Squeezed Middle Watch

[chilango]

with respect, if they can screw the middle classes into being proles again, keeping the proles in their box is going to be childs play.

The middle class has no power.

We do.

 

[yield]

The middle class has no power.

We do.

Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future
The Guardian, Monday 9 April 2007

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest".

Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".

 

[yield]

Not sure if "the worse the better" is the way forward to be honest.

Wish I shared your optimism chilango.

 

[treelover]

The middle class are being squeezed, in many cases, proletarianised, but there is still the issue of housing wealth, I know of least three bohemian types around here who were given very nice houses in leafy areas by their parents, no worries about renting, mortgages.

 

[Orang Utan]

The middle class has no power.

We do.

Aren't you middle class?

 

[chilango]

Not sure if "the worse the better" is the way forward to be honest.

Wish I shared your optimism chilango.

It's not "worse", just the true situation is more apparent with a few veils removed.

 

[chilango]

Aren't you middle class?

No.

 

[chilango]

Aren't you middle class?

:curious: Why would you think that?

 

[kebabking]

The middle class has no power.

We do.

and that has been demonstrated how?

i have a vision of a Snowman yelling 'oh i'm coming for you bitch - you going down muthafucka!' at the sun.

 

[chilango]

and that has been demonstrated how?

i have a vision of a Snowman yelling 'oh i'm coming for you bitch - you going down muthafucka!' at the sun.

Marx innit?

 

[kebabking]

Marx innit?

phew, i thought you were talking about something less solid than the predictions of a man who's been dead for 130 years vs everything we've seen and heard over the last, err... 130 years.

 

[chilango]

phew, i thought you were talking about something less solid than the predictions of a man who's been dead for 130 years vs everything we've seen and heard over the last, err... 130 years.

All that is solid melts into air...

 

[yield]

phew, i thought you were talking about something less solid than the predictions of a man who's been dead for 130 years vs everything we've seen and heard over the last, err... 130 years.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

It's not "worse", just the true situation is more apparent with a few veils removed.

For sure. But as Belushi said where is the solidarity?

 

[Orang Utan]

:curious: Why would you think that?

Aren't you a teacher?

 

[chilango]

Aren't you a teacher?

Yes. Of sorts.

That doesn't, automatically, make me middle class.

I know some people think it does though.

For me though, economically, I'm straightforwardly proletarian.

I have to sell my labour power in return for wages to survive. Wages which are below the national average as it happens.

I have no capital upon which I can live (no investments, no significant savings, I don't have a pension - I don't even qualify for the state pension, I don't own private property, I have no capital coming my way via inheritance that might change this either).

I do not have the "power to hire or fire" or any equivalent managerial control within or over my workplace. I am a simple employee.

I do have some, limited, social capital and a great deal of cultural capital acquired largely through education (formal and informal).

This does not, and will not, be enough to change my economic position however. So does not IMO change my class position.



Why does any of this matter? I don't care on a personal level what class I am. Fuck it, I'd love to be some crusty old aristo living on a country pile.

It matters, because as long as large enough numbers of us proles are hoodwinked into thinking we're middle class , and as long as this con is backed up by proles thinking that enough of their fellow proles are middle class, then the solidarity mentioned above by yield and others will be bound to remain absent.

We need to recognise our common cause, and common material interests, and one of the biggest obstacles to this in recent generations is the myth of the middle class. That the ruling class are so complacent now that they think they don't need to perpetuate it anymore can only be to our favour, in this regard at least.

 

[Orang Utan]

I must be working class then!

 

[spanglechick]

Not that this is about you, chilango - as I've no idea what your situation is and I'm thinking perhaps you're part time? But WRT teaching in general...

Certainly it depends on your descriptor of class, but in income terms, even newly qualified teachers earn above the national average, and given we have, until next year had an excellent pay and conditions document which enshrined incremental pay progression as automatic for the first several years, and thereafter fairly straightforwardly thereafter, teaching pay is, in my opinion, bloody good - even without any responsibility points (head of dept, year etc). I believe the rates in private schools are broadly commensurate.

Now I'm not saying teachers are "ponies and school fees and skiing" rich. But that's not what I recognise as middle class anyway. And obviously it's not a Well Paid Job as anyone who was money-motivated might define that. It's also not well paid for the combination of hours and stress... But in terms of the amount of money a person needs to live a life, well, teachers don't have anything to complain about.

So, relationship to the means of production aside, they certainly fit into (bottom end of) the odious media category "squeezed middle".

 

[brogdale]

So, relationship to the means of production aside....

Hmmmm

 

[chilango]

spanglechick I'll reply in more detail later, but for the record I currently work in third sector special education (loosely speaking, can't go into specifics) so my pay and conditions are not subject to the agreements won/protected by the unions.


I do have more to say on teachers' pay and conditions and so on which I'll come back to later...

However, I don't think its too useful to focus on these at the expense of the relationship to the means of production. This is the kind of "veil" I was talking about earlier that allows the class to be mythologised.

 

[chilango]

I must be working class then!

You probably are.

 

[Orang Utan]

You probably are.

I'd be roundly mocked if I ever described myself as working class!

 

[chilango]

I'd be roundly mocked if I ever described myself as working class!

...and that's the problem.

Solidarity is impossible in these circumstances. Social change has been confused from an act of mutual self-interests into an act of benevolence or charity from above.



That's the job of the myth.

 

[treelover]

Great posts, Chilango,

but weren't many of the great social reformers undertaking the latter?

change from below is another matter.

 

[spanglechick]

Hmmmm

Well, I've not come across a consensus in where teachers fit WRT this.

 

[brogdale]

Well, I've not come across a consensus in where teachers fit WRT this.

Simples, I'd have thought?

You, (the teacher), sell your labour power to an employer and add it to the means of production to produce the 'commodity'. The surplus value of what you produce, ( the 'quality' of the new entrants to the workforce), is exploited by capital. No?

 

[seventh bullet]

What is the middle class these days?

 

[spanglechick]

Simples, I'd have thought?

You, (the teacher), sell your labour power to an employer and add it to the means of production to produce the 'commodity'. The surplus value of what you produce, ( the 'quality' of the new entrants to the workforce), is exploited by capital. No?

Then by the same rationale, a doctor is also working class?

 

[brogdale]

Then by the same rationale, a doctor is also working class?

Some.

 

[xenon]

City traders, are they working class?

 

[Orang Utan]

What is the middle class these days?

Maybe it's always been an illusion.