Are Service Workers and Public Sector Employees Part of the Proletariat?

Are service workers part of the "productive" part of the working class? And what does that mean? How about public sector employees--if they're not productive workers, does that mean that their interests don't align with productive workers and socialists shouldn't support the welfare state after all?

Ben Burgis talks about what the Trotskyist leader and Marxist economist Ernest Mandel gets right and wrong in his introduction to Capital Vol. 2.

Read Ben's essay:

benburgis.substack.com/p/are-service-workers-and-public-sector

Watch the Erik Olin Wright "Understanding Class" lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmiiSSMZPnE

Read his review of Jodi Dean's book:

https://unherd.com/2025/05/the-21st-century-belongs-to-marx/

Read Dean's response to Ben:

https://www.sublationmag.com/post/analogies-and-tendencies-a-response-to-ben-burgis

Read Ben's response to Dean's response:

https://www.sublationmag.com/post/service-workers-aren-t-servants-a-response-to-jodi-dean

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