Not really. I grew up below the poverty line. Everyone I knew was working class. Some of these people are still very dear to me.
However, I did something which virtually none of them did. I wanted to get out. So I identified a skillset that the world desperately wanted, and I spent thousands of hours learning how to build and sell with that skillset. Frequently I was criticized or ridiculed or simply ignored, but it worked and I made money. Then I used that money to amass assets.
This doesn't mean I think Elon Musk is my friend or a good guy or something or even that I think the system is just, I don't. But I correctly identified the ladder out of the working class trap. I have Marxist friends who didn't. They're still poor. They still won't listen. Their lives still suck.
The biggest thing I don't like about these Marxist politics warriors is that they actually seem resigned to a future where huge corporations control our destiny, as long as an even huger government extracts some value for the little people. They seem to think that will work but I saw in my own life that concentration of wealth and power always fails the little guy. My philosophy is that it's better to bust all the big guys down (don't mistake this for an endorsement of unregulated capitalism, it isn't) and give everybody the ability to amass their own wealth by creating businesses. I think this idea is way more hackerish than Marxism, because it's all about people building and creating without needing someone else's permission.
If you are a worker, you should want to become an owner. You should not want to appeal to a higher authority for a distribution, because the hand that feeds you will always control you. You will not be free. You should strive to own and control your own slice of the pie because that is the only thing which will make you free. The more workers we can convert into owners, the better, and I'm not talking some fantastical idea of collective ownership here (at least in today's system, it basically doesn't exist).
> The biggest thing I don't like about these Marxist politics warriors is that they actually seem resigned to a future where huge corporations control our destiny, as long as an even huger government extracts some value for the little people.
legit question, what kind of marxist wants large corporations controlling everything?
Ironically, this is actually pretty close to what Marx writes in capital. Small owner operated businesses for artisans are a model he talks about, and owning your own tools and means of creating value and so on.
The state owning things on your behalf is not very true to the spirit of it at all, I would say.
> Not really. I grew up below the poverty line. Everyone I knew was working class. Some of these people are still very dear to me.
It wouldn't be false consciousness if you would be from wealthy family.
Yes, working people should climb the ladder, but without government intervention and putting collars on wealthy necks there won't be any ladder for them. There would be no small business owners like you. This is why I think you are very wrong when stating you are not one of them. In a sense that is true, but in other you have more common interest with those without any capital that with those really wealthy. But those really wealthy definitely want you to think otherwise.
And I have an impression your view of Marxism is forged on Reddit posts and not Marxists literature.
Good that people finally open their eyes.
> But, also I am not one of them, I am a capitalist, I own a small business
And that's a false-consciousness at its finest. You are closer to these workers than to those that really own capital.