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I'm 'middle class', in that my dad is a managerial type and my mum is a professional- a chemist working for the council. In a very early stage of my ideological development, I was embarassed about it, but I quickly realised that that is nonsensical. My mother is a proletarian, I am a proletarian (when I'm working, which economics forces me too...), my father is in that fuzzy "managerial" semi-bourgoisie class. Two of my grandparents were working class, the other two middle class, but all proletarians.
I don't want to get into a "how many classes are there?" argument. They're just lines we choose to draw. There are two classes and there are three classes and there are twenty classes all at once, the different models are useful at different times.
The middle class is a bit like the "house negro" in malcolm x's speech:
Being a middle-class revolutionary does require a constant self-awareness to correct the effects of priviledge, but this is no different from the awareness required as a result of being male or white. I don't walk around pretending to be a woman or black or feeling guilty, instead I'm (gradually and sometimes painfully
) learning to overcome the predjudicial behaviours that I didn't know I had. The same goes for being middle class IMO.
On the subject of "animal consciousness":
bigdave has a theoretical model. If we replace the "animal consciousness"/"human consciousness" model with an identical one using with words "first half of consciousness"/"second half of consciousness" then we can evaluate the model alone. Otherwise you should have a clear debate on what animals are like in terms of consciousness and behaviour. Mixing two debates just causes noone to understand each other.[/code]