Economic class has political power when it has a shared identity and ideology. Weber was good on this. Class alone /= everything.
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further, you can belong to the same class and have different interests. Union workers have sold out non union workers often.
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As you say, selling your labor does not imply common interest. Owning capital or buying labor does, however, to a much greater extent.
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I would say that selling labor does. All economic class is a position, economically, Needing to sell labour is a common interest.
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As far as I can tell, all cases of effective labor power lead to "all workers are equal, but some workers..."
E.g. in Norway, we now have-
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a state pension fund that protects us from hard times, by taking rent off others who are experiencing that depression... more viscerally.
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It seems to me that since selling labor is competitive by nature, the successful groups effectively become capitalists, just collectively.
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Hence my comment about capital itself inciting to capitalism. Problem seems to be the possibility of gathering wealth beyond some low level.
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You can make a system where a lot of people are well off, but as long as it's based on selling at a profit I don't see how it's scalable.
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Hence the only working class identity that makes sense (to me) is the abolition of the working class itself. You don't get *there* w/unions.
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I'd love to be convinced otherwise. It looks really bleak with labor under capitalism. All outs I see are band aids/outsourcing/denial.