Why I use ‘middle class’ as an insult | Cath Elliot
For the vast majority of people, well those who haven’t read Marx anyway, class is increasingly defined by how much material wealth a person has, and by that definition I’m decidedly middle class. My husband and I have a mortgage for instance; we also have a car. We’ve been able to afford to take our children abroad for holidays, and in the grand scheme of things, we’re doing all right.
And yet I still wouldn’t describe either of us as comfortably middle class. That’s mainly because I know where we both came from, and because I’m also aware of how quickly and easily all those things, those trappings of an illusory middle-class life, could be lost. It’s also because I probably am a bit of a Marxist in that I don’t believe material things define class so much as power does, along with some ownership of the means of production, and I know we don’t possess either of those.
More importantly, we both have what I suppose you could call a class consciousness, in that we’re both aware of our roots, and we both know on which side of the class divide our loyalties lie.
This is the key when it comes to talking about class. It’s about knowing, when push comes to shove, which group or class of people has your interests at heart. And it’s this that I’m referring to when I use “middle class” as an insult.
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June 30, 2010 10:07 am
Interesting. In Ireland there’s probably a lot of people with a foot in both class camps and I suppose that’s historical to our present – what about the 40 somethings’ children who have no personal working class experiences like standing on the road outside your house watching the hunt go by and feeling that these people were not like you and were above you, were rich and posh. I’ve just mentioned that because it’s topical now. I do my best to instill fairness in my children so they can judge well but that’s not a class experience, it’s more of a moral reckoning. Of course some would say that I’m bleeding heart liberal middleclass now and the some who might say that enjoy fags and booze and travel and maybe even not having to work full-time in the capitalist system – by choice. So what is pure class experience anymore? It’s not just poverty and lack of access. The working class experience always was you paid your taxes and you still paid for everything and you had no power over that. Is this not a middle class experience too?
Owning the means to production as defining class is gone now I think. Capital doesn’t always need production and labour to make more capital. The super wealthy in society are wealthy because of financial investments. The big MNCs are owned by a plethora of shareholders, all investors who wouldn’t even know the workings of who they’ve invested in, just the risk % and the returns. It’s roll up and place your bet!
I think new/radical politics passes no remarks on class or it starts from the basis that inequality exists, let’s not spend more time on it and let’s do something disruptive. Then you have old/consensus politics. If you look at the Labour Party which was the working man’s party (and working woman) you’d have to question how much they’re different now from Fine Gael. Vincent Browne asked this question of a Labour politician from Cork last night, he asked him for 3 principals that set them apart from FG and FF. The reply was the line you’d hear from FG.
Is middle class really an insult then? It conjures up a bit of smugness and getting your stuff a bit too easily. Is that real? Nice Home = Big Mortgage + Lighting + Heating + TV + Bins etc. Nice Car = Finance & Leasing + Insurance + Road Tax + NCT + Fuel + Servicing etc. Nice 2-Week Holiday = Saving + Credit Card Bills for several months. It’s not poverty but it’s not exactly a handy number.
So what is class? Is it relevant even?
June 30, 2010 3:11 pm
July 1, 2010 12:11 am
This sounds great but I’m still not sure not so much about what class is but who class is. We all know there is a capitalist class and then there’s the rest of us.
I have a mixture of what I’d call w/c and m/c friends (based on my ideas about their income and attitudes). Very few of them have a clear class consciousness maybe because they never studied in 3rd level or went to college but took science or something. But tacitly, they’re all conscious of being fecked over in this country with welfare cuts and pay cuts and paying for every last little thing while bankers are bailed out and none of them have gone to jail yet! Do they struggle against it? Well they all believe in using the democratic system of election. Now how do you fight class struggle in the democratic system? You would vote for the leftist party you could find because they might regulate, not be sweet with the corporate lobby, redistribute, enact new laws etc etc. and down the country the most left you can get is Labour or the odd Independant. So if Labour do not have policies that are different from Fine Gael where do you go with your class consciousness and struggle? I know I’m defeatist but I’m a realist too. Hoping for the best is not struggle so that leaves me with treking up to Dublin to get involved in anarchy of something of that nature. I’m a bit too insipid for anarchy, I understand it but it scares me to be honest so how do I struggle. I’ll tell you how I do it, I work for free in my community when I can and in different ways and my idea behind this is that not everything has to be measured in wages, money will not control my motivations, my labour is valuable in ways other than production for profit. Do you know what that does according to Marxist theory, it maintains the status quo because I’m propping up people and not trying to change the system. So yeah Harvey is right about class struggle in theory, theorists have been saying this for years, Gramsci, Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, Hilary Wainright, but I’m stuck in real life where the labour I sell isn’t lecturing or writing about class struggle. Do you know what I mean, I’m an ordinary person who is conscious but I’m stuck and I’m probably indicative of many others.
How do you know which group of people in the political class has your interests at heart? If interests are ‘what’s in it for me and the people like me and the poor and the people who need care? you’d have to think are these interests actually class struggle?
July 1, 2010 12:41 am
Read Gramsci or Paulo Friere…class aint about money, its about power…read TASC ‘Mapping The Golden Circle’.
The irony is that Bertie, Brian (Cowen) and thier ‘ilk’ (is that a demeaning class label?) will never be in the same ‘upper class’ as the likes of Martin Manseragh, (he has written quite a good book on the history of Ireland (Nth) but then again he is part of the landed gentry and quite well educated, kinda like that fella who owns Slane Castle.
Interestingly I was reading a report recently that the biggest landlords (in terms of estates of land 600-2000+ acres etc) in Ireland are those who have inherited thier estates Earl & Lord such & such… for example the Duke of Devonshire who owns huge tracts of land including Lismore Castle and he lives on a big estate in Chatsworth in England and we live in a Republic…??
You see thats where we went wrong. I remember at the start of the Celtic Tiger housing estates being built with names such as Chatsworth Mews, Devonshire Court, Crappy Villas, Dead-End Close,…
This is political ideology very cleverly playing to our emotions and aspirations to home-ownership and notions of class…
Like “you haven’t made it unless you won your own home…”
“An Irish mans home is his Ring-Fort…”
Renting a place is ‘dead money’…not according to about 70 million Germans and maybe a couple of hundred million Europeans who dont have this irrational need to ‘own’ property.
At the end of it all it seems that ‘you take the Irish out of the bog, but ya cant take the bog out of the Irish’…ahh people we were conned good & proper, so get back to the singing & dancing and the ‘bit o craic’.
Cheers
July 1, 2010 9:08 am
???
Can you clarify what you’re saying? There’s no class struggle because people bought houses that reminded them of the gentry?
July 1, 2010 11:40 am
Small Girl, sounds like you’re on a bit of a journey. As for being stuck, yes I know what you’re saying there. You could do worse than having a look at the introductory chapters on-line of Erik Olin Wright’s book “Envisioning Real Utopias” (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/ERU.htm). He addresses your point about people wanting change but not knowing how that might happen. I just read it last night myself and although some of the language is a bit academic it’s a reasonably accessible read.
July 1, 2010 1:26 pm
LeftAtTheCross, I like your name, crossroads or biblical?
The journey is taking too long – I have issue fatigue! Maybe I should have trained as a forensic accountant or something so I could poke shitty sticks at really rich people. That in itself wouldn’t change anything if there isn’t a political party that will change the tax system towards redistribution.
But I’ll read EOW anyways. Thanks.
July 1, 2010 2:49 pm
Thanks SmallGirl, the tag isn’t biblical. Not sure about your comment regarding tax and wealth redistribution, I would have thought any of the further Left parties would tick that box for you, no?
July 1, 2010 4:13 pm
SP/SWP? Not sign nor sight where I live. 50km from Dublin City Centre. And before you make any suggestions I’m really bad at public speaking…being a small girl and all.
July 1, 2010 4:27 pm
I’m out in the sticks myself, in more ways than one. Where you located? WP branch in Navan if you’re out Meath direction, would be glad to talk to you.
July 1, 2010 4:53 pm
South Kildare, Labour country! and I have friends in the LP and I’d only end up fighting with them if I joined. Can’t get into a situation of being politically frustrated and ostracised by me mates into the bargain! I’ll just plug away at what I’m doing until I have an epiphany. It feels more like personal struggle than class struggle.
July 1, 2010 5:13 pm
Hi Small Girl,
Its not that people bought houses that reminded them of the gentry. Though a question is why is there such a thing as ‘The Gentry’ in the first place?
The question is not even why people buy houses? The question is around a ‘right to own property’, ‘the right to shelter’, and the right not to be kicked out into the street for defaulting on a mortgage that you cant afford to pay, on a property that is worth 50% of the value that you paid for it, in the event that some-one would even buy the place!
The question is why a particular Irish version of the ‘Class’ system allows a section of Irish society to live with more material wealth than they and thier families could ever need, while maybe 200,000 children in this country are at risk or living in poverty, never mind the 450,000 people on the dole, the countless hundreds of thousands of people living in fear of losing their jobs, bla bla bla… Check out CORI for the exact figures.
The point is, I suppose is that there is an Irish version of a class system, modeled pretty much on the English version…like why for example do we still have ‘The Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland’ etc. What is so royal about being an architect?
Interestingly the architect Alfred Loos stated that ‘ornamentation is a crime’ observing that the capitalist project is just really a system for ‘making stuff’ that we don’t really need…
Anyway the class system is a cultural construct and Antonio Gramsci argued that in order to overthrow the state [corrupt or no] in a western liberal democracy revolutionary parties must first overcome the sources of hegemonic power within civil society, such as churches, schools, media. Well the churches have taken a bit of a bashing but they coming back strong. The schools teaching by rote that ‘points make prizes and if you pay for grinds you have an even better chance, very powerful union, no way Hosey. The media well RTE they have Pat Kenny… and Tony O’Rielly and Denis O Brien own the rest so…viva la revolution wada ya think?
July 1, 2010 6:25 pm
Hi Robert, I agree with all of what you say. But. In the absence of a project to overthrow the state which I’d have to say I’d probably back away from because historical socialism has been fairly rough, is there such a thing as class struggle outside of theory? Is real class struggle about getting stuck in and politicising and radicalising civil society and unions? If you do that you’re joining the m/c people who uphold the hegemony of the state. It’s going around in circles. I mean where are the organic w/c intellectuals hanging out? (Probably on ILR) There’s a large group of middle class people working at professional community development meeting the needs of the w/c – they’re like a working class interest group by proxy. I’ve learned more from these people than anybody else. Should they be overcome too?
I apologise now for driving everyone crackers with questions.
July 2, 2010 7:50 am
Small Girl, with regard to class and class relations, there are two books I have come across which have influenced how I approach the study of class relations
Rosemary Crompton, Class and Stratification.
There’s an early version of it here on Amazon going for 0.36c.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Class-Stratification-Introduction-Current-Debates/dp/0745609473/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278055312&sr=1-2
Michael Zweig, Working Class Majority
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Working-Class-Majority-Americas-Secret/dp/0801487277/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278055933&sr=1-8
Hands down the best book which looks at Ireland from a class relations perspective is that by Chris Eipper, The Ruling Trinity, which is out of print but is available for loan from your local Public Library (although you will have to order it.)
That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is very little else which deals with class in Ireland in terms of class relations. (Most discussion on class in Ireland is focused on categories of social class rather than actual class relations).
In terms of Marxist approaches to class, one of the problems in trying to explain a Marxist perspective is that it requires a change in engagement with the evidence. Marxism is dialectical (study of the relationship between things), whereas most social discussion is causal and categorical (study of the causes of things, what categories of things cause things to happen).
What this means is that in order to gain an understanding of class relations from a Marxist perspective, you need to engage with the subject itself – in other words, you need to engage in the to and fro of studying Irish class relations. There is no royal road to science, as Marx once said. The revolution will not be on PowerPoint.
I suppose what I’m saying is that in order to get a handle on Irish class relations and why the study of class is important to understanding how Irish society works, you need to engage with the evidence, as well as the conceptual framework of class relations . Within Marxism the process of understanding is part of the understanding itself. Paulo Freire got this completely, and that it why he used it as the bedrock of his pedagogy.
July 2, 2010 7:59 am
Oh, just to echo leftatthecross. Erik Oln Wright is essential reading on class. he has spent close on 40 years now trying to merge categorical and causal methodologies with Marxist dialectics – and although he has not been able to do it, the process has expanded greatly the study of class and modern society. I don’t quite agree with him but I think he’s brilliant, if that makes sense.
July 2, 2010 8:07 am
sorry again, as far as organic working class intellectuals, DCTV has an interesting series of shorts on just that.
http://dublinopinion.com/2010/03/12/beyond-the-classroom-communities-ep1-kilbarrack/
http://dublinopinion.com/2010/03/17/beyond-the-classroom-the-communities-ep2-tallaght/
July 2, 2010 9:51 am
ah … wow … I haven’t thought this way before. Will take me a bit of time to get it I think.
Interesting article from Donagh on Prof. Kirby’s thoughts – among points like development paradigms and structural free market ideology which is theoretical in some ways is Labour having to differentiate themselves from FG and not just continuing on the treadmill of market solutions to everything which is more practical for the ordinary person to absorb.
You guys are doing a good job here.
July 2, 2010 10:03 am
SmallGirl, just to jump back to your other comments about being Left-minded outside the great metropolis, I very much know where you’re coming from. I briefly joined Labour myself as an attempt to connect into something but I found it an unsatisfying experience. The various on-line micro-communities do a good job of keeping us all sane, who says you have to geographically co-located to be part of a community after all? But at the face-to-face human level I’d agree that it’s good to have a real world engagement with a political movement. If you haven’t already contacted your Left-party-of-choice to see if they have any stragglers in S-Kildare it might be worth doing so, there might just be a few people around locally like yourself who just haven’t found each other, or haven’t left their armchairs yet but might do so if they knew there was something going on next door. Failing that, get yourself a “socialist and proud” t-shirt and spend your saturdays walking the streets of your nearest town and see if you get any fellow travellers come up to you
July 2, 2010 11:52 am
Hi Small Girl…you got us cookin, another couple of reads is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Robert Tressell…see below taken from Wikipedia (lazy but anyway…)
Plot introduction
Clearly frustrated at the refusal of his contemporaries to recognise the iniquity of society, Tressell’s cast of hypocritical Christians, exploitative capitalists and corrupt councillors provide a backdrop for his main target — the workers who think that a better life is “not for the likes of them”. Hence the title of the book; Tressell paints the workers as “philanthropists” who throw themselves into back-breaking work for poverty wages in order to generate profit for their masters.
The hero of the book, Frank Owen, is a socialist who believes that the capitalist system is the real source of the poverty he sees all around him. In vain he tries to convince his fellow workers of his world view, but finds that their education has trained them to distrust their own thoughts and to rely on those of their “betters”. Much of the book consists of conversations between Owen and the others, or more often of lectures by Owen in the face of their jeering; this was presumably based on Tressell’s own experiences.
Major themes
The book provides a glimpse of social life in Britain at a time when socialism was beginning to gain ground. It was around that time that the Labour Party was founded and began to win seats in the House of Commons.
The book advocates a socialist society in which work is performed to satisfy the needs of all rather than to generate profit for a few. A key chapter is “The Great Money Trick”, in which Owen organises a mock-up of capitalism with his workmates, using slices of bread as raw materials and knives as machinery. Owen ‘employs’ his workmates cutting up the bread to illustrate that the employer — who does not work — generates personal wealth whilst the workers effectively remain no better off than when they began, endlessly swapping coins back and forth for food and wages. This is Tressell’s practical way of illustrating the Marxist theory of surplus value, which in the capitalist system is generated by labour.
Also
May Day written by John Sommerfield (London Books Classics Original 1936) and his description of the factory floor,
Here two hundredand forty girls in ugly grey overalls and caps live, breathe and think, thier fragile flesh confused with the greasy embraces of steel tentacles…the days and weeks of the girls lives wasting away in metal peelings in the gloden rain of brinze filings. Whwn they are twenty-one the factory sees them no more. they would have to be paid an uneconomic wage, so they are replace by a fresh batch of school girls. Out they go through the factory gates for the last time worn-out, broken-down jades whose only saleble talent on the labour market consists of being able to drill four holes in a carbon block almost as accuratly and nearly a tenth as quickly as an automatic lathe.
Blondes and bruneettes, beauties and uglies, good girls and bad girls, virgins and tarts, so much flesh so many thoughts and feelings, so many drab, cheerless destinies, so many who might have been born at some other time in some other place tolive the lives of human beings.[Will they] stop and think ,’What have we been born for, why do we live as we do, toiling only to eat, eating only to toil…’ This moment may come and be forgotten in an instant, or it may be a sudden revalation altering the whole course of thier life.
These girls with their synthetic Hollywood dreams, thier pathetic silk stockings and lipsticks, their foolish strivings to escape from the cramped monotony of thier lives are the raw material of history. When thier moment of deep discontent comes to them in a mass, taking form in the words of thier class leaders, then there are revolutions…
The above paints a picture of England & Ireland in the 1930′s and of China & India in 2010…’toiling only to eat, eating only to toil’…
and yes we have come a long way in this country, or have we?
How many families are now depending on the girls working in the hotels & the supermarkets, the chipshops and the offices. How many PA’s are in the year 2010 banging their heads against glass ceilings while the fat cats (men of course) lick their wiskers grinning their big cheesy grins looking down on you. How many girls with their Hollywood dreams and thier lipsticks are toiling to pay their mortage on thier dream appartment which is now a nightmare, worth half its value and unsaleable, built on the sinking sands of a failed political ideology. How many girls are lying in bed at night praying that thier broken down man who is suffering the indignity of not being able to provide for his family, comes home to give her a hug rather than a hammering. How many girls are going to stand up and say enough is enough, because us boys aint doing much?…viva la revolution do I hear you call??
Cheers ya-all
July 2, 2010 4:57 pm
Gee everyone, I’m feeling really well supported on my ole journey. I’ll be reading like a loon for half the Summer thanks. My da took a turn last night and he’s stuck on a heart monitor on a trolley in A&E so that’s where I’ve been all day. I mention it because he’s my working class yardstick, my aul hero, never was political though just a hard worker and I saw how bet down he became near his retirement, just jaded. And I’m mentioning because I’m flying the flag for the fems who like to put emotion into theory, to ground it and make it real and stuff like that. And I mention it coz I’m a small girl and I just need to mention it right now to people who understand what I might be talking about.
July 2, 2010 5:00 pm
Hope your Da pulls through ok SmallGirl.
July 2, 2010 5:23 pm
Thanks Leftie.