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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
This is why it’s better to study the “working class” by education level than income level. Sorry, if you have a PhD AND you teach at an ivy, even in an unstable gig, you absolutely don’t qualify. You chose class and status over income, congrats!
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Prof Zenkus
@anthonyzenkus
Replying to @ThamesOfUr
Hun, I am an adjunct and work paycheck to paycheck. Yes, I'm working class.
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David Watson 🥑
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
Do you think Marxists are the only ones with a license to talk about class? Half of the people objecting are insisting dogmatically that nothing but the Marxist formula could possibly be true or useful, and frankly that’s funny to me.
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Intercollegiate
@intrcollegiate
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Jeremiah Crotser
@CrotserJeremiah
The whole point of the category “working class” is political—it’s to build solidarity. No more of these litmus tests!! In its own way, the gate keeping on who is working class echoes the worst of the corporate style idpol from a few years ago.
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
When the Ivy League professors start showing genuine solidarity with the blue collar workers, I’ll buy this. But I can hazard a guess how many manual laborers this guy regularly spends time with.
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jeff
@midatantics
highly recommend familiarizing yourself with sociological reading. lots of thought has already been put into the concept of class
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
My objections to the working conditions for adjuncts and my desire to see them well-compensated are perfectly compatible with my ability to laugh at this guy’s tweets
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Scott Langford, PhD
@scottlangford22
I mean this with the best intentions. How do you define working class? What is the principal reason it is important? It seems folks get offended when distinctions are made with normative implications, but they may just be useful to better understand the world.
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
Colleagues in grad school persuaded me that, for purposes of research at least, "some college or more" vs "no college" was a good dividing line for useful comparison. I won't pretend that catches all the nuance I'm driving at, but whatever purpose the term is supposed to serve...
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
Because I don't think the plumber who makes more money than me by half has somehow ascended beyond working class, and I think he would laugh at me if I said we were both working class based on the numbers on our paychecks. Do you not think status and social capital matter here?
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ArtieBuccoVevo🍉
@MaloneRainja
As someone who's both worked as an adjunct for years and now works in what would be considered more of a blue collar field, this is horse shit. Class solidarity should defy cultural bounds
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Evening Pony
@huck_ster
working class doesn't refer to income level either. this is like an assistant math professor not knowing what addition is.
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
OP is the one who said "I'm paycheck to paycheck, so I'm working class." The implication is that if he wasn't paycheck to paycheck...
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
I am once again asking why online Marxists are intellectual children who think reading something means agreeing with something
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Joe Duarte 🏜️
@ValidScience
I don't believe in "working class" since it's a Marxist construct that excludes mind/knowledge work as work, but if we're talking about blue collar or whatever people use it as, always look at the hands.
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MWA
@RtrnSanity
And by habitus, heritage, family, cultural habits. Though blue collar billionaires are more common than working-class PhDs
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Conjuguemos
@realconjuguemos
If you want to define people by education level, then maybe the answer is to use a label different from "working class" that refers in no way to education.
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Crown Peach Papi
@CrunchCardwell
Neither are an appropriate way to study the working class. Class is determined by relation to the means of production. The fruit of the labor of the working class pays for everyone else
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Zionspilger
@PhilGarber5
My class depends on whatever it is I happen to be doing on any particular day. If I’m chairing a meeting I’m middle class or if I’m operating a road saw I’m working class.
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PhotobombingCow
@PhotobombingC
It’s more about attitudes towards work itself - and your boss - that defines “working class“. i.e. … having some “class“ while working - rather than criticizing and demeaning the system and the people above you constantly.
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Birrion ☭🇵🇸
@birrion
It’s better to study class by their relationship to the means of production. The actual definition of class
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
Who is throwing anyone under the bus?? We are talking about how we cluster people together for the purpose of research and analysis, you're the one who seems to think that by me saying "XYZ people are not working class" that I mean something normatively bad about them!
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Philip Bunn
@PhilipDBunn
I disagree that anything useful is accomplished in solidarity or otherwise by leftist professors patting themselves on the back about their working class status.
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Jack Guipre
@jguipre
Most people who sincerely believe they are working on behalf of working class interests are neither working class nor actually furthering working class interests.
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Tom Brookes 🏳️‍🌈
@CitizenBrookes
I suspect you may be projecting, professor - you want your PhD to elevate you from the working class, but - as any professor of political science worth their salt should be well aware - your material conditions, not your qualifications or workplace prestige, dictate your class.
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Christo Aivalis 🌹🍊
@christoaivalis
The definition is multi-faceted. I think it includes things like income, autonomy in the workplace, control over the labour process Decision making power in the workplace A TT prof has high income, high autonomy, controls their class deeply, has semi-democratic management
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Raven Beak
@ravenbeak013
Honestly I think working-class may just not be a useful term. It’s a white-collar job, but they may very well be much poorer than a blue-collar worker. I don’t think they get status/class, but they do get to work in an office/college over physical labor.
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GodzillaIsHurtingPeople
@Valentine721
I’d say a relatively safe assumption is if you could afford to get a PHD and be an adjunct you are pretty well off. You might “work paycheck to paycheck” but you have savings or a family safety net.
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Eric Friedman
@ThisIsEricsTrip
The class divide is between those who make their income by selling their labor and the fruits of their labor, and those who own the means of production and whose income is generated by the labor of others. That's it. It's not "income level" or "education level."
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Michael Tinkler
@MichaelTinkler1
My father used to call the ranking of professors "all the socio and less of the economic." He also believed (this was the old days) that "TIAA-Cref will make us all rich."
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peterneil62
@peterneil62
If you're working class, you're broke at the end of the week. If you're middle class, you're broke at the end of the month. Nothing new about that.
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Sarah 🍌📟
@sarahlol1863603
I'm an adjunct and it's my fun money job and essentially my hobby, because I do love my subject. It's not that much work. If you're not faculty and you make your whole personality "professor," it's the equivalent of working at McDonalds and making your whole identity "chef"
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Leg Before Teebo
@dmesg
"Are You Being Served?" is 50 years old and one of its stock jokes was that the maintenance guy makes more than anybody on the shop floor but he doesn't get to sit in the canteen with them.
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Alan D. Myatt
@AlanDMyattPhD
It’s long been a very revealing picture of the vile hypocrisy of the woke elites who run our universities to see how they exemplify the most grotesque exploitation and oppression of the necessary labor under their control. 70% of college courses are taught by untenured adjuncts
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Simon Silverby
@DocSilverby
There is very little class change, ever. At the extremes, a working class guy who wins millions in a lottery is not magically upper-middle or upper class. A bankrupt aristocrat is not working class or underclass. The real bridge is b/t mid & upper-mid.
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Mattathias
@Mattathias17
Why can’t we just say “working class in one way, elite in another”? Why the need to reduce everything to a single dimension?
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Yikes2024
@Yikes2024IN
Yep, that was Weber's point, whom social workers larping as social scientists like Prof Z would be well served to read.
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Gustav Swart
@Gustav_Swart
Might help if Americans stop using the word 'professor' for anyone who lectures (in other nations, the term is only applied to an exalted few).
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