>
>
> "Mr P.A. Van Heusden" wrote:
>
> > Politics - from 'Class War' to the 'Socialist Worker' - which is focussed
> > on how 'we're not middle class wankers' is more and more a posture in a
> > society where the working class look, and think, like middle class wankers
> > anyway.
> >
> > 'Working class'ness is not an obvious trait to the people I work with. I
> > can walk around and point to people and say 'this one is working class'
> > and 'this one isn't', but that doesn't make a bit of difference unless
> > that distinction is somehow filled with meaning by the people themselves.
>
> May I suggest as a starting point that one assume (a) "Middle Class"
> never did have any meaning except as an introduction to bourgeois
> sociology and the replacement of Marx by Weber.
'Middle Class' had an ideological meaning, particularly in the political climate of Labourism (and, in fact, various forms of Stalinism and Trotskyism) and Thatcherism. The replacement of Marx by Weber happened in a pretty real way - just because it is bogus doesn't mean that people aren't deeply affected by it.
(b) If you can
> point to someone (rather than just see his/her name in the paper or
> on an organizational chart) the overwhelming probability is that
> he/she is working class -- and we'd better start to base our political
> thinking on an accurate conception of the working class of 1999
> rather than 1899.
I beg to differ. The rector of the University of the Western Cape is not, in my mind, a member of the working class. His job depends not on the fact that someone extracts value from his labour, but on the fact that he extracts value from others (i.e. 'his' workers). He's not 'ruling class', but he sure as hell is not working class.
(c) Even so described, the bulk of the working
> class is rather less well off than appearances as you describe them
> (a car, a job and a fucking big TV) might indicate.
In which country? My wife's relatives up in Preston, who are on the dole, and have been on the dole for years, don't have jobs, but they do have a car, a TV (ok, not a fucking big one), a music system and a VCR, and (at least for now) a roof over their heads.
That's a hell-of-a-different picture from what I'm used to in South Africa.
I'm not trying to argue, however, that somehow this 'nullifies' the working class - it is just that when 'working class' has been identified, by both the Left and the Right, with a particular set of expressions, then when people no longer feel that those expressions apply to them, the effect is material, and cannot be ignored.
The definition of 'working class' in a particular way, through emphasis on 'tangibles' (respect for 'real money' (as opposed to speculation), 'real work' (as opposed to joblessness and/or idleness), 'real suffering' (as opposed to intangible anger and alienation), 'real existing socialism') was part of the programme which in practice meant Keynesian containment - a kind of pseudo-'freeze' of the struggle between the classes.
The anxiety which is characteristic of trying to reach beyond that sterile 'freeze' is visible as much in social theory as it is in Mike Leigh's films. Superceding that anxiety means not (as the SWP did when it called for money to be spent on the welfare state instead of bombing Serbia) trying to hold on to a particular set of social relations which were characteristic of a particular balance of forces, but rather trying to find a way forward based on the situation as we find it today.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.