i was reading a shit ton of bourdieu (not the chef) and m*rx lately. it got me thinking. what social class are you a member of? do you consider yourself working or middle class? NEET? is NEET a separate class? I don't believe m*rxist stuff about worker revolution blah blah blah. but thinking about it, we don't have a working class anymore. that sense of community, collective identity, institutions like unions etc. all of thats gone. but now we have burnouts and a whole class of people who refuse to work or are unemployed or too retarded or disabled for that. theres also the proleterianization of white collar workers e.g. comp sci faggots being fired and replaced with the AI bots they built. so did the destruction of the working class create the rise of NEETs? the trend for hyper modern or post post modern (not)society is the mass production of NEETs and crazy people? idk wtf I'm talking about

I'm a slave to the rich folk I'll work 18-65 for 7.50 and hour and I'll be happy I'll live in my slums and I'll be happy I'll eat my junkfood and be happy

Chapter 25 of Capital literally answers all of your questions.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm

do you consider yourself working or middle class? NEET? is NEET a separate class?

Class, in the Marxist sense, is strictly your relation to the means of production and whether you sell your labour-power for a wage. NEETs don't do that, so theyre definitionally not working class (nor are they "middle class", which isnt a thing in Marxist analysis).
NEETs have always been a part of bourgeois society. They are are a necessary part of bourgeois society. Capitalism inherently fosters unemployment, since the accumulation of capital inherently generates a pool of redundant workers who are superfluous to the immediate needs of valorization (profit-making). Marx labelled the necessarily unemployed portions of the population as the relative surplus population, or the industrial reserve army of labour. This surplus of unemployment serves two main functions - it disciplines the active workforce by threatening replacement and suppressing wages (workers make sure not to fight for better conditions or higher wages, since they know some poor unemployed bastard will work for less), and it provides a flexible "human material" for capital to draw upon during expansion. NEETs, by virtue of neither selling their labor-power (as proletarians), nor buying the labor-power of others (as the bourgeoisie), are a part of this relative surplus population.
In Section 4 of the Capital chapter I linked to, Marx distinguishes 4 layers within the surplus population: (1) the floating (temporarily unemployed); (2) the latent (people outside formal wage labor who are not actively counted as "unemployed" but are ready to be absorbed into the labor market if capital demands it - e.g, rural laborers, housewives); (3) the stagnant (people living on the fringes of the economy with little hope of re-entering stable employment - e.g, gig workers, workers in sectors undergoing terminal decline, undocumented migrants); and (4) those in the sphere of pauperism (people incapable of working). I'd say most NEETs I have met either fall into the stagnant group or in the sphere of pauperism - I, personally, fall into the stagnant surplus category, since I'm living off of my labor-aristocrat parents' savings and am kept afloat by private transfers from past surplus-value.

but thinking about it, we don't have a working class anymore. that sense of community, collective identity, institutions like unions etc. all of thats gone. but now we have burnouts and a whole class of people who refuse to work or are unemployed or too retarded or disabled for that. theres also the proleterianization of white collar workers e.g. comp sci faggots being fired and replaced with the AI bots they built. so did the destruction of the working class create the rise of NEETs? the trend for hyper modern or post post modern (not)society is the mass production of NEETs and crazy people?

THat's because neoliberalism RAPED the working class and fragmented what was once a more cohesive and shared sense of collective identity and power that gave workers leverage and solidarity. The result is that those traditional buffers and sources of strength are largely gone or severely hollowed out.
But that doesn't mean "we don't have a working class anymore." It means the working class has been restructured in ways that make it more precarious so as to maximize profits for the bourgeoisie. What's happened is that more and more people are now kept dangling on the edge, in the relative surplus population, rather than being stably integrated into production. This growing reserve serves capital by disciplining wages, suppressing demands, and providing flexible labor when needed, while while economic crises (which neoliberalism has multiplied through deregulation, financialization, and endless cost-cutting) accelerate the expulsion of workers from stable employment.
This isnt an unintended consequence of postmodernism! Marx directly predicted this! Capitalist accumulation inherently produces a growing relative surplus population as a necessary condition of its existence. As capital accumulates and the organic composition rises (more machinery/constant capital relative to living labor), it expels workers faster than it absorbs them, even as total wealth grows. The accumulation of wealth at one pole corresponds with accumulation of misery and poverty at the other end.
All to say: NEETs are only as prevalent as they are because capitalism's drive for endless accumulation inherently produces and expands a relative surplus population, as a mass of people made structurally redundant to capital's immediate needs for profit-making.
This, of course, will be ultimately negative for the bourgeoisie too because of the deepening contradictions it unleashes within the system itself, particularly the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, crises of overproduction/overaccumulation, and the erosion of effective demand. But that's to be considered later.

Parents and broader family are middle class. Neither rich nor poor. As I am a NEET I am the same.

>>3
particularly the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, crises of overproduction/overaccumulation, and the erosion of effective demand.

That's what war is for. it creates demand, it burns surplus, it removes useless eaters. wins all around.

from my understanding NEETs are a product of a very late-capitalist system. as well the current manufactured unemployment issues. NEETism from what i understand wouldn't really exist in a system that actually valued the people in it. under the capitalist philosophy though NEETs are bottom of the barrel pooron-filth that only exist to steal government funding that could be used for more profitable endeavors. anyways this probably counts at politics so apologies in advance

>>3
well you are saying that "Marx predicted this!" but did he really? I find a few issues with your analysis. In the first place, I don't think you've done enough to justify why this completely restructured "working class" still holds the same character as the "working class" which Marx discussed. Even in this text, he's constantly referring to factory work and agriculture, absolutely nothing to do with today's gig economies, speculative economies, attention economies, bullshit jobs, digital sharecropping, etc. A completely outdated, alien world. He is actively referring to "the industrial reserve army". Completely irrelevant to our post-industrial economy. Of course in classic Marx fashion, he goes on a tirade about how capitalism is diminishing all the holy aspects of glorious labor. Marx can never decide whether he loves or hates work. You can always find some quote where he admonishes the idea of labor and toil, to debunk claims of his productivism. Nonetheless it remains core to his theory, inextricable from his entire premise of production as the heart of everything. NEETs are produced by capital merely as a reserve army of potential industrial labor (again everything is "potential" with Marx). So then what happens to this reserve army when there is no more industrial labor to perform?

You have said workers had a "shared sense of collective identity" as workers, and now that's disappeared. But that collective identity as workers which for you is a powerful weapon against capitalism, is precisely the subjectivity produced by capitalism's reduction of people to their labor power. Perhaps it is the case that "workers" (or in this case non-workers) have rejected this capitalist subjectivity, at least in some part. A refusal to be reduced to their relation to production. I mean this is the classic error of Marx, where he reproduces the capitalist logic of production or productivism. "Nooo the mass is refusing to identify itself purely in terms of it's relation to production", this is an expression of power from the mass, neutralizing any attempt at representation. Marxists can't deal with this because it is active strategy rather than virtual energy to be realized at some mysterious time in the future.

This restructuring of the working class, isn't it possible that it has been restructured into something entirely different? To use a trite example, the programmer who works on her own laptop owns her means of production, and yet is still somehow a worker, since she participates in the wage labor relation. So the wage labor relation must in fact (contra marx) precede property relations in this instance. I could go on for a long time on the fundamental changes in capitalism from the time of Dickens which Marx was critiquing, but I don't think I have to really. I think it's plain to see by just looking around you. I'll just ask you again on your final point, how can "the contradictions" possibly become any deepened. Or rather, when is this crisis supposed to happen? Isn't contemporary capitalism in a constant state of crisis? At what point does this working class wake up? What could that even entail?
Striking workers, are they NEETs? So are they surplus labor in that moment? Is it not possible that the refusal of work is an active strategy, rather than a passive reaction? I have come to dislike the Marxist view of the mass as passive with only virtual, potential power, summoned by some arcane ritual called "organizing", which no one can actually know what it means or how to achieve it. Everything is always "But that's to be considered later."

>>7

Perhaps it is the case that "workers" (or in this case non-workers) have rejected this capitalist subjectivity, at least in some part

NTA NEETs don't reject capitalist subjectivity, they often support it by embracing consumerist values. In many ways, NEETs are like Marx (and much of the bourgeoisie) in their hatred of the need to labor but also of the environment which pushes humans to toil. Although, I'm simply assuming 'bourgeoisie' and 'prole' continue to have any meaning. The refusal to work often stems from social-psychological dysfunction, the inability live an ideal lifestyle (the one sold to you by consumer capitalism), and regular unemployment. This is why many NEETs are reactionary leftists who dream of automated communism, not far removed from the Wall E like world neoliberalism promises.

The only shared trait among NEETs is that they are deemed non-productive social scum by the standards of political economy (liberal and Marxist, pick your poison). So too are self-subsistant peasants, Sahara nomads, Mongolian herders or Amazon Indian tribes etc. all groups of people governments and the UN agencies see as non economic and try to eradicate and make productive through civilization and development. NEET is nothing more than a label stamped on a group economists can't really understand because they privilege productivity. NEETs aren't non-economic, they share, they exchange, they depend on family and friends for support etc.

NEETs are a byproduct of how chronic underemployment at a mass scale compared with the spread of neoliberal values has created, in urban economies, a whole pool of despairing people: a precariat. Those who can't keep up with the rat race slump down to the canvas, and that's the demographic that get called NEETs. They won't rebel against the system because they are to powerful and they actually believe in its ideology, which they don't reject, so they just rot. This is damaged life.

>>8
OK I went too far with that claim of "rejected this capitalist subjectivity", although I did couch it with "at least in some part". I broadly agree with your claims in the second paragraph, but I'm then confused by the whiplash of you then returning to the frameworks of "political economy" in the next paragraph. I think I should be clear that I never claimed NEETs are somehow rebelling against the system, or anything even close to that. I'm not even sure what it could possibly mean to "rebel against the system". Rather than "rebelling" I'm speaking more of negotiating, evading, refusing, dealing with. I can't agree with your sentiment in the last paragraph, I'm not sure what "it's ideology" is in this context, I won't even go so far as to disagree with this "damaged life" claim, but I am just asking you to consider rotting as active strategy rather than passive submission.

I'm working through this in reverse, but I would like to now come back to your first paragraph, which I have the most problems with. I hardly think that Marx hates labor, his theory of gattungswesen (it's not human nature, we promise! It's totally a different thing!) is predicated on labor, that humans use their "powers" to meet their "needs", which must be done through labor. He hated labor under capitalism, but because he thought it was corrupting a core part of what it means to be human, he wanted to liberate labor, not liberate people from labor, because to him that would be alienating us from our powers. I don't agree with your assessment of this "embracing consumerist values", you are still thinking in a dialectical Marxist framework where "consumerist values" must be directly opposed by their dialectical opposite and then subsumed, I just do not put faith in this notion, these dialectical structures only serve to reinforce one another (something something che guevara t-shirts). Don't take me as proposing a program here, but pushing a system into hyperlogic until it implodes seems to me a more interesting strategy. You can consider my stance neutral on this consumerism subject.

On the subject of labor, I think we're just going to fundamentally disagree here. I don't know what "social-psychological dysfunction" means in this context, and I'm skeptical of this notion to begin with, it's buying into too much psychiatry. Well I think your assessment of this neoliberal promised wall e world is compelling, but I also think you have bought into the ideology you were opposing (the one which links marx and neoliberals and so on) , that is the productivist, utilitarian, rationalist worldview. You see all of this as buying into consumerism, but I wonder if you could (i'm sorry for doing this) read some bataille, and see what this useless expenditure means on a grander scale. The one who consumes without producing, a useless one, like the sovereign. Pure squandering. Refusal to participate in the rationalized economy, by consuming without producing, and squandering whatever excess they have completely uselessly. Whatever questionable merit this has, it undeniably runs counter to the quantitative rational political economy. The reaction against this sovereign life is nothing but ressentiment. Fuck labor.

>>9
NTA
Contra rotting: following Bataille's conception of the useless (as I've understood it from your post(s)) and subversion of the rational logic of production, doesn't rotting fall back into it? If you're not participating then it would be rational to rot but doing the opposite, doing everything in your power to flourish and do most of the things that are expected of you but then not utilizing your resources (cultivated without even being aware of it) for anything, pulling the rug at the last minute, turning around and doing, or leaving undone, something so useless nobody didn't even not expect it--wouddn't that be the move of the truly sovereign? As a long term NEET I'm just so tired of passive and broken people pulling everyone else down with them by spouting this rhetoric of rotting. If rotting is all this life can offer someone then they must be one incompetent sovereign, i.e. submissive and not an active strategist, and maybe wage labor is better suited to someone like that than NEET life. As for me, fuck labor.

I think you've got your Marx a bit confused by Bourdieu's sociological managerial idiocy. Class, in Marx, has no positive content, has no "members", and has no identity. Class, existing solely as relation, is a function of the value form. In this sense, the proletariat as such is not merely the movement towards it's own abolition, that is, towards the abolition of bourgeois society and the present order.

>>10
Quite the opposite - in a social order founded upon constant production where each element must correspond to the other (Bataille terms this the general economy) rotting is the site of unfoundational externality, a practice of the active affirmation of negativity. Questions of ``competence'' that you pose are questions of the factory foreman.

>>10
If by rotting you imagine an ascetic life then I would agree that goes against bataille, but that's not the only kind of rotting. As >>11 said there's also an active character to rotting, an active squandering or sacrifice.

That being said don't read me as valorizing NEETs, I'm absolutely not ascribing anything "radical" to this notion, it's not a dialectical opposition. Sure there is this aspect of sovereignty (consumption without production), but NEETs (including myself) are always falling back into the logic of accumulation. Accumulating technology, bishoujo figures, accumulating a "shows completed" number on MAL which cannot be given away, etc. There's an element of sovereignty, but it's not fully realized. "Symbolic exchange is no longer the organising principle of modern society", there's nothing you, as an individual, can do about this, the logic of accumulation will always rear it's head.

Denpa was created by two Jewish Marxists. Just saying!

>>13
It's pretty antisemitic to imply that n0 is jewish just because of that giant schnozz he has

oh my god shut the hell up >>13
>>14

>>9

just asking you to consider rotting as active strategy rather than passive submission

You're right to point out that NEETs aren't passive and there's a range of stances people take in relation to power, resistance takes the cake but we forget about refusal, feigning compliance and slacking off. I would only say two things. Firstly, should we really see rotting as a good strategy? Second, submission is hardly passive. When you submit to an authority, you carry out behaviors to demonstrate compliance, so that's not passivity.

I hardly think that Marx hates labor

What I was trying to get at is that Marx seems to hate the environment. I think he's ambivalent and contradictory. On the one hand, he valorizes labor because labor will free us from the terrible constraints the environment imposes on humans. We can evolve from primitive tribes to a world of free individuals through labor. On the one hand, he hates capitalism for its cruelty, on the other hand Marx the theorist looks at capitalism with the eyes of a Darwinist, its a dying system that's preventing us from evolving further and there's no reason to feel morally incensed by it. Marx is a contradictory person but the consequence of his thought is a hatred of the non-human environment, or at least that's a potential in his work anyway. Also, I'm not a Marxist and don't care about dialectics.

you are still thinking in a dialectical Marxist framework where "consumerist values" must be directly opposed by their dialectical opposite and then subsumed

Well we agree here. I don't think you can push back against power like this without entrenching it. The world is too contaminated.

read some bataille

I haven't gotten around to it yet. I don't really like what I've seen from Bataille and his followers but I can't really judge without reading him.

>>11
Why should I look at class like a Marxist? Bourdieu is useful because he helps explore the cultural side of class, something Marxists are notoriously incompetent at. I don't like the Marxist definition because "mode of production" is a foolish idea.

>>13
I thought n0 is a zionist atheist?

>>13
who is the 2nd denpa creator? thought it was n0's website exclusively.

>>17
kuz

>>18
I'm still at a loss. Enlighten me a smidge, would you?

>>19
not sure if they're referring to the same kuz

https://youtu.be/j9SSsFWu7pU?si=S_njZz9vCXcGl4jH
https://wiki.soyjak.st/Kuz

>>20
"wiki.soyjak" sobbb

>>16
n0 is a zionist? wtf why doesn't he just move there if he likes it so much?

#openbordersforn0thanky0u

Thread derailment. Nice.

>>24
We've been getting a lot of that today

>>22
N0thanky0u is not a zionist

>>26
never meet your heroes

>>22
explains the big nose

to be clear I am not nor have I ever been a zionist.

>>29
Me neither.

>>30
jumpscare

i'd never call myself a zionists. But i do think that autists need an ethnostate. what is that called?

>>32
Autism Separatism

Chronic and deliberate mass unemployment along with an insane level of bureaucratization, such that you need some kind of qualification for everything, and heavy urbanization and digitization which has made irl barren as fuck, all of these created NEETs. I don’t think they’re a class in the Marxist sense, but in a general sense they represent a big shift. Capitalism relies less and less on a stable proletariat and more on a casualized precariat, where precariousness and lack of stable income characterizes most of all labor, even third world sweat shops. NEETs are really just the new burnouts.

>>32
The Redditocracy of Spazistan

>>11 >>12
My post was very unclear and I still remain ignorant of politics. What I meant was that I see this active sacrifice of consumption-without-production falling perfectly within the confines of someone acting in accord with the system only with the difference that the premise that leads to the conclusion has been omitted. Capitalism is the perpetual negation of the human spirit and by affirming negativity Bataille’s sovereign is affirming the unliving, inhumane, spirit of the capitalist system and announcing his own death. It’s precisely nothing more than playing the part of the impotent consumer: luxury enervates.

As I understood it the point of consuming this accursed share is cultural enrichment. That is not born from consumption but leisure, free time without production OR consumption. Did the Greek tragedians spend all their time in consuming? I doubt it. Shakespeare only had a handful of books in his library. Tarkovsky talks about the importance of just taking time to be with yourself, etc. Why is most anime shit nowadays? Because the people who produce it and consume it do nothing but consume anime (a point I think Digi has made at greater length somewhere [the auteurs of the past would draw influence from outside the sphere of anime and I’d argue it takes leisure to synthesize those influences and add your own creativity to it, endless repetition of the same we get now all across culture is not enrichment]).

Despite it reflecting unfavourably on my own life I’m inclined to agree with the other anon about social-psychological dysfunction and NEETdom; it may be interesting to consider this consumer-who-doesn’t-produce as a thought experiment but practically it is null. What are the things NEETs lack? Power and resources political, social and often also personal. I misread you, and think that is quite easy to do so, as valorizing rotting because this political angle is unusual and I’d wager most view it intuitively from a moral (in a wide sense) perspective. The majority of people who advocate rotting on NEET-spaces are not taking an active stance against the system but simply giving in to their own baseness, and it is against the dearth of an opposing view that I feel the need to voice my opinion because I think it is harmful; I’ve had to terminate relations in the past over disagreeing on this issue as it was impeding my own well-being and there’s only so much you can do to try to encourage, educate or help someone who is not receptive (you can lead a horse to water... [and manchildren are not children, it is not my responsibility to take a paternal role; I am all for the liberty of each adult individual and the main issue seems to be in agreeing where liberty lies]). At the end of the day I’m just hoping to reach one kindred soul as an outsider.

Who’s making you buy figurines and keep an anime list? This is why askesis is needed so that we can habituate ourselves to not falling back into the logic of accumulation as frequently and fervently. When I hear rotting I imagine the opposite of an ascetic life. My point was that instead of rotting NEETs would benefit from living more ascetically. Taking care of themselves; acquiring a skill or some other capital but refusing to realize it productively in economic terms or doing so in suboptimal ways; being a Diogenes who’s rolling his empty wine tub back and forth to imitate everyone else running around in a panic; sacrificing your spirit in unproductive labor on your own terms but being renewed and given it back since it remains untainted by the economy. The fruit of that economy is rotten apples.

Laziness is the greatest virtue but some labor will inevitable, even if you lie on the floor your respiratory system and heart will keep on working. Everything in this life begins and ends with the body. The more you rot the more you have to labor in rotting. Think Epicurean hedonism v. Gross hedonism. The gross hedonist will wear himself down in constant cycles of excess and purging and recovery, whereas for the Epicurean the greatest pleasure in life is the absence of pain (the root of which is desire). The older and more rotted the gross hedonist gets the greater his pain, his travail--his labor. The Epicurean has to work hard to learn how to want less, but the less he wants the less he has to work in the future to get what he wants. His pleasure is constant in simply subsisting and his subsistence will be achieved by minimal labor possible and that minimal amount of work will feel even smaller because he has trained to do it. Non-action does not mean no action. It is effortless. Rotting takes great effort (constantly yearning for more to consume, worrying about losing your precious media collection, etc.)

I feel like maybe I’m arguing a different issue and starting to derail this thread about class with this apolitical individualist perspective. All I can say is that I don’t control the means of production to the radio waves I keep receiving. There is no escape.

>>1
I'd probably be in the lumpenproletariat but my family used to have much more influence before we were badly impacted by land reform and we're in the lower middle class now which I guess is just collective karma for us

>>37
where in the world are you where your family lost significant amount of status from state land reform?

>>38
Well, I'm from south India, Kerala. My family consists of Brahmins which are the priest caste, and land used to only be consolidated among my group. Our state eventually joined the Communist movement and we still have the Communists in power in our state, albeit with the fact they're revisionists.
Our group consisted of quite a lot of Communists, with the first minister of our state being a Communist from my group. We've become irrelevant in the modern day since the land reform significantly decreased our influence, compounding with the fact that we don't have a cohesive group compared to other castes which have become higher caste equivalents while our influence is only really relegated to temples because of how rare we are to find and since we're the least conservative higher caste group within the country in an economics and social lens except in terms of religion.
There is a caste system among Christians and Muslims within the state too, along with the fact a lot of my group tends to be uneducated and we have a caste based affirmative action where a lot of people from backward castes get government subsidies and university admissions reserved for them. The Christians are usually a lot more wealthy comparatively, and the oldest converts are looked upon as ideal compared to Pentacostals or Protestants who are looked down upon over here with Oriental Orthodox or Syriac Christians favored. Islam's caste system here is a bit similar to the Christian one where the direct descendants of the Prophet are treated a lot better compared to recent converts. The caste system still survives nationwide in terms of marriage though.

>>36
You're veering into ethics here and I agree with a lot you have to say. The idea of askesis has been severely eroded in modern times. Askesis is also never an individual act because it is always conducted with the help of others and within a moral tradition. NEETs exist in an environment where moral traditions have broken down in the face of consumer capitalism and they are unlikely to seek out others for help anyway.

It seems we're making too many assumptions about NEETs, who are just unemployed people after all. I don't think NEET is a distinct subject position like a class and while there's a subculture built up around it, this NEET subculture is basically soulless consumer nihilism. Otaku NEETs are basically people who believe in the acquisitive principals of Western political economy. They are the ultimate conformists because their supposed rejection of social norms (refusal to work, jerking off all day, watching anime) reinforces the consumer ideology. They are soulless bastards.