'Middle Class' it's basically just a construct isn't it...

[littlebabyjesus]

It's not just about your job, either. It's about whether or not you have a pension, savings, own a house and have equity on it. If you don't have any of those things, then losing your job could be just as calamitous as it would be for anyone. Your relation to capital is purely one of servant.

 

[ViolentPanda]

To be honest kabbes I think you have lost the plot completely you seem to be arguing for the sake of it and getting yourself quite worked up completely unnecessarily.

Santino was talking (I quote) about "individual people" which implies individuals you said "an individual" which is singular where is the significant difference?

"Individual people" - an assemblage or melange of individual persons.

"An individual" - a single person.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Actually I thought your gravity analogy was more thought provoking.

We do all wear uniforms that is certainly true. And there are some behaviours that are more common to some categories of people than others. But is class, with its three main designations an adequate descriptor for these many differences, what about National Statistics Socio-economic Classification :

1.Higher managerial and professional occupations
2.Lower managerial and professional occupations
3.Intermediate occupations (clerical, sales, service)
4.Small employers and own account workers
5.Lower supervisory and technical occupations
6.Semi-routine occupations
7.Routine occupations
8.Never worked and long-term unemployed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Statistics_Socio-economic_Classification

As has been said many times before, by many Urbanites, none of the extant classification systems encompass the entirety of class, they just bite off digestible chunks thare useful for demography and the like.

 

[weltweit]

As has been said many times before, by many Urbanites, none of the extant classification systems encompass the entirety of class, they just bite off digestible chunks thare useful for demography and the like.

But there has to be a point to classifying people. With the marketeers they are just trying to find ways to target groups of consumers, with class people are trying to make sure we know our place in the hierarchy - well I do, I know my place.

Apart from such reasons, why otherwise would class be uppermost in my mind?

 

[articul8]

everything is a "construct" - but why "just" a construct?

 

[ViolentPanda]

But there has to be a point to classifying people. With the marketeers they are just trying to find ways to target groups of consumers, with class people are trying to make sure we know our place in the hierarchy - well I do, I know my place.

This is where you're going wrong. You see class as something that only acts on you to delineate you as belonging to a part of a hierarchy.
Class, though, can be active, it can act for you, as well as on you, as it does for the middle classes (to take the obvious example), who are able to use the social capital that accrues to their class as leverage for retaining their class position and/or furthering it.

Apart from such reasons, why otherwise would class be uppermost in my mind?

Because if you look at any categories outwith class, class inevitably cuts across them, whether it be categories of culture, ethnicity, economy or society in general - Class hovers behind everything. It has done since the first ramepithicus twatted the ramepithicus next to it over the head and said "you're my bitch, go gather some berries for me" in so many words.

 

[weltweit]

... Because if you look at any categories outwith class, class inevitably cuts across them, whether it be categories of culture, ethnicity, economy or society in general - Class hovers behind everything. It has done since the first ramepithicus twatted the ramepithicus next to it over the head and said "you're my bitch, go gather some berries for me" in so many words.

I see class (the system) as a hurdle I have to get over in order to get on with my life, it is an inconvenience that some individuals see themselves as in a different class to me and this can hinder me. I want to put it out of my mind and just get on with it but sometimes people won't permit this because of the assumptions they have made about me.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I see class (the system) as a hurdle I have to get over in order to get on with my life, it is an inconvenience that some individuals see themselves as in a different class to me and this can hinder me. I want to put it out of my mind and just get on with it but sometimes people won't permit this because of the assumptions they have made about me.

You don't get it. You can't escape class. Even if you manage to convince yourself of the irrelevance of it, you can't exist without it affecting you, and you affecting it.

 

[weltweit]

You don't get it. You can't escape class. Even if you manage to convince yourself of the irrelevance of it, you can't exist without it affecting you, and you affecting it.

I don't see how I affect the class system.

It may affect me, but I think you over emphasise by how much.

 

[Santino]

I don't see how I affect the class system.

This is the point.

 

[weltweit]

This is the point.

Could you expand on that?

 

[Santino]

Life's too short.

 

[weltweit]

When I ask myself why I have not yet achieved the things I wanted to, when I ask what is holding me back - it is not the class system that is holding me back.

 

[Santino]

When I ask myself why I have not yet achieved the things I wanted to, when I ask what is holding me back - it is not the class system that is holding me back.

Do you think if you'd been born into a rich family with connections, you'd be cunting about on the internet while looking for a job?

 

[weltweit]

Life's too short.

That is a bit of a copout, surely if you can't explain your idea concisely it probably isn't a good idea.

 

[weltweit]

Do you think if you'd been born into a rich family with connections, you'd be cunting about on the internet while looking for a job?

The reason I am having trouble getting my next job is that I am living in the wrong part of the country for the work that I do but I don't feel I can move because if I did, I would lose contact with my kid. So I search for an elusive role which I will get but which does not come up everyday.

 

[Santino]

The reason I am having trouble getting my next job is that I am living in the wrong part of the country for the work that I do but I don't feel I can move because if I did, I would lose contact with my kid. So I search for an elusive role which I will get but which does not come up everyday.

And would that hold for David Cameron?

 

[weltweit]

And would that hold for David Cameron?

Well he is the prime minister, he has a job in central london, it comes with a house centrally located and a company chauffered car.

That does not mean that every Eton & Oxbridge educated person makes the same success of their lives as he has. I am sure most do not. In fact of course they don't - there is only one prime minister.

 

[Santino]

.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I don't see how I affect the class system.

You exist, you interact with others, therefore you exert influence (to a small degree, true) on class.

It may affect me, but I think you over emphasise by how much.

It can't not affect you. Class infiltrates and inhabits all social behaviour. You don't see it because you're unwilling or unable to either explore how much it affects you, or acknowledge how much it affects you.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Do you think if you'd been born into a rich family with connections, you'd be cunting about on the internet while looking for a job?

See this is where it breaks down. He might be. Who knows?

If your life had been different, how do you think it would have turned out? Far too many variables to say. If the very worst calamity in your life hadn't happened, you can't know whether things would have turned out better. You might have just discovered a different calamity further on.

In some ways thinking about class on the individual level is in danger of being debilitating. On the one hand, knowing the hand you've been dealt wasn't a good one takes the pressure off. But on the other hand, if you then start to think that the hand you've been dealt has inevitably condemned you to certain things, it simply becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

 

[ViolentPanda]

When I ask myself why I have not yet achieved the things I wanted to, when I ask what is holding me back - it is not the class system that is holding me back.

Not nakedly, anyway.
The class system would be highly likely to be implicated as a factor holding you back, though, given that meritocracy is at best a minor component in why you might advance.

 

[weltweit]

Not nakedly, anyway.
The class system would be highly likely to be implicated as a factor holding you back, though, given that meritocracy is at best a minor component in why you might advance.

The only thing that is holding me back from the things I want to do is my own lack of the necessary bravery to simply take the plunge and get on with it.

 

[Santino]

Forget it, everyone. It's not worth it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

We shouldn't underestimate the role of luck here. Your class origin determines how loaded the dice are, but you still have to throw them.

There's something of a myth surrounding self-made millionaires like Alan Sugar as if they must have some special qualities to make so much money from nothing. But it's not necessarily the case at all. They were good enough (if you can call what Sugar does 'good') at what they did to take advantage of good luck that came their way. Lots of people are good enough, but only a few get the luck.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well he is the prime minister, he has a job in central london, it comes with a house centrally located and a company chauffered car.

That does not mean that every Eton & Oxbridge educated person makes the same success of their lives as he has. I am sure most do not. In fact of course they don't - there is only one prime minister.

Of course not.

What it does mean is that a majority of Eton and Oxbridge-educated persons with similar connections, status and social capital as Cameron will be more likely to have a greater degree of success in their lives than those who don't share those connections etc.

What's the basis of those connections? Membership of a particular stratum of class.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The only thing that is holding me back from the things I want to do is my own lack of the necessary bravery to simply take the plunge and get on with it.

That's not "the only thing" at all.

Again, this is about you not wishing to acknowledge a fairly obvious social fact, because to do so would place you in a situation where you'd have to acknowledge that you have less control over your life than you'd wish.

You can ignore class as much as you want, but all the while you're ignoring it, it's still there.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And would that hold for David Cameron?

You're making sense of Cameron's life backwards. Clearly, lots of good things happened for him for him to become Prime Minister (although I'd actually put it rather differently - for him to have turned out like he did, clearly lots of bad things must have happened).

But there is only a sense of inevitability to these things when you read them backwards. Everything happened for a reason, so it all makes perfect sense. But who knows what would have happened if some of those things had been different? All we can say is that Cameron had a lot of breaks in his life as a result of his family's wealth, which made possible the steps he took to become PM. But of course, we can look at the lives of every prime minister and see the steps and breaks they had. We can say with absolute confidence that every prime minister Britain has ever had benefited from good breaks. We already knew that before looking, of course - look at a successful person and you'll find reasons for their success. Of course.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We shouldn't underestimate the role of luck here. Your class origin determines how loaded the dice are, but you still have to throw them.

There's something of a myth surrounding self-made millionaires like Alan Sugar as if they must have some special qualities to make so much money from nothing. But it's not necessarily the case at all. They were good enough (if you can call what Sugar does 'good') at what they did to take advantage of good luck that came their way. Lots of people are good enough, but only a few get the luck.

Oh, luck is always part of the equation, but the degree of luck one needs grows larger the less money one has because, of course, the more money one has, the easier it is to access power and influence.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Oh, luck is always part of the equation, but the degree of luck one needs grows larger the less money one has because, of course, the more money one has, the easier it is to access power and influence.

Yes. Exactly. That's what I meant by class origin determining how the dice were loaded.