Another thread about class

[TrenterPercenter]

Actually, we associate bricklayers, painters and decorators and other manual traders as working class, but many are more well-paid than many office-based university-educated 'professionals' nowadays. Especially when you get into skilled workers like plumbers and electricians. Not to besmirch bricklayers, that's a skill too.

The Working / Middle / Upper class distinction is too blunt for the modern age, as is arguably the proletariat and the bourgeoise. At least the proles and the bougies are well-defined though.

Yes this is due to a historical hangover because of the governments old manual/skilled labour ABC labelling, Marxian working class isn't defined by the type of work you do.  Other measurements of class are available but they do different things.


I guess you need to ask what measurement do want to use and for what purpose?

[TrenterPercenter]

Would it be fair to say there are two competing definitions?

1. The Bosses - they say for example, that (extreme example) the Queen is upper class, by virtue of birth, and that a brickie is lower class, also mainly by virtue of birth. There's an idea you can do a bit of social climbing but it's thin gruel and difficult to get accepted by the uppers.

2. Marx - which Trenter's already expressed clearly enough for me.

The two don't really mix. The first one is there to define your servility. The second one is there to show you how to change it.

Précisément

[chveik]

I'm a proud member of the lumpen proletariat

[Buelligan]

Perhaps you need more stirring.

[Sin Agog]

I've said it here before, but my empirical take on the class thing is something gets dyed-in-the-wall from very young whereby working class people tend to have much more immediate access to their emotions, to the point where it can sometimes seem eruptive, volcanic, whereas middle class people tend to be encouraged to play whack-a-mole on their emotions to the point that by the time they grow up they're often so stunted they have no idea what's going on inside themselves.  It's impolite to feel at the dinner table, sweetie.

[Kankurette]

As mentioned depending on how much you own other peoples labour in your work then you could be petite bourgeois if you really wanted but most freelancers and self-employed are only really own their own labour on paper; usually they are working/being paid by someone; they just don't have contract of work.

going to uni does not make someone middle class
owning your own home doesn't make someone middle class
being self-employed doesn't make someone middle class

You are not describing anything about work other than self-employed you seem to just being saying working class is the same as being poor - which isn't the case.  Also there always appears a big onus on people to prove what working class is but not middle class; there is a myriad of classes in middle class that essentially renders it pointless other than for people to just say "I'm not the same as these poor people" (in my opinion).

If I called myself working class, I'd get laughed at. Like the girl in Common People, if I ran out of money and got desperate I'd ask my parents for help, though only as a last resort.

I am definitely being paid by someone who sends me work and I don't have anyone work for me. Also, doesn't it depend on your parents? Dad was a journalist, Mum trained as a teacher and used to be a press officer. Both of them went to uni.

ETA: re emotions, I thought it was the other way round? Working class people are stoic and resilient, middle class people are more emotional? Or is that just a UK stereotype?

[Zetetic]

Setting aside all the frustrating crosstalk between Marxist analysis and social identities, I think even if you're emphasising economic relations in class, you can't completely ignore the variation in the bottom 80/90% of the wealth distribution (even if the concentration of wealth and consequently massively altered economic relations in the top 10% is huge).

[TrenterPercenter]

If I called myself working class, I'd get laughed at. Like the girl in Common People, if I ran out of money and got desperate I'd ask my parents for help, though only as a last resort.

I think this is more to do with how it has all been bastardised into some emotional thing.  I can be if you want but that isn't really what is interesting or useful about class and as mentioned is actually more about wealth; a related but different thing.

I am definitely being paid by someone who sends me work and I don't have anyone work for me. Also, doesn't it depend on your parents? Dad was a journalist, Mum trained as a teacher and used to be a press officer. Both of them went to uni.

Then you are working class.  It doesn't depend on your parents again this is from the social grade stuff; If you are kid you can be determined to be in the same social grade as your parents.  It might be difficult to accept but going by Marxian definition you have more in common with other working class people than you do with members of the bourgeois. 

[Kankurette]

I certainly have more in common with people in the service industry and pink collar jobs - having done both - than bosses.

[TrenterPercenter]

Setting aside all the frustrating crosstalk between Marxist analysis and social identities, I think even if you're emphasising economic relations in class, you can't completely ignore the variation in the bottom 80/90% of the wealth distribution (even if the concentration of wealth and consequently massively altered economic relations in the top 10% is huge).

Yes and it gets even more complicated when we look at asset inflation - an example being a friend of mine earning north of 80k a year has recently got divorced and due to debts, the fact he no longer has a shared income, two kids to support he cannot afford to live in a house anywhere near what he was living in.  This isn't a violin for him he is in the top 5% of earners in this country.

Asset inflation has essentially forced people to cohabit because average individual wealth cannot generally afford a home.  Whether that is house shares, housing associations etc.. this has changed the fabric of life.  One of the big concerns should be the vulnerability of women (mainly women but there are men also) who cannot leave abusive relationships because they can't afford their own place - its totally fucked up, dangerous and counter to any notion of capitalist freedom - most people will literally have to find a partner and stay with them to own a home in most populated parts of the country how is that "individualism".

[TrenterPercenter]

I certainly have more in common with people in the service industry and pink collar jobs - having done both - than bosses.

Great. I'll put the guillotine away then ; )

[Jockice]

Definitely born working class. Dad was a car factory worker who retrained as a probation officer in his early 40s. Mum worked in hotels before ending up as a cook in a children's home. We lived in council houses for the first few years of my life but when my parents died they owned their home outright, so my sis and I split the proceeds.

I can't work full-time anymore, am on disability benefits but I also have enough savings to make sure I'm extremely unlikely to starve. That's cos I'm not interested in money though. I bought my flat in the early 90s, paid it off with my parents' wills in the early years of this century and dumped the rest in long-term savings things where most of it remains. Spending it doesn't interest me at all. I've had the same television in my living room since 1996. I'm not mean (I've lent quite substantial sums to friends and in some cases have even got it back) but I'm not remotely interested in being flash.

So am I middle class now because I have no money worries? Or what?

[The Culture Bunker]

ETA: re emotions, I thought it was the other way round? Working class people are stoic and resilient, middle class people are more emotional? Or is that just a UK stereotype?

Both my grandfathers were working class (a miner and a truck driver) but very different in this respect. Paternal grandpop (the driver) was very stoic, never showed much, if any, outward emotion. Mam's dad was the opposite: lots of affection, loved jokes and music, any excuse for a few beers and a good time.

I put it down to that they came from the two different parts of Cumbria: the first was from inland, around the Lakes - conservative people from small villages, usually working on the land. The other was from the larger towns on the coast, Labour voters, doing the sort of jobs where you could be killed tomorrow, so let's try to enjoy tonight - the stronger Celtic migrant influence might be part of that too.

[Sin Agog]

I may be one of the poorest people on this forum- only recently moved out of a dilapidated, waterlogged boat I'd been living on for almost a decade- but I still wouldn't outright call myself working class. Not because of a stigma against them, but just looking at the types of personalities on both sides of my families (which arguably straddle the class divides), I would say the way someone with a little more free time and money has the time and agency to direct their gaze to more ethereal/spiritual pursuits, I'm certainly more on that side of the fence.  I may get on with the working class members of my family better, as they're pretty heart-on-their-sleeves types, but the shit that interests me would be perceived as pretentious put-ons by most of them.  It's almost definitely run-on effects from societal sculpting, but it's axiomatic that there's way more to class than just what you've got, what you do and who you do it for.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

Though I never lived in a council house, they were mother's preferred day-drinking locale. The council house children were ghastly to me, one of them had a prostitute mother and they never served meals on plates, they'd gather in the kitchen and pick stuff straight off the baking tray with their hands, I had to fight with them for breaded potato shapes and one of the children scratched me. Another council house child had a loud dog. It was all very arduous and if I'm not working class after that, I'd at least qualify for affiliate status with full privileges.

Now I live in bloomsbury and no-one wants to be working-class, we're all looking up, not down. Though I couldn't stomach buying anything, I've briefly been in a waitrose. A local humphrey, the humphster, taught me that mortgages are called morgos, and if you've been on the bolly you'll get too big a morgo and daddy won't take you to St Moritz. Sounds like the humphster's a fucking pov then, that's bang out of order, chronic landlord shortage and the fucking humphster won't do his part for the nation, going to hire him to clean the swan bones off my banquet hall floor, what an actual shit.

lol

[TrenterPercenter]

Definitely born working class. Dad was a car factory worker who retrained as a probation officer in his early 40s. Mum worked in hotels before ending up as a cook in a children's home. We lived in council houses for the first few years of my life but when my parents died they owned their home outright, so my sis and I split the proceeds.

I can't work full-time anymore, am on disability benefits but I also have enough savings to make sure I'm extremely unlikely to starve. That's cos I'm not interested in money though. I bought my flat in the early 90s, paid it off with my parents' wills in the early years of this century and dumped the rest in long-term savings things where most of it remains. Spending it doesn't interest me at all. I've had the same television in my living room since 1996. I'm not mean (I've lent quite substantial sums to friends and in some cases have even got it back) but I'm not remotely interested in being flash.

So am I middle class now because I have no money worries? Or what?

No just a legend : )

[canadagoose]

I'd prefer to call myself working class, but people might doubt it. I went to university, but my parents didn't (Dad left after 4th year of high school, Mum left halfway through 5th year), my grandparents certainly didn't, and I could never have afforded to go if it wasn't for government support. I grew up in a tenement, in a slightly run-down part of town, but my parents owned it (well, with a mortgage). Definitely didn't go to private school. I live in a flat with a mortgage, but we only have that because my flatmate got a windfall when the company he works for was bought over and he got a dividend for some reason. I'm on Universal Credit these days, so that's hardly posh either.

In terms of other people, I reckon being middle class is probably a combination of "had a fairly privileged upbringing and earns more than enough to be comfortable". Or just a snotty attitude.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

Yes I like this test.

If you grow up working class and consider yourself working class and feel proud of this - then you are working class

If you grow up working class yet consider yourself middle class somehow then you are still working class just one that wants to identify as middle class and for some reason looks down on working class people - middle class people (lols it doesn't even exist)  that don't own their own labour are just deluded snobby working class people.

I grew up working class; and I've tried to make a good fist of being successful but remaining morally intact; I've got some money now (well relative to growing up in a very poor household) been to uni (a few times) got lots of letters after my name etc.. but I still consider myself working class (I am regardless of what I think anyway) and I wouldn't want to be anything other than this until my dying day.

Actually, I do usually identify as working class, and by your definition, i'm working class. It depends who i'm desperately trying to impress at a dinner party.  People say I'm middle class due to the profession i'm in etc.  It doesn't really bother me, either way, to be honest.  I'm happy with where I came from and grateful with where i'm at.

[flotemysost]

I'm with Cocker's position on 'Common People'. I've worked my fair share of years in minimum wage call centre and retail jobs, but I'm middle class because I've always known that - if push absolutely came to shove - my middle-class Boomer parents would be able to support me.

This is pretty much the logic I apply as well. I've got a few friends who grew up in the same area as I did (relatively wealthy suburb in Greater London), same school (decent state school), and generally had similar opportunities growing up, but because of how things have panned out with their family situations, they probably don't have the same financial recourse I would most likely have - e.g. their parents have separated/one parent died, family home sold, parents now in legal/financial difficulty and/or with a new family to provide for, meaning the support available to said friends (as well as the likelihood of getting any sort of inheritance) is inevitably impacted. 

I guess you could argue that's more circumstances than class (and it's true that someone who's had a reasonably comfortable upbringing in a "nice" area still has certain advantages over someone who didn't have that at all, thanks in part to social prejudices), but ultimately isn't all of this really just down to luck - whether that's your own luck or your great nan's? Debating the ins and outs of what makes someone middle class doesn't seem very helpful really. There are certainly plenty of homeless people who would have been considered middle class at a previous point in their lives.

'traditional working class' has been a dog-whistle for 'white' used by far right groups like the BNP and UKIP for yonks, it became legitimised by the brexiteer arm of the tories and also enveloped by their culture war bullshit since.

Absolutely.

[Kankurette]

There's also things like values. According to Paul Embery, working-class people are traditional about gender roles, aggressively indifferent to LGBT people (not sure if he means 'oh, you're gay, that's cool' and leaving it at that, or 'get these queers off my telly, I'm sick of them shoving it in my face') and fiercely patriotic. I'm sure he or some other Blue Labour person said women would be much better off not working and/or getting married.

Note: not saying working-class LGBT people don't exist because of course they do, just that certain portions of the left/right seem to think homosexuality is a middle-class thing.

[chveik]

I've said it here before, but my empirical take on the class thing is something gets dyed-in-the-wall from very young whereby working class people tend to have much more immediate access to their emotions, to the point where it can sometimes seem eruptive, volcanic, whereas middle class people tend to be encouraged to play whack-a-mole on their emotions to the point that by the time they grow up they're often so stunted they have no idea what's going on inside themselves.  It's impolite to feel at the dinner table, sweetie.

this is a cliché. I can find very easily counterexamples of working class people (in my family for instance) that are dedicated to repress their emotions and never talk or express things that might disturb others (some of my cousins only learned in their late thirties that their grandfather had killed himself). I feel like your opinion is very outdated, poor people aren't more prone to anger or display of emotions.

[Jockice]

No just a legend : )

Thanks, but I'd say I was more of a myth.

[canadagoose]

There's also things like values. According to Paul Embery, working-class people are traditional about gender roles, aggressively indifferent to LGBT people (not sure if he means 'oh, you're gay, that's cool' and leaving it at that, or 'get these queers off my telly, I'm sick of them shoving it in my face') and fiercely patriotic. I'm sure he or some other Blue Labour person said women would be much better off not working and/or getting married.

Note: not saying working-class LGBT people don't exist because of course they do, just that certain portions of the left/right seem to think homosexuality is a middle-class thing.

Paul Embery is a dog-whistling red-brown cunt. He seems to like projecting his own bigotry onto other people ("the working class" to him probably being straight white British Christian cisgender men who do manual labour or work in trades and watch football). Funny how many so-called "champions of the working class" forget about women, never mind all the other minorities they shit on.

Edit: Should be blue-brown really, he's barely even left of centre.

Double Edit: rephrasing

[Sin Agog]

this is a cliché. I can find very easily counterexamples of working class people (in my family for instance) that are dedicated to repress their emotions and never talk or express things that might disturb others (some of my cousins only learned in their late thirties that their grandfather had killed himself). I feel like your opinion is very outdated, poor people aren't more prone to anger or display of emotions.

Well I did say it was empirical, and this may be more of a cockney thing than anything.  I also think it may relate to how much attachment you have to stuff.  Meaning, if you don't have anything you've got nothing to lose, therefore you can be more knockabout in general with your approach to household boisterousness.  But if you're in a house where everything is kept in perfect order and things must be done a certain way just like the Jones' next door, you're likely ensconced in a more repressive environment.  Of course there are still working class 'at least I keep a clean home' types, which is certainly a million miles from what I grew up in, where we'd have the same massive food stains on the carpet for years on end.

[flotemysost]

There's also things like values. According to Paul Embery, working-class people are traditional about gender roles, aggressively indifferent to LGBT people (not sure if he means 'oh, you're gay, that's cool' and leaving it at that, or 'get these queers off my telly, I'm sick of them shoving it in my face') and fiercely patriotic. I'm sure he or some other Blue Labour person said women would be much better off not working and/or getting married.

Note: not saying working-class LGBT people don't exist because of course they do, just that certain portions of the left/right seem to think homosexuality is a middle-class thing.

I'm tempted to say this is another example of the dog-whistle thing but I think it runs much deeper than that and probably warrants a separate thread in itself, as there are lots of different theories about what informs homophobia (and indeed misogyny) in any society. I suppose it's defensiveness of traditional gender roles, and therefore fear of anything that appears to threaten that, which is something you see in societies all over the world.

Obviously goes without saying there are very very many middle class or posh homophobes and sexists, several of whom are running the country.

[Kankurette]

Paul Embery is a dog-whistling red-brown cunt. He seems to like projecting his own bigotry onto other people ("the working class" to him probably being straight white British Christian cisgender men who do manual labour or work in trades and watch football). Funny how many so-called "champions of the working class" forget about women, never mind all the other minorities they shit on.

Edit: Should be blue-brown really, he's barely even left of centre.

Double Edit: rephrasing

Like I said, they seem to think black and Asian working-class people don't exist.

I watch football but I'm also a bisexual Jewish woman who does a desk job. I kind of need to eat and pay the bills and I also don't want to be in a relationship. And it really hurts when men like Embery - and I encountered a load of them the other day - make it clear that Labour, in their view, will only get back into power if the queers go back into the closet and the little ladies stop being so demanding and leave the men to handle things. And people like Gillian Duffy are the people they should be courting, and Labour are too 'woke' now, even though JC ran on a class-based platform. I really wish they'd come out and say exactly how Labour are 'woke'. I suspect trans people may be involved.

I also seem to remember an actual communist on here saying really disgusting things about LGBT people and how we broke up the family or whatever.

[imitationleather]

I also seem to remember an actual communist on here saying really disgusting things about LGBT people and how we broke up the family or whatever.

Blimey, who was that?

[canadagoose]

Like I said, they seem to think black and Asian working-class people don't exist.

I watch football but I'm also a bisexual Jewish woman who does a desk job. I kind of need to eat and pay the bills and I also don't want to be in a relationship. And it really hurts when men like Embery - and I encountered a load of them the other day - make it clear that Labour, in their view, will only get back into power if the queers go back into the closet and the little ladies stop being so demanding and leave the men to handle things. And people like Gillian Duffy are the people they should be courting, and Labour are too 'woke' now, even though JC ran on a class-based platform. I really wish they'd come out and say exactly how Labour are 'woke'. I suspect trans people may be involved.

That would not surprise me.

I also seem to remember an actual communist on here saying really disgusting things about LGBT people and how we broke up the family or whatever.

Were they in the CPGB-ML? They seem to do a lot of that socially-regressive stuff.

[Kankurette]

I can't remember the dude's name, he was very Christian as well. Think it was a while ago.

Are Labour really even that arsed about trans people? Like, so many feminists refuse to vote for them because of self-ID and Corbyn being too pro-trans. The trans issue would also explain why Nigel Farage has a bug up his arse about the SNP being 'woke'.

[Zetetic]

How many "feminists"?

Are we talking about as many people as have donated to WPUK in the last couple of years? 10x that? 100x that? 1000x that?

(I probably wouldn't characterise them as "feminists", without any qualification whatsoever.)