Middle class revolutionaries

I'd agree with Malva. Here's my two cents:

'middle class' is a cultural distinction that spans both some small-time capitalists (petit-bourgeosie) and some workers. Thats why it is so annoying when people refer to it as an economically homogenous entity with the same material interests. And also why i think Ian Bone is a right tosser for encouraging friction between the 'middle' and 'working' classes.

I would say it is a largely psychological (as well as sociological) phenomenon though.... and that it is an illusion that has been made reality because people believe it exists. It should be part of our task as revolutionaries to destroy this myth and get more people to self-identify as working class.

I would be considered 'middle class' in the way i dress, but i'm only at uni through a grant, had to work over the last few years to save up living money, and my parents are both low paid full time workers. Does that mean i should get the hatred of the more culturally defined section of the working class? Seems antithetical to class solidarity to me.... and in fact on the student walkouts/demos i got on with the militant 'chavs' from my college really well.

Also i know some really rich fairly conservative kids with massive houses who dress, talk and act like they live on estates. So it's a fully bullshit category that relies upon one-sided generalisations.

Harrison, I'm not sure about the argument 'I know a couple therefore abstraction is shit' is very helpful. Especially when dealing with social categories. I have long hair, that doesn't mean I can't say as a general rule men have short hair (unless they listen to heavy metal of course ).

At an AF IWW and Alarm meeting yesterday at the bookfair I was having a little think. When this guy was going on about not considering himself working class etc, etc, it seemed to me, that it is so called 'middle class' identity*, as a subjective category that can actually get in the way of class solidarity. This guy didn't feel working class because he had a 'comfortable' (what ever that is, an iPad?) lifestyle. I mean. Maybe he was just at the wrong meeting and he is an anarcho-capitalist, but I think what he was actually doing was expressing a certain way of being 'middle class'.

*i would say someone who thinks they do not have a class is included in this. I think that this was this guys basic argument. That and he seemed to earn more than me....

I just see abstraction on this subject very difficult to take seriously as it appears to me to only be a personal/cultural phenomenon.

I wouldn't disagree with the fact that it is a tangible cultural distinction, and one often with negative political consequences, just not a genuine class distinction.

btw. WRT heavy metal, been listening to this and this recently.

This seems to be my problem with some leftists critique of the middle class. I don;t like it either, as i said earlier in the thread (i think it was this one) it is a term phenomena that arises from a period of high finance etc, etc, but I get the impression people just denigrate the phenomena of 'middle class' (whatever you decide that is) because it gets in the way of their 'genuine class' analysis. It seems to me, if something is having real concrete political effects (as you concede) it should be taken seriously in any analysis. If only to critique it. For me the stronger critique of the middle class isn't to highlight its culture/personal character* but to show how it arises from a certain socio-historical conjuncture. Post war boom, rise in relative 'affluence' etc, etc. In times of crisis (like today) we can chortle heartily in our cornflakes as the very material conditions that allowed a 'middle class' to come into being are disappearing. Maybe the crisis is the death knell of middle class-dom, we will have to wait and see. But we can see its effects on political movements today (occupy movement is full of people who don't dare step on the 'working class' territory).

N.B Sorry if this post reads like i am burning you Harrison, I intend it in the most comradely of fashion!

*even though for me this is a pretty weak critique....

PENTAGRAM FUCKING ROOOOOOLZ!

Hey it's fine, i agree with you on so many other issues.

The other reason i have strong views on this is because it related to part of my actual concrete political activity in trying to communicate the validity of my ideas (not in a weird politico gramscian interventionist way but just casually when people request me to explain my politics). A friend at my uni largely agrees with me, but keeps bringing up the idea that he's middle class and inferring that he's therefore somehow not able to be involved in working class politics beyond reformism. I don't really see any way out of this fairly common problem than the classic

Yes. Having come from the working class, I'd say that this is just about the whole problem with the middle class (see my previous post for my 'definition') - and its nice for someone to recognise it. But its not just what the middle class say, but how they say it (tendency towards the pointless pretentious abstract and indirect) and, of course, what they do and how they react - which can include a whole constellation of subtle styles and priorities that people who have really materially suffered and struggled, or who have had to work with their bodies all their lives, find disgusting.

(Not that I'm glorifying the working class or absolutely condemning the middle - hedges, qualifiers and anti-black-and-whites are prominent here)

Of course, the working class is incapable of thinking outside its little box of prejudices. It can't conceive of conditions other than those of which it has direct experience. It shies from intellectual standpoints preferring to uphold "common sense" orthodoxies and denouncing anything it doesn't understand as "a load of shite". It's inarticulate with no mastery of grammar. It's vicious and cruel. Its very revolutions are founded on the theories of its middle class superiors.

This is all a load of shite, isn't it? In truth: prejudice, banality, arrogance and affectation pervade society at all levels, as a result of capitalist relations.

It's all a load of shite. Oi Pikel, that's my catchphrase

Dronboddly, yes, I know you qualified what you said, but your point still smacks of working class stereotype cum 'identity politics' which is... a load of shite How they say it? You want to hear some of the weird bollocks I grew up with. Yes, direct as fuck but often abstract as fuck and with more than our fair share of pretentious twats doing the rounds... er... me being one of them

You remember Class War in its heyday? I never recognised the 'working class' they talked about. Sure, some of it rang true but most of it was pure stereotype or wishful thinking. More shite.

Malva, I like the cut of your jib. Middle class background? No biggie. But what are you doing with your life now? That's what matters. And from the sounds of it, you're doing right.

Complete tangent now, but anyway... my favourite ever line on this topic comes from the FC United fanzine A fine lung, which says: 'Rise with your class, not from it'. Some shrewd person pointed out that more often than not, the working class is sinking, what with repeated class defeats, post 70s depoliticisation and the general dumbing down (shamefully pandered to by some anarchists). Well, we'll just have to do a fair bit of nudging to get us on track again.

I don't wish to bitch slap you, but aren't you upper middle-class? You thought a flight to Australia was nothing and had an aupaire; I was brought up middle-class (think American Beauty with Kevin Spacey), but I didn't know what an aupaire was until I was moved to private school and even then, hardly anyone had one.

Don't feel guilty about being middle-class, take it from me, it's neither healthy nor productive.

Mine is Tyler Durban (on the proletarianised middle-class):

Its pretty accurate I'd say.

Yes, they do - its just the details that change from class to class. "Capitalist relations" - a very recent phenomenon - aren't the root of the problem though.

Nor did I say otherwise.

Nor did I say otherwise.

Fair play then.

Maybe "fair play", but more "what's your point then, dronboddly?"

Go for it man. I dunno, but I think the trick is to find a job that you enjoy, if not a job then a hobby/relationship or something that gives your life meaning. Have you watched the film Office Space? It's about shitty jobs and alienation, I really think you'd enjoy it. Looking forward to reading your piece!

So from reading this thread I am beginning to think there is a massive difference between Britain and the US in terms of the meaning of "middle class". In the UK, it seems to me that there is more visible distinction between middle and working classes which is expressed in definite differences in terms of accent, social habits, etc. Obviously I'm sure this strict division doesn't hold true all the time, but my point is it fits the UK more closely than it does the US. In the US, in my experience, the "middle class" is more broadly defined and vague. Most people self-identify as middle class thanks to a variety of material factors and the ideological supremacy of the bourgeoisie. This is not to say that there aren't visible class distinctions between middle strata and the deprived "underclass", just that engaging this problem using the existing vocabulary of "the middle class" makes much less sense in American than in Britain. In Britain it seems that the idea of middle classes is something at least partially rooted in the conceptions of workers, whereas in the US it is a terminology which is part of the ideological control of the ruling class.

EDIT: The US is one of the most indebted nations on earth...it is common for people to use access to credit to purchase the trappings of affluence or at least participation in the consumer society. Then when they have trouble paying their debts they are spit on by conservatives for "living beyond their means". But the point is that personal debt is very widespread. This means that class distinctions are less immediately apparent, as poor working class people may purchase the same items as the more well off, but spend months working to pay them off. Cultural habits are also harder to use as indicators...librarians and bookstore workers will have intellectual habits while plenty of rich people will be boorish idiots, concerned only with money and lacking the sophistication and "culture" of other bourgeois groups. Middle class kids will wear dirty, ragged clothes and working class/poor kids will be clean cut. My family is culturally "middle class" according to some definitions but our blue collar neighbors who own a small construction business have more money than us. Accent can certainly still mean something but it is probably less useful as an indicator of class over here. Again, this is not to deny internal divisions in the broadly defined "working classes" but just to say that the language of the "middle class" is even more problematic over here than in Britain.

Another factor which can't be ignored when considering class composition in the United States is the extremely powerful ideology of "the American Dream", an "aspirational culture" which significantly weakens the formation of subjective class identification. When one believes any position in society is attainable one is less likely to fight for improvements in one's immediate position, i.e. individual aspirations sometimes replace collective ones. This is obviously not true for everyone (obviously many people are not duped by the lie that we are living in a meritocracy), but it does affect many people and is dominant in the political discourse. I think this ideology has its roots in American expansionism and conquest, which allowed for a lessening of class tensions in urbanized areas through the giving away of cheap or free land (brutally confiscated from the Indians of course) to anyone willing to be a pioneer. From the individualistic identity and politics fostered by small farming (even as the small farms rapidly disappeared), to the Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches, Gilded Era trope, to the 90's dot-com capitalist mellinarianism which idolized (and exaggerated) the phenomenon of small investors and technology start-ups America has a long tradition of clever ideological sleight of hand to defuse class struggle. Another thing about class in America is that in contrast to Britain (if Orwell is to be believed) "New Money" social climbers are idolized and embraced both by some workers and by pretty much every capitalist ideologue. The capitalist heroes in America are the rags-to-riches cases like Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey.

Don't kid yourself, the way you describe it is not much different to my own experience in the UK. [deleted possibly self-identifying material]

And people getting into debt and being criticised for "living beyond their means" has been a significant story here too over the last 30 years.

The sociological and cultural definitions of class are an entertaining distraction.

Are you having a laugh? Bill Gates? Rags to riches??

To expand, William Gates Snr (formerly William Gates II) founded a successful law firm. His first wife Mary (daughter of a banker) got their son, William Gates III ("Bill"), his opening with IBM, thanks to her role (first female Chair) on the national United Way board where she knew IBM's CEO, to tout the MS-DOS operating system (itself of controversial authorship) and the rest is your "rags to riches" history.

Nevermind about Gates then I've heard him referenced as an example of rags to riches so many times ("he went from college dropout to millionaire") that I didn't bother to check up on it. I obviously put no stock in the idea of "rags to riches", but its interesting to see how even a statistically insignificant handful of individuals who are genuinely "self made (wo)men" can be cited as an argument in favor of capitalism. The phenomena of the "self made man" blurs together with "humble" billionaires like Warren Buffet who didn't come from nothing but are still nice, unpretentious "jus' folk" type people, just like you and me.

Btw, I didn't mean to imply that the class-blurring phenomena I cited didn't occur in Britain, but it still seems like there is even more of it in America. Like in America virtually nobody identifies as "working class" while in Britain some still do, if I'm not mistaken.

Well the UK has Alan Sugar (who does the UK version of Apprentice) and Richard Branson amongst many others - I don't think there's anything specifically American about hyping people like that.

Self-identification as 'working class' is actually increasing in the UK, at least according to some poll a couple of years ago.

Also there isn't really an attempt to use middle class interchangeably - if politicians here don't want to say 'working class' they say things like 'hard working families' or 'the squeezed middle' - which is partly why the 99% stuff from the occupy protests probably gets less time from people in the UK than it does in the US. If someone was to say they were fighting for middle class interests you'd get raised eyebrows I think - since it brings to mind the interests of suburban wine drinkers with nice jobs, terms like 'the squeezed middle' sidestep that issue (since plenty of people who drink wine with nice jobs are still getting wage freezes or getting made redundant and etc.)

I understand the class struggle between those who own the factors of production and those who must work to live. However I don't think that a person's socio-economic status determines their effectiveness as a revolutionary. Our struggle is to abolish class, not to see where we fit in. I welcome anyone with a revolutionary mindset.

I'm not sure why any degree of homogenization is necessary. Is it possible to be genuinely "middle class" and involved in revolutionary activities? Yes, absolutely. Is it likely? Likelier? Perhaps not.

However, that doesn't mean a class can't act against its own class interests, for whatever reasons, and no source of potential help should be derided out of hand, especially not on the basis of some idealized purity of proletarian identity.

Agree 100%. Also in the real world people can shift classes throughout their lives depending on the circumstances.

Sorry to jump in late with this but I detect a serious drift laterly in this thread towards an individualist and idealist approach which seems to deny the material reality of class, and as importantly the heirachical and power relationships within class, on the formation of ideas.

Individuals can 'buck the trend' up to a point, but no more, without significant shifts in material conditions resulting from the interplay of capitalist competition and mass class struggle, and on a world scale. We might be seeing the beginnings of that but no more as yet I suspect.

We pro-revolutionaries should do what we can to counter some of the more perverse ideological barriers to class struggle but in the battle of ideas we are small fry on our own.

This thread should be read in conjunction with the related 'pro-revoluionaries in academia' thread though it does have some sidetracks to avoid.