Class traitor

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Class traitor is a term used mostly in

loss prevention,repossession agents, vigilantes, security guards (mainly those hired by private security companies), workers who cross and refuse to respect picket lines during a strike and anyone paid a wage who actively facilitates the status quo. According to Barbara Ehrenreich: "Class treason is an option at all socioeconomic levels: from the blue-collar man who becomes a security guard employed to harass striking workers, to the heirs of capitalist fortunes who become donors to left-wing causes".[1]

In Russia before and during the

Menshevik Russians and other counter-revolutionary socialist organizations under Joseph Stalin
.

The motives behind becoming a traitor to one's class can include the necessity of survival (taking up whatever wage is available), the belief that the person is of a higher class and so has political views that work against the working class, the pressure of conformity, or a rejection of the view that society is divided up into antagonistic classes.

Bourgeois class traitors

While the idea of the class traitor is one typically applied to the proletariat, it can also be used to describe members of the upper-class who believe in and espouse socialist ideals. For example,

anarcho-communist who wrote The Conquest of Bread, was born into a noble family.[2][original research] Additionally, Friedrich Engels, partner and lifelong friend of Karl Marx
, the revolutionary socialist, was himself a son of a wealthy factory owner. Such people sacrifice their ability to be part of the capitalist upper-class for the sake of who they see as the oppressed, even if it hurts their status in the process.

The Earl of Cardigan was described as a class traitor by The Daily Telegraph for denouncing police violence he had witnessed.[3]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 9780394556925
    .
  2. ISBN 9780921689607
    .
  3. Independent.co.uk. 3 February 2013. Archived
    from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Class_traitor&oldid=1217509171"