Here are some phrases that I hardly ever hear these days, and when I do, even to my ears, they seem a bit old fashioned. "Working Class", "Middle Class", "Ruling Class".
Two things made me think about this. Firstly, after deliberately not reading it for a couple of years, I am reading Tom Wolfe’s novel I am Charlotte Simmons ( I was going to review the reviews of this book, as they are illuminating in themselves). Secondly, I watched a documentary on the BBC celebrating the tenth anniversary of Pulp’s song Common People.
(the lyrics are here: http://www.paradise-engineering.com/quotation/commonpeople.html).
Both the book and the song are impassioned and relevant dissections of class difference, yet both seem a little outdated. Whatever happened to class?
It’s not like it went away. The ruling class still rules, the working class still works and the middle classes are still in the middle. So what happened?
It seems that the discourse surrounding class has dried up.
I was reading up on the neocons (forgive me but sometimes I get my Wolfowitzes confused with my Horowitzes) the other week and kept coming across this claim that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher won the Cold War. I won’t list the reasons why this is a ridiculous claim but simply set a quiz.
Q. What was the reason for the fall of Communism?*
Was it…
- Defeated by the combined might of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher? or
- Amongst other reasons, as an complex and idealistic social experiment communism was corrupted by leaders who confused power with violence and attempted to impose a too rigid and unbending ideological system on a massive swathe of people, many of whom were neither informed about the project or interested in it. Ultimately, the experiment failed because the imposition of ideology pretty much always leads to tyranny, and, like any religious or political project the ideal which drove it in the first place is implemented by imperfect and often evil people who seemingly cannot help but bow to their own desire for power (hence the fact that lots of fervently religious people who claim to live their lives according to The Bible seem to own misprinted copies that omit the word “not” from the text of the first Commandment,). This is especially bad for an ideology that is anti-materialist, because materialism is a pretty good expression of someone’s belief that they are more powerful than someone else – hence, for example, Ceaucescu’s numerous palaces, Atari video consoles, Porsche Carreras, Sony Walkmans and big hairstyles for Mrs Ceausescu (it was the 80s remember). Also, the Communists made a big mistake – they failed to operate on a balanced budget and whilst supposedly operating a controlled and managed economy were about as good at controlling it and managing it as the average sociology student at a party college is at controlling theirs. For a student, this means that they have to smoke roll-ups and call Mom and Dad for a bail out to prevent them from living on Pot Noodles and beans on toast. For the Communists, this meant that several million perfectly innocent people starved to death. Also the Communists weren’t too happy about people who didn’t want to be Communists. Or even people who were Communists but pointed out that Communism could perhaps be run a bit better. I have done this at work sometimes and the consequence of it was that my bosses didn’t like being criticised and I was passed over for promotion. For people in Communist countries it meant they were passed over for survival. Anyway, eventually the whole thing, which was too big a project in the first place (Communist motto: “Act Global, oppress and murder local”) became unsustainable, because the leaders of Communism didn’t learn from history. You cannot make people agree with you by telling them they should, and perhaps more importantly, an unusual moustache, flamboyant and pompous hat collection and endless military parades does not make you into a good leader. Communism fell apart, a little like a shoddily managed small business whose boss shouts a lot, wears a comical fur hat, overestimates the broad appeal of its products and eventually runs out of overdraft facilities?
Around the time of Communism’s disintegration, I remember some people declaring that that was it – the struggle was over and history was finished. And I think this is one reason why class has become a non-topic. The idea that ‘we’ had won was very appealing to lots of people, and by dint of the fact that class is basically a Marxist concept, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
It was the same time as two other political things happened. In Britain John Major declared that he wanted to see a classless society, an idea that was joyfully embraced by the middle class liberal media, most of whom, through no fault of their own, had never really experienced class differences up close (The middle class suffers from this problem, in that the middle class is pretty broad. At one end people are so desperate not be working class that they will do anything to avoid the working class, and at the other end people just don't have anything to do with the working class. The middle class hardly ever suffer from or are punished for their status). The idea of a classless society in Britain is very appealing, it makes everyone feel better. To help, Labour threw out the Trotskyite brothers with their Marxist ideology, those pesky donkey-jacketed chip-eating miners could no longer cause anyone any class-focussed strife and, despite the stockmarket crash and a recession the media centre of the country i.e. London, continued to surf the waves of money that were made when the Tories rocked the tax boat so vigorously at the end of the eighties.
In America Clinton got in. Now, I realise that my idea of class is a British one. In some ways America is a classless society. It says so in their constitution. However, the irony is that it is probably the most class-ridden society the earth has ever seen. Within a society based on the revolutionary principles of equality, elitists have had to work so much harder to establish the fact that they are, in fact, elite. They work really hard at it, they are obsessed. But Clinton was an exception. Firstly, he was from the South. The South I ask you?! Secondly (and by the way it doesn’t matter whether any of this is true, it’s about the perception of him not being an eastern seaboard blue-blood) he came from a place called Hope (which is near a place called Hot Springs). He was the modern embodiment of the kid who grew up in a log-cabin and ended up as Prez. Hurrah! America is the perfect mythical classless society and he is the proof. Rather conveniently, he also sorted out the budget deficit and everyone had lots of jobs and prosperity. People didn’t suffer as much for their status under him, and if they did – as surely they did – they weren’t punished. In fact, he apologised and promised he’d make it better for them. Even as they died in emergency rooms for lack of insurance, they died smiling. Staring off into an optimistic future.
All these things pushed class off the agenda. It withered and died.
Which worried me. Instead of working class these days, we have Chavs. Chavs aren’t a political concept, they are a consumer group. Perhaps this indicates another reason why class is such a taboo topic for discourse. The mysterious and mythical ‘they’ don’t want us to think in political terms because it’s bad for business. Pretty much, if everyone is to be a consumer, everyone has to be some kind of middle class. For those who are poor and traditionally working class you just change the name. You treat them like aspirant bourgeoisie and they respond by behaving like aspirant bourgeoisie. You create special categories of consumer goods to make them aspire to. Often this involves the word “Jeans”. Calvin Klein Jeans, Dolce and Gabbana Jeans, Paul Smith Jeans. In these cases Jeans is shorthand for ‘just, but only just, within your price-range. So save up your minimum wage, suckers.’
So who benefits? The ruling class, of course. As Verbal Kimt suggested : “the greatest trick the devil played was to convince everyone that he didn't exist.”
*The answer is 2, by the way.
In other news,
Half of me is horrified by this story and half of me is amused.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/4617310.stm
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