God! I cannot understand why people cannot understand this simple point.
Engels and Marx were never ever working class, never members of the working class, but they were politica's of the working class, ideologically they were working class, in that their politics was only about the self activity and direct action of the working class, in the interests of the working class.
Even after all this time you can't grasp the difference between what Marx and Engels did, which was to explicate a new set of political theories to a new audience, theories which required them to engage
with the working class on a particular level to facilitate that explication, a dynamic that ran both ways (Marx etc drew from their interaction and used it to inform revision and evolution of their work); and what the SWP do, which is to retail a version of
codified Marxian theory as a dogma, while
assuming a position as "politicals of the working class", as "working class, ideologically", with very little of the dynamic of revision and evolution of theory that existed in Marx's time.
The SWP seeks a role with the working classes, rather than being of us, they are "for" us, because of their beliefs regarding our "role" in the realisation of
their dogma.
Likewise, the Conservative party is the British party on the ruling class, even if the majority of its membership word working class [I think there were times in the 19th century when the vast majority of votes for the Conservative party, was working class.
For most of the 19th century the vast majority of the working class didn't have the vote. For most of the 19th century most votes came from the middle-classes.
This didn't make it a working-class party, did it?] As someone coming from a solidly working class background, I have no problem whatsoever with middle-class people getting involved in working class politics, if their aim is to promote the self activity of the working class, in the interests of the working class.
Who are these middle class people, what right do they have, to decide or state what the interests of the working classes are, what is
in our interests?
However, on the constituency I am not convinced by the evidence presented, which is next to 0. Even looking at your limited examples there, there really needs to be some discussion about the proletarianisation of the middle classes. I would say your average teacher today is working class. This transformation of class relations within occupations happens all the time capitalism. The aristocracy of Labour, the engineers, were at one time middle-class.
That's not transformation, it's mutation of transient interests rather than of class relations, whether within or outwith occupations.
Engineers, by the way, were never defined, by themselves or others, as "middle class", but as skilled artisans, until engineering was "professionalised" in the first half of the 20th century.
So my points are two very simple ones. I don't care whether they are middle-class or not. I'm not convinced that they are middle-class.
PS. When I was a member I often used to wind up the once middle-class occupations with this jibe about them being middle-class, but it was never really serious.
Of course it wasn't. It wouldn't have served your beliefs for it to be serious.
