Material Contradictions and the Misuse of Class

Idealist "class analysis" is an inherent failure.

I often see leftists lauding, quoting, or retweeting Nina Turner, because she says things like “class.” The problem, however, is that the way she uses it is a misnomer.

This particular tweet is an excellent example of how self-described leftists completely misunderstand class and the material contradictions that shape it. “If you work for a living... You are part of the working class” is a catchy slogan, but it’s wrong.

Does this mean a CEO with a significant stake in the company doesn’t work? Sure, they don't do the manual or service labor that most people associate with "work," but they perform a job for a living. Similarly, many members of the petite bourgeoisie—small business owners—also work for a living. Are they part of the working class? Though their long-term interests ultimately lie with the working class (monopolization and the general upward transfer of wealth will eventually proletarianize them), they are absolutely not working class.

While they work, neither of these groups is “working class” because their relation to the means of production is fundamentally different from the working class. They control, manage, and extract value from labor rather than selling it for a wage or salary. CEOs are often the top beneficiaries of capital, and the petite bourgeoisie aspires to join their ranks by exploiting workers beneath them.

The problem here is that “doing work” is an arbitrary distinction. We could call all sorts of activities “work,” but what matters under capitalism isn’t whether someone works—it’s if they work for someone who owns the means of production and is thus socializing labor. This is the fundamental, defining contradiction of capitalism, the socialization of production while private appropriation of product and profit is retained. This is the material contradiction which creates “classes.”

Thus, we must understand that ownership is not arbitrary—it’s a concrete material relationship. Whether you own a meaningful stake in capital (and, with it, you socialize production) determines your class position, not how many hours you put in or what tasks you perform. This is why CEOs or landlords “work,” it’s just that their labor is particularly tied to, primarily, maintaining their material relationship to production and, secondarily, accumulating wealth.

Then there's Turner's strange appeal to people without “a sugar daddy, sugar mama, or a sugar somebody.” Isn’t a “sugar somebody” a boss? If someone is paying someone else for commodified activity—whether it’s sex work, companionship, or whatever else—they are effectively employing a subordinate who is selling some form of labor. It may not be typical (or productive), but it’s still labor in a commodified system.

The issue here is clear: this tweet takes “work” as a purely superficial category, devoid of any material distinction. This is the problem when liberals/leftists try to talk about class and social progress—they overlook the actual material contradiction at the heart of class society.

Class isn’t just about whether you work; it’s about your relationship to the means of production and what you do with it. If you own the means to produce but produce on your own without socialization of production (like a small-time, individual farmer or Uber driver), you’re not bourgeoisie. One could classify this relationship as one of a peasant, but it’s often more a means to obscure employment without legal recognition; Uber drivers are legally “self-employed small business owners” but are effectively employees without benefits.

Once a person who owns the means socializes production, they express capitalism's fundamental contradiction. That creates material conditions that we can classify.

Understanding class through material distinction is how we can achieve genuine progress. Without this understanding, ideas and ideals can be repurposed to serve anyone, regardless of class interests. When we don’t make these distinctions, labels and terms like “working class” get used by people who have no interest in addressing workers’ conditions. This creates confusion and ultimately works to the advantage of the ruling class, who can co-opt language and ideas for their benefit.

When we center our analysis on material relationships—like the ownership of the means of production—we focus on a concrete contradiction that must be resolved. Our goal is not to change or reinterpret ideals to fit a particular narrative but to address the underlying contradiction that prevents those ideals from being realized.

Take the ideals of the bourgeois revolutions: liberty, equality, and fraternity. These are good ideals, but they are only universal in theory.

Under capitalism, they serve the interests of the ruling class. Liberty exists, but only for those with the capital to be free. Equality is promised, but it cannot exist in a system defined by the extraction of surplus value from a subordinate class. Fraternity is a noble concept, but classes with opposing interests cannot truly share a sense of community.

By making ideals secondary to material class analysis, we create a framework for recognizing when these ideals are being twisted to serve the ruling class. This makes it harder for the ruling class to co-opt language. A material understanding of class, in other words, gives us the tools to cut through the obfuscation and resist tactics designed to pacify, mislead, or neutralize dissent.

In the end, ideals can only serve everyone if the material contradiction of class is resolved. And that requires understanding class for what it really is: a relationship to the means of production, not just whether or not someone “works.”