Just bear with me here lads and lasses, but I think there's a problem with the workers against the bosses ideology that is at the root of a lot of socialist thought.
You see, as far as I can make out, we live less and less in a world where the "working class" and "boss class" can be broken down under those headings. The class breakdown is the right idea, but the target is wrong. We live in a world where the growing issue isn't the repression of people in wage employment by capitalists (although that is still a very real problem), it's the subjugation of the masses to a life of unemployment on meagre benefits and what they can get out of the system. Unemployment's much tougher psychologically than employment (or at least I think it is), and yet it's one thing that's on the up. Unemployment in the UK is seemingly lower than it has been recently, but it's still much, much higher than it was before Thatcherism, when we had near zero unemployment. But the most terrifying threat is global unemployment: it's higher than it's ever been, and it's increasing faster than ever before.
Capitalists don't just make money from virtually enslaving people, they can also make it from securing a finite pool of resources for the "haves" and limiting it from the "have-nots." The welfare state in the current capitalist society is basically an excuse that appeals to the bleeding heart liberals for taking huge amounts of resources and giving very little of it away. And, they argue, why should they have to? They claim that since "these people" don't work, we're lucky to get what little benefits we can. Screw the fact that our already near non-existent opportunities are dwindling as the rich start to rely on outsourcing, and moreover they know that immigration of skilled labourers means they don't have to give up their precious cash to help train our own inner cities and lower classes.
As I was saying about global unemployment, it's a very real threat. I read in the Economist (yeah, so I'm reading the enemy ) that something like 50 million are unemployed in the Middle East today, but that figure will be 150 million in 10 years' time. In my area two vacancies at WHSmith's had 350 applications (guess what? I didn't get the job). University students are being forced to do the jobs that schoolkids once did to fund their ever higher tuition fees, and all the while the dole beckons in the future. A classic example of what I'm talking about you might have seen in the papers about the US - the "jobless recovery." Turns out that the productivity gains of the Clinton boom haven't created more jobs, far from it. The "moral side" of capitalist advance goes something like this: technology may make people lose their jobs, but it creates as many as it destroys. This is ever more clearly bullshit, as the US economy grows ahead, and yet no jobs are being created. What the hell is the point of all this technology if more people live in poverty because of it?
In short, I reckon this is where revolution lies. As unemployment grows, so does discontent. Just look at what happened in Iraq: that moron Bremer sacked the army and outsourced Iraqi business to American conglomerates. That's a whole lot of angry unemployed people, who've turned on the US instead of welcoming them as liberators from Saddam. If technology and productivity keeps on getting better and better, soon people are going to start looking at unemployment in a very different way: not as people being lazy, but because the capitalists and state deny them the skills and opportunities they need, as an excuse for monopolising resources themselves. I think that could end up forcing a conversion to socialism, where we either rely on our technology and see work as something merely productive and fulfilling, but not totally necessary, or smash the whole edifice to bits.
I'm not trying to draw attention away from the working class struggle, but I am trying to make what I think is an important point. We often talk about "the working class" and group together unemployed people, benefit claimants, under that same heading, but that makes the term misleading. The "exploited class" might be a better name, and it might help draw our attention to the equally important struggle, between the establishment and the people it denies jobs. Similarly we often talk about "the labour movement," and things like that. In my opinion, it's important to recognise that this isn't just a worker/labour struggle any more, and that the future of revolution could look very different (but even brighter).
Thanks yall, if you read this far .
Whilst your post makes some good points, and I agree with a lot of it (Argentina being a recent example of the force of the unemployed) I believe the term 'working class' is still correct, as it refers to the existing labour pool rather than those who may be employed at the moment. You said yourself, you applied for a job in WHSmith, so you are part of that labour pool, if they want you they will use you. If none of the labour pool is willing to work for the capitalists anymore, thats where you see the current system in trouble. Those who are in work, and the unemployed, are therefore equally as important in bringing about revolution, and there is no real division between them implied by the term 'working class' IMO.