players.

As we wrote in the article on the labor theory of value, if an entrepreneur assesses their contribution adequately and in accordance with how it would be assessed by the market and from the perspective of the theory of justice, one cannot speak of exploitation. It is incorrect to classify entrepreneurs like Robert Owen as exploiters, the leisure class, and the siphoning system (moreover, Owen possessed a working-class worldview, but more on that later). If an entrepreneur gives most of their income to charity, keeping for themselves little more than an ordinary worker has, it would be absurd to talk about their belonging to the leisure class and the siphoning system. The latter acts out of selfish motives and is built on proceeding, during the distribution of funds, not from an impartial assessment of each enterprise participant’s contribution, but from leaving as much as possible for oneself and as little as possible for the other participants of the enterprise. This is how corporations appear that report record profits and simultaneously complain about the impossibility of paying higher wages, officials who distribute collected taxes on state dachas for themselves, and so on. In the siphoning system, access to income distribution tools is what matters.

Leisure class

The concept of the “leisure class” first appeared in the work of one of the founders of institutionalism, Thorstein Veblen, a famous sociologist and economist, who in his book “The Theory of the Leisure Class” (1899) conducted an analysis of “conspicuous” or “ostentatious” consumption, in which goods are bought not for their utility, but out of prestige considerations. Members of this class demonstrate their status through their expression of contempt for all forms of productive work, especially for any kind of manual labor. Veblen himself did not provide a clear definition, and we can only conclude that the characteristic features of the leisure class are as follows⁸:

• ownership of property, including production, appropriating the lion’s share of the produced output;
• leisurely pastime;
• wasteful consumption, that is, this group consumes disproportionately more products, material goods, and wealth than is necessary for life and normal human needs;
• ostentation, striving for ever greater leisure, greater conspicuousness.

According to the definition of the Fiveable educational portal, the leisure class includes people who can afford to live without engaging in productive labor, often focusing instead on consumption, leisure, and the display of wealth⁹. Other sources give a less precise definition — for example, the Merriam-Webster dictionary considers it to be “people who do not have to work”¹⁰, and Dictionary.com — “wealthy people who can afford not to work”¹¹.

Practically every period of human history was marked by the existence of social groups or classes, many representatives of which lived and consumed immoderately at the expense of others, whether slave owners, nobles, big capitalists, and so on. Each industrial revolution or simply the sum of innovations led to a change in the structure of production, and these social groups changed, as a result of which all past agitation of the working classes became obsolete. This does not contribute to achieving their goals, so it should finally be said that regardless of changes in the structure of production, until now there has existed and will continue to exist, perhaps for a long time, a division into the leisure class (whether nobles, big capital, or anyone else) and the working classes (whether industrial workers, slaves, peasants, or anyone else). That is, the time has come to introduce broad and long-term formulations.

Such attempts were made earlier as well — back at the end of the 18th century, the English anarchist William Godwin argued that society was divided into two classes — the rich and the poor. The latter make up 98% of the population. The poor create all the revenue, but they themselves receive almost nothing. Almost the entire product of their labor goes to an insignificant minority, which is rich precisely because of this¹². Not long ago, the Occupy Wall Street protests positioned themselves as expressing the interests of 99% of the population against 1% of the super-rich. However, we believe that the term “leisure class” is more grounded due to theoretical work already done on this topic, better formulated definitions, and the lack of a rigid connection to percentages.

The leisure class includes various social groups and subclasses: the nomenklatura, big capital, criminal elements, large rentiers, top management, so-called “superstars”, non-working heirs and widows — everyone who receives a disproportionately large income for their activity. As a rule, such people can afford not to work at all for many years. The leisure class creates the siphoning system and uses extractive institutions. In general, today it can be considered that the leisure class consists of owners and people close to them who can afford not to work and use extractive institutions for personal enrichment and conspicuous consumption.

It should be noted that criminals today have actually emerged as a full-fledged social class. These are not only pickpockets, thieves, murderers, organized crime like the mafia, bribe-takers, and corrupt officials. These are various groups of fraudsters — info-scammers (for example, those who sell a course on making a lot of money, but only make money themselves on selling this course), fortune-tellers, phone scammers, creators of financial pyramids, creators of cults, and so on. That is, a fairly broad social stratum is included here.

Sometimes clergy members provide assistance to parishioners and the homeless while living rather modestly themselves — such people, despite the doubts of social democrats regarding the provability of religion, cannot be classified as belonging to the criminal class; they are full-fledged and respected members of society. However, for example, in the ROC there are many priests who do not provide aid to the destitute, “latching onto” wealthy members of society and, through the sale of magical services to them, afford a life with the acquisition of luxury items. Such “priests” should be classified as belonging to the criminal class. The criminal class is, in essence, a parasitic part of the population. They do not create value, creating only deception, that is, essentially negative value, yet they often consume significantly more than people from the working classes, from the producing system.

In a special series of articles, we also explained that the nomenklatura has actually emerged as a separate social class. In some countries, it merges with criminals (we observe such a social deformity, for example, in Russia). But in general, both criminals and the nomenklatura should be attributed to the broader category of the leisure class.

Working classes

The main part of citizens, as a rule, consists of the working classes. To understand what this is, we first need to define what the working class is. In the article on social struggle, we gave the definition:

Working class. This includes workers in manufacturing, the service sector, and mental labor working under long-term employment. This class can also be calmly characterized by the terms “workers”, “working class”, “salaried employees”. The definition of the term “working class” from the Britannica Encyclopedia dictionary states that the working class is a class of people who earn money, most often doing physical work, and who are not rich or influential. A similar definition is given by the Great Russian Encyclopedia: “a social group of salaried employees in the sphere of material production and services that arose in an industrial society”. A lot of talk in Russian society takes place regarding whether to include the intelligentsia in the working class, and this question is best answered by the fact that the concept of “intelligentsia” as such is present mainly in Russian culture and in the English language is designated as “Intelligentsia”, that is, by a word from the Russian language, and is used in rare cases. We, of course, can speak of the existence of the intelligentsia as the sum of salaried employees engaged in mental labor, but in general they belong either to the working class or to the class of freelancers. The working class also includes those who are commonly called “workers” (most often this term refers to factory workers).

Readers of The Guardian note: “When I see the ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’ labels in articles, I know we are usually being misled. We are too complex, too multifaceted to be conveniently pigeonholed. The existence of a ruling elite is indisputable; the rest of us are just arguing over the details”¹³. Oxford Reference explains: “The working class is classically defined as the class forced to sell its labor power in order to survive”¹⁴. Nevertheless, Western sources often mean by “working class” specifically those engaged in manual labor, such as the Britannica mentioned above or the Cambridge Dictionary (“the social group consisting of people who earn little money, often being paid only for the hours or days they work, and who usually do physical work”¹⁵).

One of the founders of social democracy, Wilhelm Liebknecht, advocated for classifying part of small business as belonging to the working class. His idea was that the working class should be understood as all those who lived exclusively or mainly on the product of their own labor and did not get rich at the expense of another person’s labor. Consequently, proletarians were salaried employees, peasants, and certain groups of small business¹⁶. Liebknecht believed that the latter two categories also suffered from exploitation by the system, so the task of social democracy was to educate and attract them. Indeed, small business, squeezed out by big business, suffers from this state of affairs. As Doctor of Historical Sciences Alexander Shubin notes (though he believes that manager-administrators in production were meant here):

Some ideologues of the Commune even included part of the bourgeoisie in the circle of the working classes. “La Révolution politique et sociale”, the newspaper of the Ivry and Bercy sections of the International, asserted: “The people and the working bourgeoisie are one…” What is this “working bourgeoisie”? A deputy of the Commune, J. Vallès, a non-party socialist close to both the Blanquists and the Proudhonists, contrasted the parasitic bourgeoisie with the “working bourgeoisie”: “honest and courageous, which wears a cap to the workshop, walks in boots through the mud in the shops, stays at its till and desk in the cold and in the heat… It swallows dust and smoke, walks with bruises, burns itself before machine tools or before the forge, puts its hands into the dough, and watches over the work; by its courage and its cares, it is the sister of the proletariat¹⁷.

However, in general, as Karl Kautsky noted back in his time, “Class is an economic category, but not a legal one; even class affiliation is always in a constant process of change. One small artisan, under the dominance of small-scale production, feels like an owner, a possessor; under the dominance of large-scale production, however, he feels like a proletarian, which he indeed becomes, although statistics may enroll him in the category of owners and independent entrepreneurs”¹⁸.

Many artisans (essentially representatives of small business) were part of proletarian uprisings. This is also true purely logically — if a person, for example, owns a shop and has hired employees, but at the same time spends a full workday in this shop himself (often even more), and his income is not higher than that of some skilled workers, it is more likely that he receives adequate compensation for his organizational and physical labor (though each case, of course, should be examined individually). An ideology that states that a competent organizer of production, providing his people with work, decent wages, and good working conditions, is an exploiter, while a “pilferer” who plunders humanitarian aid and actually steals public resources is a worker (solely because he is employed for hire, whereas the organizer of production hires others himself), should be categorized as false ideologies.

Nevertheless, considering small business as part of the working class is not entirely correct. In addition, we noted that it is also incorrect to classify the precariat and the unemployed under it. However, all three groups are allies of the working class. Together, the working class, small business, and the precariat are what we will refer to by the designation “working classes”, or the class of working people. By working classes, we will understand representatives of all classes who live exclusively or mainly off the product of their own labor and have not grown rich off the labor of another person. And this concept is broader than just factory workers. This is the entire layer of hired employees (including civil servants, with the exception of the nomenklatura and corrupt officials), and it also includes the precariat (for example, freelancers) and small business. At the same time, regardless of whether small business is classified as part of the working class or considered an allied class, the attitude of social democrats toward it changes little.

Attempts to introduce the term “working people” to designate a broader layer of people than factory workers were made earlier as well. Eduard Bernstein called on the SPD to become a Volkspartei (people’s party) and to declare itself a party of working people (a term covering all workers, not just industrial ones)¹⁹. The term “working classes” was used by Karl Kautsky, who wrote: “Like all working classes, the peasantry demands democracy”²⁰. That is, he attributed the peasantry to the group of “working classes”. One way or another, today the task of social democrats is to unite the broad masses of people living off their own labor and to overcome fragmentation.

Communists, on the other hand, attempt to split the working classes, declaring that any entrepreneurs and freelancers (the modern equivalent of artisans) are the “petty bourgeoisie”, also capitalists and opponents of the working class just like big capital, thereby pitting them against other representatives of the working classes. They also attempt to “unhook” fellow travelers like Owen from the working classes, and even the working class of Third World countries from the working class of the democratic world. The goal during the Soviet period was to disrupt cooperation within the working classes in order to pull part of them over to the side of the USSR, to turn this part into agents of the Soviet Union, and therefore of the nomenklatura (capable of ensuring support for it in its geopolitical games). Unsplit working classes did not support the communists, in part due to the position of small entrepreneurs, because under the communists they would be persecuted. Other parts of the working classes were also in no hurry to support the communists in view of the standard of living in the USSR and the situation with the rights of hired employees there.

Pitting different parts of the working classes against each other and taking the side of one part in this struggle seemed like a good way out for the communists, in order to present themselves as the voice of its interests (in reality, the communists expressed the interests of the communist nomenklatura and security forces). Liebknecht warned that “socialists” who exclude its component parts from the working class work for reaction for two reasons: first, they try to limit the revolutionary movement only to those groups that are insufficient to carry out a revolution; second, they allow the peasantry and small enterprise to be intimidated by social democracy. Kautsky agreed with this as well: “Rarely can a single class command such strength as would be sufficient for its sole dominance in the state. Once a class receives power and cannot establish itself by its own strength, it then seeks an ally for itself”²¹.

These adventures of the communists ended in failure, but the discord they introduced into the working class remained. Interestingly, having declared the peasantry to be the “petty bourgeoisie” (quotes from Vladimir Lenin: “the so-called ‘working’ peasant is in fact a small proprietor or a petty bourgeois”²², “The basis of Marxist views on the post-reform peasant economy in Russia is the recognition of the type of this economy as petty-bourgeois”²³), the communists themselves proclaimed the slogan of an alliance between workers and peasants (from decrees and speeches of the communists: “Russia is declared a Republic of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. All power, centrally and locally, belongs to these Soviets”²⁴, “The workers’ and peasants’ revolution, about the necessity of which the Bolsheviks have always spoken, has been accomplished”²⁵).

That is, according to their own words, it turned out that they came to power at the expense of the “petty bourgeoisie”, and the state they built was petty-bourgeois. In reality, the peasantry could fully be attributed to the working classes, but the Bolsheviks decided to work for unification only when it was beneficial to them, and for division when unification became unbeneficial for them. However, if any other political force relies on an alliance of hired employees and small business, the communists will call such a force “petty-bourgeois”. But in this case, they are obliged to call their own movement “petty-bourgeois” as well — above all, Lenin and the USSR.

Other classes

In the article on social struggle, we highlighted the class of the unemployed, which, as we explained, includes people who are temporarily or permanently out of work, as well as those on social welfare. They are divided into several subclasses.

The era of welfare states strengthened the subclass consisting of socially dependent people, in other words, dependents (we attribute this subclass to the class of the unemployed) — people whose primary source of income is social benefits or other state payments, or who are supported by their family. These are pensioners, persons with disabilities, unemployment benefit recipients, and so on. Logically, this subclass should support social democrats as the primary inventors of the welfare state. Nevertheless, the instruments of the welfare state have also been adopted by populist forces, including those on the right. But if payments fall under social democrats, populists make skillful use of this, while social democrats are often unable to take advantage of similar problems among populists.

Dependents are potential allies of the working class, but this is a weather-vane subclass. If populists provide them with stable payments and win the information struggle (for example, through control over television), they will support the populists, forgetting that they owe these payments to left-wing forces. The goal of social democrats here is to remind dependents that their payments depend on the position of social democrats in society. In the event of a final victory over social democrats, nothing will stop the right from cutting these payments; in Russia, conservatives have long been speaking in favor of abolishing them. Thus, United Russia deputy Irina Rodnina stated that “In some countries, there are no state pensions at all… You can’t rely on someone all the time, it’s time to become independent”²⁶. Also calling for the abolition of pensions was the founder of the conservative TV channel “Tsargrad”, Konstantin Malofeev²⁷ and many other right-wing figures.

A special position among dependents is occupied by individuals who receive payments not from the state, but from their families — for example, children in wealthy families or “housewife” wives. Often, they hold a conservative position unless ideological work is conducted with them and they are integrated into society. It is not easy to win their favor toward the working class, but if successful, they can dedicate a fairly significant portion of their time to the struggle for its interests. Another special group of dependents is students and high schoolers. Frequently, they represent a revolutionary force due to a large amount of energy, the lack of a stable and sufficient income, and uncertainty about their future. Students often become catalysts for revolutions.

Two more groups should also be mentioned: the unemployed who do not receive social benefits, and the lumpenproletariat (that is, declassed elements — individuals without a place of residence, beggars, individuals in severe stages of alcohol or drug addiction, and so on). There is a big difference between these two groups. Unemployed people who do not receive benefits are a most powerful revolutionary element; therefore, a large number of unemployed people without benefits and means of subsistence is a serious revolutionary factor. These people, as a rule, are in active search of work, are dissatisfied with their position in society, and have free time and physical strength.

These traits are less characteristic of the lumpenproletariat. Many of them have neither the ability nor the desire to work. Many had them, but found no application for them and lost them over time. Kautsky called them the “lumpenproletariat” and treated them harshly: “Another layer of the propertyless, deprived of all hope for a better fate, forms the lumpenproletariat, a layer of parasites completely superfluous to society, even burdensome, ignorant, without self-awareness, without connections among themselves”²⁸. This class of society needs to be pulled out of its practically hopeless situation, but one cannot rely on its help in overthrowing an authoritarian regime. Rather, the regime will bribe them by throwing them a “bone” in the form of paltry handouts, which, in view of the hopelessness of their situation, they will take and be ready for the dirtiest disruption of protest.

Internal division of classes

Classes, as we explained earlier, are divided into social groups, and one person can belong to several social groups at once (by social status, beliefs, interests, and so on). There are very many of them, but in a revolutionary sense, we are interested primarily in one specific aspect of division. The fact is that awareness of one’s interests is not characteristic of all people from the working classes. The worldview of the working classes, according to which their representatives should receive fair pay, have the opportunity to elect the government and create parties, improve working conditions, and so on, is often replaced by the worldview of the leisure class, according to which the poverty of the worker and the flagrant luxury of the leisure class are a fair state of affairs.

This was understood back in Ancient Greece, where a distinction was made between the demos and the ochlos. Polybius, in the sixth book of the “Histories”, expressed the idea of a cyclical succession of three “correct” (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) and three “corrupted” (tyranny, oligarchy, ochlocracy) forms of power²⁹. Aristotle described ochlocracy as a form of democracy in which the decrees of the popular assembly, rather than the law, are of decisive importance³⁰. In this case, the people, according to Aristotle, become a despot, and such a democratic system resembles tyranny. Where supreme power is based not on laws, he believed, demagogues appear who control the opinion of the people, form their views, and set the mass upon officials. Demosthenes distinguished between masses “yielding to emotions” and masses “yielding to reason”.

We encounter something similar in socialist movements as well. In “The Poverty of Philosophy”, Karl Marx writes: “Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle… this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself”³¹. In the Soviet philosophical encyclopedia, it was explained: “A class ‘in itself’ is such a stage of class development when, due to underdeveloped nature, it has not yet realized its special, objectively conditioned fundamental interests, their difference and opposition to the interests of other classes. Such a class does not put forward its own program and is characterized by the lack of a developed class consciousness”³².

Such a position was based on, for example, the work of the Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, “Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology”, where he wrote: “we must not forget the systematic psychological and ideological influence exerted by the ruling class, possessing the state machinery, in order, on the one hand, to nip in the bud any class consciousness among the oppressed classes, and, on the other hand, to inject its own ideology in every possible way, or at least to extend the influence of this ideology to some extent, infecting them with it. All these circumstances lead to situations where a class already exists as a collection of people playing a definite role in the production process, but does not yet exist as a conscious class. A class exists here, but it is not yet ‘conscious’. It is present as a factor of production, as a definite set of production relations. But it is not yet present as a social, independent force that knows what it wants, what it strives for, and that realizes its distinctiveness, the opposition of its interests to the interests of other classes, etc. … In order to designate these various states in the process of class development, Marx uses two expressions: he calls a class ‘in itself’ a class that has not yet realized itself as a class; he calls a class ‘for itself’ a class that has already realized its social role”³³.

Kautsky emphasized that in order to be conscious, the working class must possess an identity, feeling itself as a single whole rather than as scattered individuals: “The maturity of the proletariat expresses itself in its class consciousness, which has reached the highest degree of its development, in understanding great social connections and goals, an understanding into which scientific socialism introduces complete clarity. This is achieved not only through theory, but also through practice, through the intervention of proletarians in politics in the interests of the whole, and not for the sake of their own special interests”³⁴ (note, however, that “scientific socialism” is an outdated term). That is, the working class cannot be an actor in politics if its conscious part is concerned only with its own personal interests, but not with the interests of the working classes as a single whole. Reaction attempts to substitute this identity with a national one through reactionary tools such as patriotism, which prevent the working classes from realizing themselves primarily as a class rather than as part of a nation.

Socialist-Revolutionary Viktor Chernov emphasized the “ochlocratic support of Bolshevism”³⁵. He viewed “ochlos” and “demos” as two varieties of the popular masses, two of their faces. The first of them is elemental, the second is organized and conscious. “Demos” is characterized by will and discipline, “ochlos” by permissiveness and the predominance of instincts. In a sociological sense, the “ochlos” consists of marginal, declassed groups of the population who actively manifest themselves during crisis, transitional periods. An ochlocratic crowd easily yields to external influence and simplified slogans, and does not set the preservation of democratic principles as its goal.

Therefore, the working classes can also be divided into the demos (the conscious part) and the ochlos — the suggestible part, often possessing an imported worldview of a class hostile to it. That part of the working classes which possesses the worldview of the leisure class takes the side of the leisure class, the extractive system, in the social struggle, rather than the side of the working classes. It constitutes the working classes economically, but not politically. The task of social democrats is to instill the worldview of the working classes into all their representatives through educational work.

It should also be noted here that not all representatives of the leisure class possess the worldview of their class either, nor are they conscious from the point of view of their class. And social democrats can instill in them the worldview of the working classes, thereby turning them into their allies.

Conclusions

Human society is most often divided into a producing system and an extractive system, where the former consists of inclusive institutions, and the latter of extractive ones. The leading force of the extractive system is the leisure class, and the leading force of the producing system is the working classes. The leisure class includes various social groups and classes: the nomenklatura, big capital, criminals, large rentiers, top management, so-called “superstars”, non-working heirs and widows — everyone who receives a disproportionately large income. The working classes include hired employees (factory workers, rank-and-file civil servants, office workers, IT specialists, doctors, transport workers, and so on), farmers, freelancers, and small entrepreneurs.

These two large social groups possess a number of interests that contradict each other. While progressive taxation, democracy, and the welfare state are advantageous for the financial well-being of the working classes, the lowest possible taxes, “stable” power (that is, authoritarianism), and the absence of spending on social payments are advantageous for the financial well-being of the leisure class. Various combinations are possible: for example, the leisure class, under pressure from the working classes or, for instance, social democratic parties, may implement democracy or elements of the welfare state. The working classes can also compromise on part of their interests, “surrendering” democracy or progressive taxation to the leisure class.

The demos, that is, the conscious part of the working classes, essentially does the work for other parts as well, because in the event of its victory, all working classes, including the ochlos as well as dependents, will benefit. But the demos is aided by renegades from the leisure class who have adopted the worldview of the working classes. The working classes, in alliance with them and having reached the maximum possible level of consciousness through social democratic education, are capable of achieving a democratic revolution that will allow them in the future to carry out social democratic reforms. Kautsky believed that “where the proletariat is deprived of rights, there, of course, it cannot create mass organizations and conduct mass struggle in normal times; there only chosen, hardened fighters can stubbornly struggle against the ruling regime”³⁶, and therefore “conscious proletarians and their representatives everywhere struggle for democracy, shedding blood for it. They know that democracy cannot be dispensed with”³⁷. Therefore, a democratic revolution creates a democratic regime, on the soil of which parties of the working classes can already develop and carry out their reforms.

Social democratic policy expresses the interests of the working classes to the maximum extent. It cannot be conducted without social democratic organizations, parties, and media. As the same Kautsky wrote, “a class can rule, but not govern, for a class is a formless mass, whereas only an organization can govern”³⁸. We also noted that “the most powerful social group is a political party — it struggles for power”. Therefore, a special responsibility lies upon social democratic organizations for forming and popularizing the concept of the working classes, raising the consciousness of these classes, uniting them, advancing their program, and developing methods for its implementation.

We thank Artyom Kuznetsov for assistance in preparing the article.

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