Amidst all the concern about knife crime and gang culture, it is often tacitly assumed that the perpetrators are representative of alienated working class youth. Not so: what they are more generally representative of is a new -and growing- social formation that has willingly embraced a non-work ethic. It needs to be recognised that these lumpen elements represent a grouping that is quite separate from, and actively hostile to, the interests and well-being of the working class proper.
Admittedly the biggest problem in identifying the trend is the physical proximity between the emerging underclass and the working class proper. Though they may share the same estates at the same time the former harbours instincts, values and aspirations at variance with and indeed hostile (like sort of low rent neo-liberals) to traditional working class custom and practice. This is what goes to make it so potentially destructive a fifth column. Karl Marx himself concluded that it represented ‘the most dangerous class of all’ (our italics) for similar reasons. And given its current scale, a class is what it undoubtedly is.
And even if initially a scarcity of choices is what propels these youngsters toward the life, the gang culture is alluring. More than anything what it promises the pack member (there is almost always a pack factor) is instant gratification. Money, status and sex (consensual or otherwise – mass rape goes unreported though is apparently not uncommon) all seem instantly more attainable, with the core philosophy all wrapped up rather opportunistically in the flag of ‘respect’. Put simply most are ‘in the life’ because they want to be. It might also be tempting to dismiss it all, as some do, as nothing but a lethal subculture (on the mistaken grounds that the scum only kill each other) but the belief system and philosophy they draw on -get rich quick, the weak go to the wall- has a considerably wider and more venomous resonance.
Why this is important politically is that once a lumpen mentality is allowed to take root over a generation or more, a pattern is set seemingly for other socio/ political relationships too. In place of civic pride, community spirit, or basic empathy and solidarity (none of which have any place in their world) there is instead an over-developed sense of individual entitlement combined with a perverse pride in subverting a core socialist tenet: ‘you only take out exactly what you’ve put in’. It follows that outside of what affects them directly as individuals or maybe immediate family there is a malign indifference.
A knock-on consequence is that many ordinary working class communities become blighted by a not dissimilar contagion. Thoroughly demoralized, many no longer regard themselves as having any real stake in how their neighbours or the wider community is getting along. Previously a deep sense of community and comradeship made many an otherwise downtrodden area bearable.
Much of this destruction can be directly attributed to the 30 year crusade by Reagan/Thatcher/Blair, who, inspired by right-wing think tanks, became convinced they could actually influence how people think. Atomising social relations and fundamentally changing what people had faith in, is, if anyone needs reminding, what neo-liberalism was really about. Having done so successfully, we now are reaping the whirlwind.
Consequently with the arrival of each new generation previously identifiable working class ideals are eroded or displaced, while ‘lumpen’ characteristics typified by a venal and brazen opportunism seem to become ever more pronounced. In some areas it already appears to be the natural condition.
Understandably the emergence of the ‘underclass’ (with the working poor being wrongly included) has been greeted with glee by many right-wing academics. Usually because it affords them a soft target, an ideal opportunity, without ever appearing to over-reach, to justify the existing order and validate middle class prejudice. Among the more seriously motivated the scrutiny of this new social set is to discern if it might carry a possible threat to the existing political order. In actual fact they needn’t worry, for as an effective fifth column it is already proving a considerable buttress to the status quo though arguably still in its infancy.
But precisely because the IWCA is in business to ensure that a political threat to the system is not extinguished, aspects of housing, education and social security policy, apparently well meaning and benign, when mixed with the overarching neo-liberal narrative may have become toxic. If that proves to be the case they have to be pinpointed and rooted out. What strengthens our class – as a class - is always strategically good while any polices which emasculate, diminish or dilute it is strategically bad.
The first task therefore is to explain where this new social formation has come from and how it functions, while at the same time backing long reaching solutions that promise to check or reverse its growth, a stance that might be best explained by re-working an oft-quoted comment from John Major on criminality in 1993: ‘we need to understand a little more and condemn a little more‘. In a post-industrial world having the ability to confidently define the core working class constituency is a must. Because it is only out of such a process that the political authority to exclude as well as include can emerge.
