Middle class revolutionaries

Tastybrain, what you say about the concept of middle class having a much more specific meaning in the UK tied to both profession and cultural habitus sounds rather accurate.

However:

"Blue collar" is one of those bullshit terms that conservative ideologues in the US like to use to obscure class analysis. A prime example is the highly irritating New York Times columnist David Brooks, who likes to indulge in these sloppy speculations about "Red State" vs. "Blue State" America, which plays off the crudest stereotypes about NASCAR-watchin', drinkin' beer from a can REAL American blue collar types vs. effete coastal intellectuals sipping expensive wine and coffee.

In other words, whereas class distinction in the UK is at least partly tied to a sociological definition that distinguishes between wage laborers and salaried professionals, in the US there's an irritating tendency to define it purely in cultural terms, as if "working class" and "middle class" were subcultures like "punk" or "goth".

And your use of "blue collar" above is an inadvertant perpetuation of this way of thinking. You say your neighbors own a construction business. If that's so, then they're basically small proprietors, "petty bourgeois" in the realest sense (unless the firm is big enough that they actually qualify as capitalists of some sort). Saying they're "blue collar" obscures their relationship to the means of production.

Angelus - I think that's the very point he was making, no?

Yeah, that's why I agreed with his broader point, I wasn't so much disagreeing with his post as supplementing it.

"Blue collar" is one of those useless terms, since people use it to mean both the casual construction site laborer *and* the guy who owns the company, just because the latter also wears a hardhat.

Any consistent communist who owned a business with employees would go broke pretty soon. I mean, we're supposed to be agitating in our workplace to get better wages, conditions and hours, right? The business owner would have to go tell his workers: you should all sabotage my machines and lock me in my office till I agree to triple your wages and halve your hours and having done that tell them to seize the workplace and lock her/him out. Employers can't be communists on anything other than some weird ideological level.

Yeah, I should have been more explicit about that. "Blue collar" is a ridiculous term for exactly that reason. These guys are "blue collar" because they build stuff and work with their hands even though they have their own business, a hot tub and a massive flat-screen, important MOP like the huge trucks you need for a construction project, and probably hire wage labor. My family is "middle class" because we have a certain level of education and an interest in "cultural/intellectual" affairs even though we are all wage laborers. The conversation about class in the US is so stunted that we are still dealing mainly with cultural categories or issues of sheer deprivation (hence all this conservative outrage about the fact that "90% of people below the poverty line own a fridge!!!11!!"). Granted my family is better off than most wage laborers.

I think there certainly needs to be an acknowledgment of the existence and significance of "middle strata", but in the U.S. at least one cannot do that using the existing vocabulary of the "middle class" as it exists in the popular media, as that terminology is too fraught with contradictions and distortions. Unfortunately in the U.S. you have many workers self-identifying as "middle class" and expressing their demands that way, which plays right into conservative hands by creating an identification of workers with the interests of other "middle class" small business owners, "job creators", etc. Britain has a history of institutionalized politics (supposedly) emanating from the working classes, who were explicitly identified as such and encouraged to accept such an identity. In the US this terminology is less mainstream. The official model is a large "middle class" which includes nearly everyone and tiny upper and underclasses which can both serve as punching bags to rally the huge "middle class" for whatever purpose a politician deems fit.

To be a consistent communist I think you would need to live in a communist society. Rather than agitating for better working conditions, it would be more productive to explain why capitalism will destroy us all.
A workers revolution may have been possible in the 19th or early 20th century, but is unlikely today. Most employers are not wealthy individuals, but impersonal corporations. They employ a hierarchical system to control their employees. Employees are desperate to keep their jobs and their positions which requires that they please their immediate supervisors.
These supervisors are also desperate to keep their positions by pleasing their supervisors..
Employees , and some workers whose income is large enough to afford to live in a home, have health care, save for retirement, and buy things like Ipads etc., consider themselves middle class. This doesn't necessarily mean that they wouldn't support another world.

"Class" as defined by Karl Marx is a relationship to production and has nothing whatsoever to do with income, attitude, taste, how you hold your finger when drinking a cup of tea or political affiliation. I agree with Karl Marx.

There is some confusion because Marx was writing in the ascendant phase of capitalism when the "middle class" often referred to the bourgeoisie. There was the aristocracy, the feudal ruling class as the "upper class" and the bourgeoisie as the "middle class" the proletariat as the "lower class" and the peasant class as the "woops" forgotten ones. This has created some of the confusion.

Subsequent to this "Marxists" referred to the "middle class" as the "petit bourgeoisie" and in polemics they would add to the petit-bourgeoisie intellectuals, writers, teachers, and those engaged in non-productive labor to create a hodge podge rather than a "class." This has created even more smoke and mirrors than the above.

The key phrase is "as defined by Marx". Different people mean different things by class, which means that one has to specify in what sense one is using the word so as to avoid confusion, but it doesn't mean that some sense is "right" while the others are "wrong". There are only "more useful" and "less useful" definitions.

"Work" means something different in Physics than it does in everyday life, but that doesn't mean the everyday notion loses its meaning just because of a different, more precise meaning in Physics.

When most people who aren't Marxists are discussing class, they usually mean an intersection of different factors, including relationship to means of production (which is usually the sense I use it in), but also to income hierarchies or a cultural habitus associated with class position.

Keep in mind Marx's critique of political economy presents an abstract capitalism "at its ideal average", so the class categories are necessarily simplified. In the real world, class determination is a messy thing.

For the sake of clarity, I'm also not willing to forgo the concept of a sort of intellectual/bureaucratic/coordinating "new class" of educated decision-makers. Government, the non-profit sector, trade union bureaucracies, and professional "activist" groups are full of people from this class, and I'm not willing to sacrifice the analytical necessity of conceptualizing this social layer by saying, "well according to Marx they don't own the means of production so they would be workers", even if some of this layer draws from the ranks of the working class.

Aufheben make some good points about this in their critique of Harry Cleaver.

Alexander Roxwel wrote:

You are close to correct in explaining Marx's definitions of "middle class". However I believe the "petite bourgeoisie" referred to those workers who owned their means of production, possibly hired assistants, but worked along side of them.
These were useful definitions in the politcal economy of the 19th century and useful today when studying the works of Marx. Now in 21st century global corporate capitalism they do not describe the common meaning that is given to the term. I do not believe they are relevant to the subject of this thread.

In the UK Middle Class from the Oxford dictionary:
the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business workers and their families.

In the US from Merriam-Webster
: a class occupying a position between the upper class and the lower class; especially : a fluid heterogeneous socioeconomic grouping composed principally of business and professional people, bureaucrats, and some farmers and skilled workers sharing common social characteristics and values

This could even include mannerisms while drinking tea or coffee.

But this is no use if we're trying to analyse an economic system. If you think the Marxist definition of class is no longer relevant, you need to come up with a refinement or replacement of it which is relevant to analysis of the economic system, not to people's trivial behaviours, cultural preferences and accents, or (solely) their income bracket. Or do you think there is no class element in the economy?

Interesting. This almost seems to confirm my contention that the term is more nebulous in the US, as the US definition is more vague and includes "some farmers and skilled workers".

I’v been wanting to try to figure out what I think about class more clearly & I’v read a bunch of libcom postings around this area with interest.

Some of my personal experiences with class intersect with parts of the discussion on the academics/pro-revolutionaries thread started by tastybrain.
By what seem to be the prevailing definitions my grandparents were working class and so is my mum who raised me as a single parent. When I was at high school our history teacher asked us to put our hands up if we were working class and then if we were middle class. I felt confused by this and was half putting up/down my hand during the working class Q but kept it down in the end cos the only other person who put it up was x the butchers son (who always got straight A’s and was a bit flat socially) and lots of people went eeeuwugh xxxxx and I didn’t want to be connect with that due to the constant fear of social ostracisation that drove about 80% of our interactions as teenagers. But then I didn’t put my hand up during the middle class Q either and my teacher pulled me up for it and said I had to choose so I ‘chose’ middle class. When I went home I told my mum about this and she said no we were working class. Later I went straight to university from school and spent 3 years there before dropping out. Dropping out was one of those life decisions that is larger than you can have words for at the time. It unfolded in a not fully conscious and slightly chaotic way. I can look back over that period in my life and still have new reflections or understanding of what was going on. But one way I put it to myself is that I was being asked to swap classes - working for middle. Another is that if I had stayed in the university system I would have lost some vital control, independence and integrity over not only my intellect but my consciousness as a whole. I strongly feel that if I’d stayed I wouldn’t have found the ideas (like womens liberation) and people that have helped me to make sense of life and to survive. Also I was just 20 and tired of being in institutions all the time – I wanted to explore anarchism and sex and life! Just like now!

& going back to class I feel that id I’d stayed I would have been drawn away from my family and felt more adrift. years later when I really had to call on my inner resources to make sense of complicated family shit that hit the fan it was the radical politics and good friendships and connections that I’v made thru that that really helped me. I think swapping classes would have left me alienated from myself…that said I can see that there would be other ways to interpret or lay the emphasis of explanation in my experiences.

I can understand why people are saying that the divisions between working class and the middle class are smoke screens of consciousness fostered by capitalism. But some people have been writing almost as if those divisions aren’t real at all, others saying they are only a construct and others saying the concepts are so nebulous that that proves they don’t exist. The thing is, in my observation, as you try to make sense of things politically and if you come from a poorer background the differences between you and people who are more comfortably off don’t always seem so insignificant. And those differences can be both or either economic and cultural. Sometimes they do seem insignificant and your common humanity or shared dislike of the way things are set up in society are whats most important. However just because somebody (like me!) may struggle to express their outlook or make sense of their experiences it doesn’t make them any less real. Which is partly what I want to explore… because it is deeply personal experiences that people are being asked to redefine or reorientate their understanding of.

Don’t get me wrong – I prefer the idea that the vast majority of people have everything to gain by bringing about a revolution. I agree that all of us whether
‘sociologically’ w/c or m/c actually hold very little real power over all the most important decisions to be taken in society and instead they are being taken by a small number of arguably insane people. I asked my mum what she thought of this conversation and she said that she had noticed that the amount of people being identified/identifying as middle class had increased a lot & people who once would have been called working class are now called middle class. (she is in her early 60’s). its interesting cos it might confirm the belief that the state encourages people to identify as middle class and feel like they got more invested in the status quo.

The thing is most of us haven’t read marx and probably aren’t ever going to – a Marxist interpretation of class/ or a current interpretation of marx’s interpretation of class who knows!? has to vie with and exist alongside other ways of understanding not only class, poverty, relative affluence, our place in the global economy, the many forms of violence that pervade our society.

So when soc says :

The important conclusion here I think, that the communist movement should overcome such a manipulation. As the communist movement isn't based on how individuals identify themselves but how they exist within the society, it is hard to reconcile with the identity politics of the capitalist society. The abolition of capital, is a working class interest, and those who are with higher income are gravitated more to the capital by observation. But that doesn't mean, they can't recognise this need and act accordingly.

And Sidney Huffman says:

That's a very well reasoned post, soc. It also places a lot of importance on the idea of Quote: overcom[ing] such a manipulation
. What is the best way to achieve this? Propaganda would seem to be the obvious answer.
Some of my thoughts on the above
• I have to say I’v never liked the term propaganda. It always sounds to me as if you’re making something up. & that is somehow being simplified for those who are more stupid/less well informed/contains a hidden message instead of trying to be open and truthful. Maybe its just semantics but I associate it with vanguardist politics where people are trying to guide others into what they think is the correct consciousness rather than trying to create spaces for discussions and mutual growth and direct action.
• I think certain methods of organizing and interpersonal communication either promote or discourage connection on a human level between the people involved. Trying to do things that way can help to stop misunderstandings based on different life experiences leading to people falling out or being disrespectful to each other.
• I have found myself on both sides of the your’re too working class or negative attributes connected with the w/c or the your’re too middle class. I too have had hurtful personal interactions due to peoples larger dislike of the class they have believed me to be part of. I feel sympathy for your early experiences malva…it may be true like serge says that other things were feeding into her behavior besides her frustrations at you belonging to a more privileged family than hers. I don’t agree with hitting children..
• I believe it is valid to organise around other ‘identities’ and can at times be essential to do so. Focusing on a particular aspect of your life and trying to bring about political change in that area whether it be an area of life like your own workplace or the fight to keep a community garden is as broad or as narrow in revolutionary scope as the people involved are able to make it. The same goes for focusing on things that are part of your personal experiences of life e.g. organising around creating federation of feminist health centres for women, landrights and soveriegnty for first nations peoples, anti-police violence against trans men/women/folks ………each of us has a whole (well not always sadly..)life too do different things and focus on different things at different times. Choosing to organise with other people who are in the same boat as you doesn’t mean taking a generally separatist position; even if your immediate organising group is closed you can still work in coalitions with other people. Nor does it mean that you are automatically going to form cross class allegiances across boundaries that would include the ruling class. An analysis of bullshit can prevent that. But maybe including concern about all these different aspects of our lives/persons can help people not to be dismissive of people just because they have a bit more or less money or power than them…
• Cannot instruct people simply to have a new consciousness or set of opinions about these matters – i.e. ideas about middle class and working class, there has to be space somewhere for peoples different experiences to be discussed and reflected on. Just saying about the economic/marx definition isn’t going to make peoples feelings and interpersonal difficulties (y’know the sort that can stop potentially good groups and/or projects from working at all) go away.
• Other modalities – need to bring all of life into mix not just ‘propaganda’…
• There are lost opportunities of group discussions, like at demos where socialist groups bring their shitty fucking megaphones. Waiting outside a polis station fro someone to be let out and you could all have a good talks but instead its someone just shouting at you thru a megaphone about their shining path. Jesus fuckin christ I can’t stand it. These are occassions where people could be discovering things they have in common across the various differences
• Aiming for an environment of discussion where sharing of personal experiences are respected but not allowed to shut down critical discussion. I say this cos I have been in meetings where if someone tried to cite a personal experience it was like it was a distraction from the revolution (the one that was going to happen in the nxt half hour and was being delayed by 2.33 minutes by someone talking about their granny/health/tax difficulties etc.)
• Not to sweat over someone renting out their flat & paying of their mortage , what can y do? Give people space to breathe and not trash them for trying to deal with lifes complexities, adapt to living in the here and now with its odd mixture of glory and tedium. (Tho do think owning more than that i.e. x 2 properties is wrong. – I know you don’t pixel – just saying generally)
• Some of the I’m a lumber jack and I’m all right working class smugness totally ignores how working class people in the empire countries eg western nation states benefit from the exploitation of other poorer people all over the world. There are international divisions of class experience…
• Resentment is not to be underestimated as an emotion or grouping of emotions and thoughts, is it not part of a revolutionary impetus as well as love? I guess it’s a questions of direction..
• Having an ongoing and active political analysis does involve moral questioning of oneself and being wary of co-opted when another better and possibly but not necessarily more self-sacificial course of action could have been followed. Or for me I could say could say being spiritually alive involves having an active and ongoing political analysis….
• The thing is I think there are people who have more power than other people in the uk and one of the things that professions that get called m/c sometimes have in common is having more power. Sometimes that power is held individually by that person eg life or death power held by a social worker. And I think part of that power that is unique to those kinda professions as opposed to say a plumber like mentioned b4 is that that power comes about by active decision more frequently. I know folks might say a busdriver has power cos they could run over folk but once you take that decision not to most of them aren’t having to constantly weigh things in the balance that affect peoples lives in really drastic ways. I guess I could go on but my observation is that there really is a middle class. Besides finding ways to bring the clarity of the idea that we have more in common than we do differences we need to actually be honest about the differences that are there and find good way to deal with them. The pressures to buy into the system are on all of us but they come in different ways..
I’m sorry my post is so long. I hope folx can still engage with it. Its partly my work hours that have made it come out like this and partly I’m still turning over what I think….
Ps this is kinda what libcom forums are like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45av-BcWA1k

oh god its so long, i feel socially embarassed now i can see it up there!

As someone who frequently posts reallly long comments I can relate to having a lot to say.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. It is really important to talk about individual experiences and not simply write them off. I also think you are right to observe that more and more people are identifying themselves -- and being identified as -- middle class, and that this is in the interests of the state. In the US it's gotten to the point where everyone is "middle class" except for the evil "underclass" in the inner city, and I think the increasing identification of various groups who might have been considered working class years ago as "middle class" is immensely harmful, as it links the interests of ordinary workers with that of big business and capitalism generally.

I also think it is important to emphasize that there are differences in people's backgrounds and material resources. When we say that the middle class is a manipulation, as soc put it, I don't think we are denying these inequalities. What is meant instead, I think, is that people whose material interests are with the working class are being fooled into identifying with the ruling class by being defined as "middle class." Certainly there are huge inequalities within "the class", and we should never forget this and strive to acknowledge it in our political work. The point, for me at least, is not that "the middle class doesn't exist", but that "middle strata" people do exist (I prefer the term "middle strata" because the word "class" implies a coherence and community of interests that I really do not see in the "middle strata"), but the existing terminology and conceptual apperatus of who is and isn't "middle class" is inadequate to truly describe them and that we must strive for an analysis that serves a revolutionary purpose, which can unify people against capitalism but doesn't paper over the contradictions and fault-lines within the "working classes".

I actually had an argument with my Dad a while ago over whether we were working or middle class. He said something which I think approaches your point, which is that to people living in the ghetto, depending on food stamps for survival, my family is "elite." This is obviously true. Everyone's status is relative, and as you point out, Dohball, even the poorest in the "First World" seem prosperous compared to what poor people face in "Third World" countries.

This is why, I think, people are wary of "resentment." Of course, capitalism is going to breed resentment on a massive scale and as you point out, this can be an emotion that might drive revolutionary action. On the other hand, resentment can be destructive. I think that working class/poor people who resent those with a little more money than them are unlikely to see the bigger picture of capitalism and the need to abolish it. In the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks had no problem letting the poor peasants vent their resentment on "kulaks," "middle class" peasants who often had little more than the people who hated them. It was a great way to channel and contain that resentment and make sure the people didn't start thinking for themselves. Similarly, during the French revolution, countless aristocrats were executed, no doubt appeasing resentful peasants and workers while the middle class leaders were busy shoring up their new, bourgeois social system. So I am wary of the politics of resentment (partly because I am undoubtedly resented -- I've had a pretty easy life) --- I'm not sure if taking revenge against the "middle strata" is useful, although certainly the negative influence of the "middle strata" on revolutionary movements should not be ignored. In my opinion, if the workers are focused on payback from the people who live in relative comfort but don't exploit people directly or own capital, they will miss the forest for the trees and allow capitalism to be rebuilt around them. The revolution will have to use violence, but the moment this violence slips from necessary combat into petty revenge, even against the worst capitalists, we are in trouble. Merely punishing individuals for their class positions pre-revolution ignores the basis of this class position in the social relations of capitalism. If revenge is taken against middle class and bourgeois people while the substance of capitalism remains new individuals will climb into these class positions immediately. It is worth pointing out that Stalin came from a poor background; the object of the revolution should, IMO, be abolishing the present society, not punishing those at the top, because the logic of this punishment places the responsibility for the suffering and disaster created by capitalism on the moral failings of individuals and not on the social system itself.

Plus I would hate to get rid of all the rich people. I would love to see Mark Zuckerberg digging a ditch.

Pikel wrote:

I don't mean that the Marxist definition is wrong. As Alexander Roxwel said class in the Marxian sense is determined by relationship to production. From a Marxist perspective members of a class that don't have consciousness for that class have what Engles called false consciousness. This is true for many of the working class here in the US. We are flooded with propaganda that pits the unemployed and underemployed and those who are poor for any reason against the "middle" and "upper" classes. In this view those who pay taxes are being cheated by those that can't afford to or are using social services. This propaganda emanates from the media, politicians, and the fundamentalist churches. The intention is to impose an IMF like program, similar to those being advocated in Europe. They attack Social Security, health care, education, libraries,food assistance,etc, while demanding that income taxes are not raised for the rich and military funding be continued. Astonishingly the majority of the supporters of this view are working class and petite bourgeoisie.
The financing for this movement is supplied by the bourgeoisie. The current situation in this country is that the working class is acting against its own interest because of false consciousness.

A related problem for analyzing according to the Marxian definitions of class in neoliberal capitalism is the organization of the corporations. A worker was also defined as someone with nothing to sell but his/her labor which is a commodity. This is true for everyone up the hierarchy from a janitor to the CEO.

I would not pretend to be capable of developing a modern analysis of our global economy in a Marxian context. However I do believe that we must take account of the differences in our modern political economy and the social relations that have evolved when we strategize for a revolution. Its in this sense that I feel it more relevant to use the modern meaning of middle class, which will be understood even by those who have not studied Marx. Non-workers, like myself, who have "false consciousness" could be a source of revolutionaries.

What happened to the middle class being a bourgeoisie construction?

I think that the petit bourgeoisie has shriveled down to practically nothing today while the number of "non productive workers" has increased exponentially. I think most of those who call themselves "Marxists" now call "non productive workers" petit bourgeoisie (or, alternatively "middle class"). Trotsky was famous for this when he called those who refused to support the Russian invasion of Finland a "petit bourgeois opposition."

That was in in 1939.

As far as "middle class" goes today I do not believe it has any standing at all. A billow of smoke.

lol, yeah I guess it is a lot easier to deal with the class structure of 1939 Russia than it is 2011 Euro-America . Marxist can be the most conservative breed

Roxwell thinks he's resolved the issue by pointing out the decline of the traditional petit bourgeoisie.

But he doesn't even address the issue of the emergence of a technocratic/managerial/bureaucratic/coordinator class. The Johnson-Forest Tendency and Socialisme ou Barbarie took this question much more seriously, seeing this class as the class whose interest is expressed in Stalinism.

I'll go one step further and say that this class is an important component of the social base of what we call "the left" in general (I mean in the broad sense, not in some left-communist denunciatory way). And I don't think the full implications and problems of this have been worked out by a lot of people. Often because it's difficult to conceptualize, but more cynically, also because a lot of people on the left don't like looking in the mirror.

I find the question fascinating because I've witnessed first hand student leftists from relatively comfy professional/middle-class family backgrounds make the smooth transition from "student activist" to "professional activist with an NGO/party sinecure". I really don't think it aids clarity to just collapse this social layer into some indistinct working class.

Alexander Roxwel wrote:

In response to a 1938 article by Emma Goldman criticising the massacre of the Kronstatt Anarchist sailors ordered by Trotsky, he responded by saying it was an action against petite bougeoisie. Seems he used that term like McCarthy used Communist or Rush Limbaugh uses Socialist or Liberal.

I respect the philosophy of Karl Marx. However like all philosophy I read it critically and never assume something is right just because Marx said so. I detest both the teachings and the actions of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and their supporters and apologists.

The Russian so called "workers revolution" turned into a police state that cruelly oppressed both workers and peasants. Party leaders became the bougeoisie in control of the means of production. I think the reason this happened was that there was not enough support to maintain the revolution without force.

The reason we must encourage an anti-capitalist consciousness in all classes is to avoid a similiar outcome. It may take some violence, or the threat of it, to overcome the final 10%, but we need solidarity among the rest of us.

Power over others can come from control of the resources they need or from political power. Both cases need police or military enforcement. In a free society no one could have economic or political power over others. Resources and the means of production would be held in common. A just method of distribution would be necessary requiring some kind of political structure. This would have to be direct democracy. Social classes including workers would no longer exist.

Bollox. Then why is the anarchist and activist 'social scene' (at least in London) dominated by posh boys and girls who all seem to have gone to a public school at some point in their miserable lives?

Yes.

hahahaha.

I don't think it makes a person inherently anti-revolutionary. But there is an objective marxist tendency there. The problem is measuring the poshness to revolutionary ratio....

I think awesome dude too readily tars london anarchists and london activists with the same brush!

Isn't inclusive enough of who...the working class? If anyone on this site is doing academic research on the social habits of the upper crust of 'middle England', you've hit the jackpot by coming to 'activist' anarchism...and you might get to shag one or two promiscous types on the prowl for rough 'proles' (though that'll be part of the research). On second thoughts I probably shouldnt encourage academics, what with all the 'JP' treatment the poor bastards are likely to receive on Libcom.

Why in the world do you consider that relevant to class analysis?

if you think that tendencies towards abstract art, being pro-gay, sexual inhibition, and apple computers are all together a set of middle class traits when put together, than you've gotta be either someone who is a self hating middle class person, or someone who thinks that workers are people who wear suspenders and sneer at people on the street while they listen to hardcore punk. the person I know who is closest to the type of person you're describing (loves abstract art, uses an apple computer, rides a fixed gear bike, wears fashionable clothes, rational atheism, eco-friendly) works two jobs and has to steal from stores to even make that work. I know you said that this doesn't apply to everyone but basically the description you gave is 100% useless.

People who are prosperous have no incentive to change the world for the better. They're loathed in traditional anarchist literature because they potentially are a counter-revolutionary force - just as men in a feminist organization might be, or whites in an organization for people of color.

If you're middle class and, simultaneously, care enough to sacrifice all that for an ideal, people have the right to be suspicious. Anarchism is traditionally class based, people who are neutral to the effects of capitalist (or state) oppression have no rationality for caring. (Perhaps the rise of, and eventually "hegemonizing", of Pacifism among the radical left can be blamed on demographics; radical leftists largely being middle-class and college-educated white males, with a mere smattering of genuine poor.)

I'm not saying that people can't be Anarchist and well-to-do at the same time, I'm saying that these people probably won't act on these beliefs in any significant way, and that any militant posturing is toothless.

Probably doesn't mean definitely, however.

There are still men who have furthered the goals of feminism, and continue to.
There are still whites who have furthered the goals of people of color, and continue to.
And there will be people advancing the goals of the impoverished and oppressed across the world, and continue to - because they care, not because of some "BEEP BOOP RATIONAL SELF INTEREST" bullshit.

People should be wary and prejudiced towards the intentions of "middle class revolutionaries", but certainly not dismissal of all of them. Otherwise, you have to pretend people like Hellen Keller, Dilma Rousseff, Tim Wise, Norman Finkelstein, Subcommandante Marcos, Desmond Tutu and anyone who's ever took up a cause supposedly not advantageous to their supposed interests are all anomalies to be ignored. And that's just silly.

When you see someone flying the Palestinian colors in a protest who doesn't look Palestinian, is the first thought you have "Oh no, it's an entryist"?

Just because your middle-class doesn't mean you can't sympathize with workers, just as being a non-Palestinian doesn't mean you can't sympathize with Palestinians.