2 thoughts on “Discussion Board 4.2”

1. 1. Direct distinction from the reading:
   Parenti explains the difference in terms of how they earn their income:
   “One should distinguish between those who own the wealth of society and those who must work for a living.”
   Owners: People whose income mainly comes from the labor of others e.g., “the very rich families and individuals who compose the owning class live mostly off investments, which include stocks, bonds, rents, mineral royalties, and other property income.”
   Example: A wealthy shareholder who earns dividends from the corporation that employs workers.
   Employees: Those who live mostly off wages, salaries, or fees for their own labor.
   Example: A factory worker or office employee who sells their labor in exchange for a paycheck.
   Parenti also notes these categories aren’t perfectly neat (some managers or professionals earn high wages and may later live off investments), but the key difference is where the income comes from: wages vs. income generated by others’ labor.

   2.Smith is emphasizing that the fundamental value in an economy comes from human labor, not money itself. Money is just a symbol or representation (“nominal price”), but the true value of any good or service is grounded in the amount and effort of labor that produced it.
   So it means that labor is the real source of wealth = the work people perform to turn raw materials into usable products is what really gives things their worth. Money doesn’t create value; labor does.

   3. In Reading 4.4, Parenti rejects the idea that class is simply like race or gender, something you are. Instead, class is defined by your relationship to economic production and to others in the economy, especially in capitalism.
   Rather than being about personal traits or cultural identity, class is about structural roles — who controls productive resources and who must sell their labor. Under this view, class explains not just differences in lived experience but differences in interests, power, and dependencies within society.
   I understand this argument to mean:
   Class isn’t a fixed “identity category” like ethnicity or gender.
   It’s a structural position that shapes what people can do, how they’re treated, and what they must do to survive especially in relation to production and access to wealth.
   This helps explain why class has political and economic implications beyond personal identification — because it’s about where power lies in society.

   4.When Parenti (and Marxist/class analysis generally) says class is about dependency, it means workers depend on owners for the basic means of survival (income through wage labor), while owners depend on workers’ labor to generate profit.
   This is a mutual but unequal dependency:
   Workers must sell their labor because they don’t own the means of production, things like factories, land, machines, so they need wages to live.
   Owners must have workers produce goods and services if they want profits and continued wealth.
   But the power in this relationship is skewed: owners have control over work conditions, profits, and hiring decisions. Workers have little choice but to accept employment terms.
   Example:
   A manufacturing plant:
   The company owner owns the machinery and factory.
   Workers don’t own these things, so they must work for wages.
   The owner’s profit depends on workers’ labor, while workers must labor in order to be paid.
   This is the “close form of dependency,” each class is structurally tied to the other, but not equally.

   Log in to Reply

2. 1. Owners’ incomes come from the labor of others , employees are exploited by being paid less for the value of what they create. An example of owners is when slave owners would make hundreds yearly when it cost them $13 per year for the slaves’ maintenance. An example of an employee is laborers living paycheck to paycheck being paid ¼ of their market value.

   2. I interpreted Smith’s quote to be saying that labor is the real price that is used to set the monetary value for labor. It’s saying that labor is what is used to determine if the pay is enough for the worker and worth it for the employer to pay.

   3. While I can understand both the liberalism and socialism argument of class as an identity vs class as a relationship, I do agree with the liberal argument more. After reading Reading 4.4, I understand the socialist argument that class isn’t who you are, it’s your economic standing. However, I agree more with the liberal argument that class is an identity because of what defines someone’s class and in my opinion the world that we live in is why class is an identity, there are discriminations and people open the doors for others who are like them, whether that’s physically, politically or socially. They also raise their children to be like them which continues the cycle. Reading 4.4 was very well written and made some solid points that did make me stand less firm in my opinion when I first read it.

   4. I understand the quote to mean that the higher class is dependent on exploiting the lower class and the lower class is dependent on the work from the higher class. “A close form of dependency “ is both classes using each other, but it’s different. The higher class is using the lower class for their labor to maintain/grow their wealth and the lower class is dependent on that for a job to survive. An example is workers earning low wages in poor conditions for making clothes for clothing companies and the companies benefit from their labor and sell the clothes earning millions

   Log in to Reply