We need to talk about class. Since Jess Phillips’ interview with the Times there’s been a lot of talk about whether she is authentically working class. This is, as Suzanne Moore says, mostly guff.

We need a Marxist perspective here. To us Marxists, class is not just another identity or another lifestyle – a matter of whether you drink in Wetherspoons or wine bars or shop at Waitrose rather than Lidl. Instead, it is an objective fact about your relationship (pdf) to the means of production. If you lack ownership or control of these, then you are working class – in a position of exploitation or domination. If you do have ownership or control then you are capitalist, or bourgeois.

There are of course nuances here. You can be an exploiter without dominating someone: we can, for example say that footballers exploit systematically loss-making club owners, or that senior bank managers and traders exploit shareholders. Conversely, you can be a dominator without being an exploiter: think of low-level managers on poor wages tyrannizing their staff. And then of course there are what Erik Olin Wright called contradictory class locations – such as middle managers who can extract some rents for themselves but who are also subject to control from above. Nor is all wealth the product of capitalist exploitation: we wouldn’t really call, say, J. K. Rowling a capitalist.

These nuances, however, don't alter the fact that by this standard the working class is not the libelous fantasy that much of the metropolitan media pretend. It is not a homogenously white group of racist northerners. It contains people of all races, and even those earning very good money.

Does this notion of class matter? Of course, it has never been a perfect predictor of political attitudes. Working class Tories and leftist capitalists are as old as capitalism, and racism can be found among the bourgeoisie as well as workers. And I think there is something to be said for non-Marxian conceptions of class: for example, there are reasons to distrust the prevalence of posh people in politics.

Nevertheless, the Marxian idea of class does matter. For one thing, it is an objective fact that millions of people live lives of poverty, unfreedom and insecurity because they lack access to capital*.

And for another, it does help explain the popularity of Corbynism among the so-called “middle-class”: at the last election, 35% of “ABs” voted Labour. Many people even in erstwhile good professions have no hope of owning property and face stress and domination from their managerialist overlords. The harm caused by class division extends far up the income ladder. Even quite posh people are working class – however many avocados they eat - and many of them vote accordingly.

You might argue that if so many people are working class then the definition is useless. Far from it. The fact that they are vindicates Marx’s claim that “the lower strata of the middle class sink gradually into the proletariat." It also means that class makes for a less divisive type of politics. Whilst identity politics risks splitting us into countless hostile groups – made more bitter because they are personalized - class politics can unite most of us**. And it can do so in a more humane way. Class is a matter of social structure, not of goodies against baddies. This should take personalities out of political discourse and so permit more sober analysis. I know it is an odd thing to say given the historical record, but Marxism has the potential to be a more civilized type of politics than we currently have.

* But remember Joan Robinson's quip: "the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism."

** Well, actually you. By the definition I’m using I’m less working class than most of you. My shareholdings are sufficiently big that I can almost afford to retire. (And I’ve never been into Greggs, although I often go into Wetherspoons, albeit in Stamford and Oakham.)