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

[butchersapron]

Well student tuition fees are looming large. I don't disagree that a lot of people can't see past their short-term interests, such as cheering as the housing crisis deepens. But the credit crunch has worried a lot of people - a lot of the same insufferably smug people who were congratulating themselves on how much their houses were worth.

I'm not being funny, but have you got the idea that i'm sitting here going middle class student cunts or something? I'm really not.

 

[butchersapron]

No, this is what they say, humans are notorious for not doing what they are told as they well know.

They want people to think that they can change class easily which is different, as it means that most people will put their energy towards 'bettering themselves' rather than paying attention to the stuff they hope to carry on doing with impunity for as long as possible.

No, they want you to think that class doesn't exist, except in the form of poverty of aspirations. They are not promoting a class based way of thinking. I really don't know what you're arguing here to be totally honest.

 

[weltweit]

No, they want you to think that class doesn't exist, except in the form of poverty of aspirations. They are not promoting a class based way of thinking. I really don't know what you're arguing here to be totally honest.

Which I would have thought could be a good thing. I don't see the existance of class or its analysis in everything as very constructive.

 

[Santino]

Which I would have thought could be a good thing. I don't see the existance of class or its analysis in everything as very constructive.

Jesus fucking fucking fucking fucking wept.

 

[weltweit]

Jesus fucking fucking fucking fucking wept.

No need to get so excited about it, I just don't believe everything is about class.

 

[kabbes]

No need to get so excited about it, I just don't believe everything is about class.

And yet you claim you have been paying attention.

What exactly is it that you have been paying attention to?

 

[weltweit]

What exactly is it that you have been paying attention to?

Oh, for example that some people think Elvis Presley is all about class.. such things..

 

[Crispy]

I dunno, some things are about religion or family for instance?

 

[Santino]

No need to get so excited about it, I just don't believe everything is about class.

Read carefully.

The government is waging war on the working and middle classes. One of their weapons - one of their KEY weapons - is promoting the idea that we shouldn't think in class terms.

THE FACT THAT PEOPLE THINK IT IS GOOD NOT TO THINK IN CLASS TERMS IS WHAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO BE FUCKED OVER BY THE RICH.

Do you understand that?

 

[danny la rouge]

I dunno, some things are about religion or family for instance?

Doesn't mean they aren't about class as well.

Take NI, for example.

 

[butchersapron]

I dunno, some things are about religion or family for instance?

About is the wrong word to be using here - class effects these things, some of them it directly forms, some of them it just pushes in ceratin directions, but there's very few things which escape class full stop. Religion and family are both really good examples of how class effects things as it goes. There is reams and reams of serious work on just this.

 

[Crispy]

there's very few things which escape class full stop

I agree.

 

[danny la rouge]

Religion and family are both really good examples of how class effects things as it goes. There is reams and reams of serious work on just this.

Indeed. The reformation, for example. Big, well-known books on that.

 

[kabbes]

Religion, anyway, is a really, really bad example of something not being about class. Religion and class have always been enthusiastic bedfellows.

 

[weltweit]

Do you understand that?

I understand that this is your position, yes, clearly.

 

[camouflage]

There are people that have to work, and rich people that don't. The invention of a 'middle class' is just a way to set people against each other that are really in the same boat, having to work all their lives to service debt, etc.

So it it just a construct to help 'them' divide and rule?

Discuss.

I used to think middle class meant not-rich-not-poor and advanced-skilled (doctor, lawyer, engineer, artist etc).

But the term 'middle-class' actually refers to social transformations that go back to medieval times. The middle-class were the first urban class, neither aristocrat nor peasant, those that made their living from the towns, and since inception squeezed from the bottom and the top. Insecure, materialistic, future-preferential in forever working toward some future heaven (puritan influence there that still persist). There's quite a lot more that goes into the whole middle class thing than I'd realized actually.

In short version, the middle-class are useful but often tossers.

 

[spacemonkey]

In short version, the middle-class are useful but often tossers.

Which class has the highest percentage of tossers though? It's a head-scratcher alright.

 

[krtek a houby]

I am krtek class & krtek sexual. Hear me roar.

 

[stuff_it]

Which class has the highest percentage of tossers though? It's a head-scratcher alright.

I think that being a tosser may well be genetic, it is simply that there are different types of tosser. 'Class' may in some cases be instrumental in just what sort of tosser you are, but that person was 'born twatty' and won't be able to keep it all in even if they try.

 

[spacemonkey]

I think that being a tosser may well be genetic, it is simply that there are different types of tosser. 'Class' may in some cases be instrumental in just what sort of tosser you are, but that person was 'born twatty' and won't be able to keep it all in even if they try.

I suppose your class gives you a chance to be a tosser to exponentially more people (as you go upwards).

My mate Chris is a tosser, but he's only a plasterer and nobody listens to him. Whereas say, Phil Hammond, is probably an equal level of tosser, but his tosser-like opinions/policies affect millions of people.

I don't really know what I'm talking about, I need some lunch.

 

[Pickman's model]

Which class has the highest percentage of tossers though? It's a head-scratcher alright.

no contest: ruling class

however, the definition of 'tosser' is subjective.

 

[kabbes]

You're not born anything. But tosserness will certainly run in families.

 

[krtek a houby]

You're not born anything. But tosserness will certainly run in families.

I was wondering what the working class makes of the Redgraves, for instance

 

[kabbes]

Of the five Olympic gold medals fame?

 

[JimW]

It's been interesting watching the emergence of a new middle class in China in the post-reform era. A strata below a ruling class that's also in transition (as officials with privileged access parcel out the goods to family and connections), there was a hope (civil society advocates etc.) that they'd subscribe to the values of bourgeois freedom and move the country towards Western liberal democracy, but as it turns out while they were also benefiting from the re-division of assets in the post-collective era whatever inclination they had to freedom of speech or representative democracy etc. took second place to material considerations. Even now, as the bubble's burst for most of them already in the compressed way of the capitalist resurgence, it looks like a prospect of wealth, however illusory, is still enough to keep them on board even as housing costs soar (though in urban areas a fair few do benefit from this as they are rentiers exploiting allocated property) and graduate unemployment hits new highs. It's almost as if, like the way factory bosses at the bottom of the outsourcing chain cut margins to the bone, there's some formula that can produce the absolute minimum buffer class formation to keep things just about on the rails. The ideological apparatus (in terms of mass media drama and so on) certainly focuses on their problems, and of course tends to present them in terms of the notion that if you just hang on in there, you will make it into the magic circle of cross-generational bourgeois living.

 

[butchersapron]

Interesting post jim. Especially the 'minimum buffer class formation' idea.

 

[JimW]

Cheers; realised as I posted I've not really thought this through that well but thought I'd stick it up anyway as it's obviously something important that's going on, and what you get here is often a glimpse at these class formation processes going on in the raw over a much shorter period of time, given the history, though of course with some pretty different local specifics.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That is an interesting post.

It is a little depressing how easily those with even just a small-ish stake in the status quo can be won over and scared basically into supporting oppression. Same thing happened in Chile.

How does that manifest itself here, do you think?

 

[_angel_]

God knows what class my kids are or going to be. Completely

 

[camouflage]

It's been interesting watching the emergence of a new middle class in China in the post-reform era. A strata below a ruling class that's also in transition (as officials with privileged access parcel out the goods to family and connections), there was a hope (civil society advocates etc.) that they'd subscribe to the values of bourgeois freedom and move the country towards Western liberal democracy, but as it turns out while they were also benefiting from the re-division of assets in the post-collective era whatever inclination they had to freedom of speech or representative democracy etc. took second place to material considerations. Even now, as the bubble's burst for most of them already in the compressed way of the capitalist resurgence, it looks like a prospect of wealth, however illusory, is still enough to keep them on board even as housing costs soar (though in urban areas a fair few do benefit from this as they are rentiers exploiting allocated property) and graduate unemployment hits new highs. It's almost as if, like the way factory bosses at the bottom of the outsourcing chain cut margins to the bone, there's some formula that can produce the absolute minimum buffer class formation to keep things just about on the rails. The ideological apparatus (in terms of mass media drama and so on) certainly focuses on their problems, and of course tends to present them in terms of the notion that if you just hang on in there, you will make it into the magic circle of cross-generational bourgeois living.

Yup, classic middle-class thinking. Heaven forbid one should lose their position and plunge back into the unwashed masses. Keep clinging on to the dream, authority knows what it's doing, work hard and maintain focus, keep up with the Wongs, etcetera.