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.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm
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.
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.