Relation to production¶

"Relation to production" is not simply about owning particular means of production themselves, it is about whether your class interests align with or oppose the economic structures that dictate that production writ large. Income does serve as a useful proxy for that interest. https://t.co/o1ymIFPyg5 Someone who owns no means of production whatsoever, but is paid astonishingly high wages, and is therefore afforded secure access to not only basic means of survival, but all the luxuries they could dream of, has a vested interest in maintaining the system that pays them so well. Such a person doesn't see a clear path to improving their economic well-being through the destruction of this exploitative system. To them, that destruction would mean the destruction of their way of life. Just like the capitalist trembles at the prospect of the end of capitalism forcing them to work, the labor aristocrat trembles at the thought of having to exchange their labor at an equal rate. Both are enriched by the extraction of surplus value -- one directly and with minimal investment of their own labor, the other as a consequence of broader imperial extraction, and requiring more of their own labor as an input. Empire acts as an exchange value multiplier for the imperial workforce. At higher strata, your labor is granted higher exchange rates: one hour to earn enough wages to purchase five, ten, fifty hours-worth of someone else's labor. The more valuable your labor is in comparison to others, the more you are materially invested in the system which maintains that inequality. Not because you "enjoy exploiting others," but because you enjoy stuff, and the class structure allows you to access more of that stuff. Someone who's paid well enough to afford all the things they want in life cannot be motivated to revolution by appealing to their sense that they are lacking. You can try explaining how "unfair" it is that their boss is "stealing" their surplus value, but... why would they care? Nevermind the fact that part of that inflated compensation comes in the form of stock options, retirement funds invested in the market, and the ability to afford investments of their own. There are almost no high-income workers who are not also stockholders -- capital-holders. That is their relation to production: they are enriched by capitalism. You cannot promise them any more than they already have. All you can do is show them that the system that enriches them is unsustainable and already crumbling and hope that can overcome their class instinct.