EDL watch

[Captain Hurrah]

cumface.

 

[SpineyNorman]

you really did miss the point didnt you. over and out and off on hols!

There wasn't really a point was there? Other than you crying about being called a nasty name on the internet.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Spiney Norman

Your "cunt" point about malatesta is poorly defended again, almost as poor as your lack of attempt to address my challenge to it.

There wasn't a challenge to it. Silly boy.

But I now have a better understanding of why.

"What does that even mean? The balance of power is in favour of the working class? You're mental."
Now. Read what I said again. Why would the balance of economic power be towards the working class. Did the more obvious and obvious sense-in-context "balance of numbers" not occur to you? Or are you so fixated on seeing and finding something to slag someone off for. Well, we've seen your form in that regard.

It didn't occur to me because you didn't say it. You just wrote that the balance was in favour of the working class. How the fuck was anyone suppose to know what you were on about when you didn't bother saying? And now of course there's the question: why on earth did you feel the need to say that? What's the relevance?

So you had to stick another word in, get it wrong, assume you were write and use a dubious term to insult me.

*right* you're like one of those illiterate proles in the EDL. And I didn't assume anything, hence the question mark.

If you put up stupid strawmen so easily it's a waste of time trying to converse. So I genuinely haven't read any more of your arrogant, deluded uncomprehending stuff since, and thus won't respond to what ever ill founded nonsense it may contain. I suggest we both leave it there.

And lol

 

[ViolentPanda]

You can define the group yes, but I'm not sure what purpose it serves. A lot of previously "middle-class" people end up in poverty after redundancy, or a psychotic episode, or a drink/substance problem, or a messy divorce, or etc. They don't have the security of capital/means of production, and so can very quickly find themselves dumped to the bottom of the food-chain. But by having this label of middle-class, that realisation doesn't come until after the event.

It seems to me that if those millions of people understood that, then perhaps 'working class issues' would become the majority's issues.

You're making claims that you simply can't quantify, frankly. "A lot" in comparison to what? In comparison to the total size of the haute bourgeoisie?
The fact is that the middle classes are better-insulated against such issues than their working class counterparts, and for all that individuals may fall through the gaps, the bourgeois angst isn't directed against what causes them to, but still against those of us whom they might become like.

Save your tears for a time when the middle classes as a social bloc don't automatically react to economic hardship by trying to screw the working classes.

 

[ViolentPanda]

There's a lot to that post, but what you are missing with the rhetorical trick at the end (and indeed throughout) is any mention of nationalism or indeed the international context of the time.

It is no secret that fascism had many many admirers in the middle and upper class, well it's kind of dirty secret in many ways. Churchill was one of the only tories to see Hitler as a threat.

Woeful. Absolutely fucking woeful.
Learn some history, for fuck's sake.
Fascism (and Nazism) wasn't a Tory disease, it was rife throughout the upper and middle classes, whatever their political bent.

I came across a 1936 Encylopedia when I was young. The short biog on Hitler concluded that some of his policies were "seen as controversial".

In 1936 that's exactly what they were. Your encyclopedia-writers didn't have the benefit of hindsight that you have.

In contrast, we know how many of the working class (and possibly middle too) gave or risked their lives in Spain (some Irish ended up on the wrong side backing who they saw as their Catholic bretheren - the partial if not whole roots of Fine Gael - the "blueshirts")

For a potted history, that's absolutely fucking risible.

To be honest though, I think first time around : Il Duce, Franco, Hitler, Mosely et al: Did the dupes and droolers have more of an excuse without the lessons of history to draw on?

Not really. Fascisms were a new face to some older ideas, with some new takes on capital thrown in.

I quickly found that saying "don't vote BNP, they're fascist" was pretty pointless because so many people didn't really know what "fascist" was anyway.

Wrong, people know what "fascist" means in most contexts except the historical (which is, of course, the most important one to know).

That's ignorance, and you don't need to be formally educated or middle class to be void of it. Many ignorant people are both.

Thatks for that illuminating observation.

 

[ViolentPanda]

YimStarkey looks like someone who has been hit in the face with a shovel, someone should advise him against smiling

A soulmate for Hollobone?

 

[frogwoman]

oh god can you imagine

 

[barney_pig]

Are you Darren Redstar? I wondered what happened to you!

I didn't think it was a secret, I have referred. To myself quite a bit, and there was one of those knowing threads about returning under new names, sorry.
I think I said once before that I wasn't particularly proud of my attitude when I was on here before, and decided to start again with a clean state.

 

[Citizen66]

It doesn't get much more confusing than this.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Save your tears for a time when the middle classes as a social bloc don't automatically react to economic hardship by trying to screw the working classes.

Indeed.

 

[ViolentPanda]

oh god can you imagine

I just did, and now I'm going to go and vomit.

 

[Corax]

Save your tears for a time when the middle classes as a social bloc don't automatically react to economic hardship by trying to screw the working classes.

You're ascribing emotions to me that simply aren't there. I'm not talking about tears or pity, I'm pointing out the essential fragility and artificiality of the WC/MC class distinction, and suggesting the advantages that could be gained by eroding it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You're ascribing emotions to me that simply aren't there.

I was being polite and not saying "spare me your fatuous emoting".

I'm not talking about tears or pity, I'm pointing out the essential fragility and artificiality of the WC/MC class distinction, and suggesting the advantages that could be gained by eroding it.

You're pointing at a small wear mark on a copper-bottomed set of distinctions that have given the working classes the shitty end of the stick for 2 centuries. They may be artificial, but they're certainly not fragile, and they certainly appear to have a great deal of utility for the middle classes.
As for advantages to erosion, sure. If there were some way to legislate and enforce social equality, but there isn't, especially not when one side of the distinction can count on benefitting from it to the degree that the middle classes continue to.

 

[frogwoman]

I just did, and now I'm going to go and vomit.

i've now got visions of what sort of children they'd have thanks for that

 

[ViolentPanda]

i've now got visions of what sort of children they'd have thanks for that

Their male offspring would look like Fred West.

 

[frogwoman]

You're ascribing emotions to me that simply aren't there. I'm not talking about tears or pity, I'm pointing out the essential fragility and artificiality of the WC/MC class distinction, and suggesting the advantages that could be gained by eroding it.

i agree, in my opinion it's being eroded anyway by circumstances, at least in some cases. and different people respond to that in different ways. some of the middle class respond to it by siding more and more with the working class (see doctors/headteachers, while a middle class profession for example, and the upper layers of management, and many of whom will be independently wealthy/privately educated etc, going on strike for the first time). see also small businessmen/shopkeepers putting up notices refusing to serve scabs in the miners strike etc.

others don't, others a mixture of the two. i wouldn't like to say that the "middle class" all respond in one way (good or bad) to these attacks because there is a confusion about what is meant by the middle class, and traditionally they've/we've been the class that have responded to this stuff in a very very variable manner. and of course it's undeniable that a landlord or a small business owner or whatever *will* be at an economic advantage compared to yer average prole even if it is slight

 

[Corax]

As for advantages to erosion, sure.

And that's the bit I'm talking about.

Yes the MC profit from etc and prop up the blah, that's all a given. But holding a grudge about that is the most pointless emoting of all. You're one of the more objective posters on here IMO, but even with you there's a subtext of resentment and hostility in the post above. I'm not saying that's wrong, or undeserved, or anything of the sort - I just think it's counterproductive. The MC share far more with the WC than the rich, and should be standing alongside as a source of funding and influence. Instead, all the rhetoric distances them and those potential advantages are lost. The main reason for that seems to be some sort of classist puritanism.

Ps: re fragility - A P45 and 3 pay-cheques is a pretty fragile distinction IMO.

 

[frogwoman]

well there's the whole question of what's meant by the middle class anyway, a lot of people think teachers are middle class, and to some extent culturally they are. but if you have to sell your labour you're working class

 

[Corax]

well there's the whole question of what's meant by the middle class anyway, a lot of people think teachers are middle class, and to some extent culturally they are. but if you have to sell your labour you're working class

That in bold is exactly what I was talking about when I earlier said that I don't think the middle class really exists.

It's a construct. Divide and rule.

 

[frogwoman]

That in bold is exactly what I was talking about when I earlier said that I don't think the middle class really exists.

It's a construct. Divide and rule.

It does though. my family is middle class - my dad doesn't really have to work. he hasn't had to work really for the last ten years - he had a business and has mostly been living off the money from that for the last ten years. we're not rich, but he's not poor either.

for the moment.

 

[frogwoman]

damn you, trying to deny my class consciousness

 

[frogwoman]

*awaits ostracision*

i'm serious though. you can't seriously say that somebody in my dad's position is the same economically speaking as somebody who's three paycheques from disaster but who happens to have gone to uni. i hate the term middle class anyway, i prefer "petite bourgeoisie" because there's less scope for confusion. Yes I'm weird lol

that said, the modern day petite bourgeoise's conditions have changed a lot. It is undeniable that our "conditions" have changed (got a lot worse) in the last 10 years and if my dad was starting his business now he wouldn't have been able to live that well as he did on the money he made. I don't think it's the same as the working class though and I don't think that it can be denied that middle class people have (or mostly have) options and opportunities that working class people frequently don't have.

that isn't saying that they're bad or should be ostracised or whatever. it's just stating a fact.

 

[Pickman's model]

*awaits ostracision*

i'm serious though. you can't seriously say that somebody in my dad's position is the same economically speaking as somebody who's three paycheques from disaster. i hate the term middle class anyway, i prefer "petite bourgeoisie" because there's less scope for confusion. Yes I'm weird lol

what's wrong with the traditional term 'petit bourgeoisie'? why make a masculine term feminine?

 

[ViolentPanda]

And that's the bit I'm talking about.

Yes the MC profit from etc and prop up the blah, that's all a given. But holding a grudge about that is the most pointless emoting of all.

I don't hold a grudge, I state a fact.

Do I resent the lived reality of that fact? Of course I do! The impact of it is so wide-ranging on "the lower-orders", and often so arbitrary, that I'd have to be some sort of Gandhi not to resent it.

You're one of the more objective posters on here IMO, but even with you there's a subtext of resentment and hostility in the post above.

Of course there is! Our lives are shaped by our circumstances, and as a member of the working class, my overall life circumstances, regardless of objectivity, erudition, or astoundingly-good looks (at least one of those is a lie!) have been partly shaped by forces beyond my control, forces the middle classes have exerted.

I'm not saying that's wrong, or undeserved, or anything of the sort - I just think it's counterproductive. The MC share far more with the WC than the rich, and should be standing alongside as a source of funding and influence. Instead, all the rhetoric distances them and those potential advantages are lost. The main reason for that seems to be some sort of classist puritanism.

This isn't a message that you need to preach to the working classes. We've extended a fraternal hand many times over the centuries, only to have it slapped away.

Ps: re fragility - A P45 and 3 pay-cheques is a pretty fragile distinction IMO.

Average savings in the social and professional strata currently taken to constitute "the middle class" is >£12,000, as opposed to <£2,500 for those taken to constitute the working class. I'd say that the insulation for the "average" member of each class shows that the w/c person is going to feel the chill a bit sooner than their m/c counterpart, wouldn't you agree?

 

[ViolentPanda]

*awaits ostracision*

i'm serious though. you can't seriously say that somebody in my dad's position is the same economically speaking as somebody who's three paycheques from disaster. i hate the term middle class anyway, i prefer "petite bourgeoisie" because there's less scope for confusion. Yes I'm weird lol

Bourgeois women of small stature?

 

[Citizen66]

My experience of proper middle class: they have a flat off the kings road and a cottage for weekends in the country. The woman is a journalist and her husband a successful restaurateur. Kids privately educated. Pims and Tennis.

Teachers are just well paid proles.

 

[frogwoman]

My experience of proper middle class: they have a flat off the kings road and a cottage for weekends in the country. The woman is a journalist and her husband a successful restaurateur. Kids privately educated. Pims and Tennis.

Teachers are just well paid proles.

that's not middle class, that's posh, which is completely different

if you're a successful restauranteur you're no longer part of the PETIT bourgeoisie lol

 

[Citizen66]

I mix up bourgeois and bourgeosie aswell.

Quick lesson pls.

 

[Citizen66]

that's not middle class, that's posh, which is completely different

How so? He's petit bourgeoisie. They're not upper class by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[ViolentPanda]

well there's the whole question of what's meant by the middle class anyway, a lot of people think teachers are middle class, and to some extent culturally they are. but if you have to sell your labour you're working class

It's about the choices inherent to the sale of your labour that you can exercise, and how skilled your labour is, as well as about distance from a means of production. With more skill comes more choice, as well as the social capital to maximise the returns on your labour.