When we think of working class, many things can be conjured to the forefront of our minds. Blue collar workers, those who work with their hands and fix things, the working poor, those who barely scrape by working minimum wage jobs, and for others, potentially even those stuck on benefits to survive. But when we look at class in this way, we then also have to create other classes that are more ephemeral in nature. Well, we clearly have the upper class, the rich and powerful, like politicians and billionaires. Then upper middle? Perhaps you might consider these to be high powered lawyers and doctors, who work for a living but earn vast sums of money. Middle class would come next, the ever coveted and ever ‘shrinking’ class. Full of basically everyone else not covered by the working-class moniker and the upper-class moniker. White collar workers who work at a desk and do things like IT and consulting. Nurses and junior doctors, and other ‘professionals’. Then some people might even say there is a lower middle, or upper working class. This contains… Maybe nurses for some, teachers, lab technicians, call centre workers and other desk jockeys that earn just above minimum wage.
Splitting the populace into these groups, as you can see already, is difficult. And almost everyone will dice them up, including where they themselves lie, in a variety of different ways. But when looking at class through this lens, we obfuscate the largest and easily definable class conflict. The conflict between workers, everyone who works and sells their labour to live, and the capital class, those who own capital and live off of business profits. These two classes are diametrically opposed to one another. The workers work for the capitalist class, and demand that their time and efforts afford them the necessities for life. Shelter, food, travel, and money for luxuries. Capitalists use wage labourers to create their profits. They are incentivised to pay the labourers as little as possible to get their work, so that they can make the largest profits possible.
But, you may ask, what about small business owners? Those who own their shop fronts, their offices, and in some cases their small factories? These people are in a sort of state of evolution. They still sell their labour (to themselves), in order to make a living, but they may hire a small number of staff to help them in their day to day running of the business. With capitalisms tendency towards monopoly, the reality is that the majority of small business owners will fail. And often within the first few years of trading, they will close up their doors, and end up becoming a worker once again.
Hive, and in some other cryptocurrencies, we are empowered to work for ourselves. We sell our labour to the people, and if they like our writing they will give us a piece of the expanding monetary supply by voting on our work. But most of us will still be working other jobs to make ends meet, despite potentially owning a good amount of Hive and in some cases making considerable income from Hive. There is also the very real potential that Hive might fail sometime in the future. This would lead to all of us who are not in the capitalist class to become full time workers once again and sell our labour to a business owner. In this case, cryptocurrencies very much can represent a sort of anarcho-capitalist dreamscape. While they work and are relatively successful, and if they have mechanisms in place to prevent monopolisation, they can be empowering vehicles for the working class. But, as is the case with all capital investments, the whales (those with considerable capital and most likely part of the capitalist class) will make the most money. And off of the backs of our labour! Each word we write on Hive, and each extra bit of value we provide to the blockchain is enriching the value of Hive for people who may not even use the blockchain but own a large stake in its success. There is no way around this. This is true goal of most if not all cryptocurrencies. They are a nice gravy train in the short term, but the ones who make the most out of them will always be the capitalists.
I would love to see a time in which this problem posed by cryptocurrency could be solved. I can’t see it happening any time soon though, as the challenge is immense and the power to make decisions lies so firmly in the hands of high stakeholders, i.e., those with the most capital. Their class interests do not lie in making Hive and other cryptos more democratic, and more empowering to the individual worker. Any changes made to benefit the majority of holders will only be done so if it will make more money to the largest vote holders. I do not malign any worker who is involved with crypto to make their life better for themselves. I believe that it is often in their interests to do so, especially within the third world where the income from writing on Hive can vastly outstrip their local wages. But we must understand that this is short termism and will not solve all the problems that we as workers face. Only collective action and organisation can do so. Basically, this is a long winded post to say join or start a union!