electrogirl
dignity is overrated
Really? I think there is less class consciousness as you go down the class system.
Does class still matter?
- Thread starter danny la rouge
- Start date
Really? I think there is less class consciousness as you go down the class system.
Paulie Tandoori
shut it you egg!
that's not really what i was arguing - it was more about the importance of recognising that class-based structures still exist. although i would also argue that at the lower stratas of society, there is and always has been a recognition of the fact of people above you who hold more power and influence, whether these people are ragged trousered philanthropists or molotov wielding revolutionaries.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Thanks for that - really helpful. I'd sugest that as it was you who orignally said that economic and cultural definitions of class are neccesarily seperate that the onus is on you to seperate the two for us - backing up your claim in the process.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Absolutely - (though i don't like the term consciousness but that's neither here nor there). Those who most often believe class no longers exists or has minimal importance today are often the most aggressive pursuers of the class war - they just hide it under objective facade of culture -which is why the gentleman farmers who try to seperate economics and culture have a partial incomplete viewpoint - and argue that everyone else should also blind themselves in one eye. Class relations takes many many forms.
Idaho
blah blah blah
And then look what you do - go and say something meaningful and useful.
I actually think the cultural class 'debate' if one could call it that, actually distracts from the real class discussion.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
Can I put forward a suggestion that butchers' earlier post with the stats is appended as a sticky at the top of the politics forum and that any further discussion on the existence of class in the UK is automatically made in reference to the facts contained within?
by which i mean, top post that man.
by which i mean, top post that man.
Yes class very much matters, just check Butcher's links.
Of course it matters, but then according to members of Class War (a sick joke nowadays) I aint working class as I have been unemployed for some years, though I only take 80 pounds a week through choice, though I could take more.
There is not an emerging underclass, there is an underclass, allright if we used the baseline of the third world then all the working class are middle class, and yes some members or at least supporters of Class War have argued this point.
They seem to think class is based on work, not social status and as always The Petite Bourgeois Anarchist are talking bollocks, there politics is one of envy and aspiration, my politics is neither why would I aspire to become middle class?
When one is quite happy and content in where I stand, of course this is not the case for all The Working Class, there told often it is right to desire what the Middle Class have, and often by Lefty's and The Petite Bourgeois Anarchist, as much of the world around them.
Is not time we Made The Middle Class History?
There is not an emerging underclass, there is an underclass, allright if we used the baseline of the third world then all the working class are middle class, and yes some members or at least supporters of Class War have argued this point.
They seem to think class is based on work, not social status and as always The Petite Bourgeois Anarchist are talking bollocks, there politics is one of envy and aspiration, my politics is neither why would I aspire to become middle class?
When one is quite happy and content in where I stand, of course this is not the case for all The Working Class, there told often it is right to desire what the Middle Class have, and often by Lefty's and The Petite Bourgeois Anarchist, as much of the world around them.
Is not time we Made The Middle Class History?
rioted
redundant
Take £80 from where? Will I get a choice when I sign on?
More money, less stress and a generally high standard of life?
Being proud of being working class is one of the stupidest ideas imaginable. We, as a class, are defined by by being exploited, by being dispossesed and having no control over what we do for a living. What kind of dimwit takes pride in that? What is there to be proud about in being working class?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Well, you can be pround of the various 'cultures of resistance' that have been developed in fighting back against all those things - and use those traditions and experiences to go further. I think that's what most people who say they're proud of being w/c (in a political sense) mean.
and being Middle Class, what a crass aspration to have, i have all i need, good standerd of life, and little or no stress and control over what i do in life, that;s the kind of dimwit you talking about:
Fair point, but the value of 'cultures of resistance' is in the fact that they represent an attempt to negate the proletarian condition, not to affirm it through "class pride". It just irks me and smacks of middle class people slumming it by putting on working class affectations.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Again, it's easy enough to argue that they were attempts to negate the proletarian condtion (if only they were!) they were attempt so ameliorate rather than go beyond exising social relations - they were in fact affirmations of the worker-identity and condition - and to impose aims they didn't have is bit cheeky. But then we'd end up down some daft ultra-left cul-de-sac, which interesting though it may be, i've not time for today 
(edit: you been reading that endotes book ?
)
(edit: you been reading that endotes book ?
)
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Yeah, class matters
Stop poorer dying younger
Life expectancy gap 'widening'
Poverty and inequality in the UK
The long shadow of childhood: associations between parental social class and own social class, educational attainment and timing of first birth
Army disproportionately recruiting in schools in deprived areas
Number of Working class students 'to fall'
Private schooling key factor in career success
Over half country's top journalists went to private schools
Declining/stalled social mobility in Britain
Gap Between Rich And Poor Widens
Children who cannot escape the poverty trap
Class segregation 'on the rise'
100 schools 'dominate Oxbridge admissions'
Premature deaths
Religious schools 'show bias for rich'
Networked from birth
A postcode lottery of life and death
Deprived areas data reveals cancer survival divide
Exactly.
An argument for another day then. Though just to be clear (and get the last wordAgain, it's easy enough to argue that they were attempts to negate the proletarian condtion (if only they were!) they were attempt so ameliorate rather than go beyond exising social relations - they were in fact affirmations of the worker-identity and condition - and to impose aims they didn't have is bit cheeky. But then we'd end up down some daft ultra-left cul-de-sac, which interesting though it may be, i've not time for today
) I'm not suggesting that there was any conscious aim of negating class in the sorts of things you're talking about.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Well it certainly throws down the gauntlet to those who say class doesn't matter.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
You have understanding of the question mark?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
They're nowhere near being synonymous, though, especially as the caste system is almost entirely static, it leaves very little room for what, in a class system, might be labelled "social mobility".
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
The class system is always changing, IMHO.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
'Adapting', I think, would be a better verb.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I disagree. I'd say it's more of an obvious (and therefore more remarked upon) phenomenon in the UK, but is just as prevalent (although sometimes partially hidden within other forms of social categorisation and relations) anywhere that capitalism holds sway.
Fedayn
Well-Known Member
Well perhaps given what BA has posted, those who have said it doesn't matter could explain, with some evidence perhaps, why it doesn't matter?!
