I was recently in a conversation with a self-described MagaCommunist who held the position that the primary contradiction in the USA was that the financial owning class owned all of the means of production and that the contradictions of settler colonialism were secondary and could only be resolved through a workers’ state.
I realized that I hold the position that settler colonialism is the primary contradiction in the USA, but I also found that I struggled to articulate it effectively. I’m looking for your own thoughts or writings that I can study to learn more on this topic.
I will say I agree that proletariat and bourgeoisie, as terms, are mostly useful for discussing theory. If I’m talking to a normal person I’ll just say working class and ruling class, and I’ll even use terms like “middle class” like I’ve done here in this discussion.
But I don’t think we need to throw out the concepts to capture the “consumer” as a social class, because the revolution will not be fought by consumers. Consumers are inherently reactionary; a direct result of the redistribution of superprofits to workers within the imperial core. That’s a settler class. They have disposable income from high salaries and investments, the ability to retire, their own homes, the ability to start their own business, and that is all bourgeoisification. They’re workers who exist in a stratum above the workers of the rest of the world in their own special “middle class.” They are bourgeoisified - or like you said, creditors more than debtors.
The debourgeoisified proletariat, without the superprofits from imperialism, can buy what they need to live and that’s it. They aren’t “consumers” and they certainly wouldn’t identify that way. They buy whatever is cheapest and will get them to their next paycheck, they make do with whatever knockoff garbage they can afford, and they pirate whatever they can’t buy. I don’t think the “consumer” identity is an important one for building class consciousness, and it will decline as conditions worsen and the contradictions sharpen.
Now if we bring this back to doctors, I agree that they will probably never be in these dire straits. Same with any other highly compensated profession. But! Their ability to consume whatever they want will decline, and as a result, being able to identify as a consumer will decline as well. There’s also a difference between doctors in their own private practices and doctors in hospitals. One is petite bourgeois with ownership of their own business, the other performs socialized labor in an industrialized setting alongside much less well compensated fellow workers. That’s like saying mechanics can’t be proletarianized because there are private mechanics. It’s the industrial labor that makes the prole.
I think these recent strikes, with doctors striking right alongside other healthcare workers, are a sign that doctors are being proletarianized and losing their bourgeoisified status.