Ordinary working people and the working class

The term ordinary working people is better understood than working class.

Often in political discussion there is a slippage between the terms “working class” and “ordinary working people.” The distinction is important for social theory. In Marxist terminology the former refers to those who have surplus value pumped out of them because they make things, while the latter are people who simply sell their labour power in order to live (e.g. the call-centre workers, lorry drivers, etc). The word “ordinary” is added to exclude those whom Karl Renner called the Dienstklasse, persons who sell their labour power in exchange for high privilege, e.g. judges, and are thus economically and politically attached to, and advantaged in, the existing political order.

In political campaigning, if not in social analysis, the term (ordinary) working people does well enough. The point remains today, as it did a couple of decades ago, that a majority of ordinary working people have an economic and political interest in transcending (abolishing, going beyond) the existing structures of capitalism, and are yet frustrated in understanding that fact or, even if they do, being unable to do anything to effectively bring about change.