[lbo-talk] Middle Class

[Marvin Gandall]

I think people started thinking of themselves as "middle class" when they
began acquiring a modest amount of personal property - notably a home in the
suburbs and a car to get there - and entering white collar jobs. They would
describe themselves that way as a way of setting themselves apart from those
still working in factories and living in rundown apartment buildings in
downtown neighbourhoods - often where they grew up and where many of their
family and friends still lived. The term was a measure of their social
progress, and therefore a source of pride and self-esteem. Was it false
consciousness? Not insofar as they had a consciousness of themselves as
enjoying better conditions than other workers. Yes, when they interpreted
this to mean their interests were broadly coincident with those of large
property holders rather than the mass of blue collar and other workers who
derived their income from wages and salaries, and who benefited rather than
were penalized by the extension of social programs and access to collective
bargaining rights. Since social mobility was mainly a white thing, there
was, as with everything in the US, an intertwined racial component to it.

Also, I think "working class" has typically made people uncomfortable
because they've been conditioned to associate it with "Communism". In my
experience, the same people don't cavil when you refer instead to "working
people" which has more acceptable populist connotations, and which can be
used in the same way as "working class" to "raise consciousness".

MG
-------------------------------------

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 4:22 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Middle Class


> turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>
>>I know the social democratic mind has a hard time digesting this, but
>>history has known sudden leaps--both in society--revolutions, they are
>>called--and the necessary leaps in consciousness that accompany them.
>
> Really? Do tell. I've never heard of these revolution thingys before.
>
>>  Maybe it's been so long sinch such an event has taken place that we tend
>> to forget they ever happened. But progress will never happen unless large
>> numbers of people disabuse themselves of backward ideas. And the notion
>> that they are middle class is one of the most backward and paralysing
>> ideas American workers are beset with. It is embedded in many other
>> reactionary notions--that money and social status are an indications of
>> personal worth, and that the social hierarchy is therefore legitimate,
>> for instance. But it is also deeply implicated in notions of race. White
>> poor people think they're midddle class because they're not part of the
>> underclass, which happens to be guess what.There is nothing to be gained
>> by capitulating to backwa! rd consciousness.
>
> Sorry to repeat myself after just six months, but... When I was in Italy
> in 1976, I heard a story from a guy who said he'd been bicycling on
> Sardinia and rode past a mental hospital. On the hospital grounds, a
> female patient was tied to a tree, and three shrinks in white coats were
> slapping her, saying, "You're *not* the Virgin Mary!" Ever since, I've
> been tempted to recommend a trip to Sardinia for certain neurotics I know.
> But now I learn that that's the sound revolutionary treatment for deluded
> workers. Slap 'em around and insist "You *are* working class!"
>
> Doug
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