DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
this is certainly ground thats never been covered before
Squeezed Middle Watch
- Thread starter Belushi
- Start date
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
I wouldn't think so, I expect most would own means of production?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
But isn't there always a reserve army ready to come in and labour...all over again?
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Is it as simple as that?
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
spanglechick with regard to teachers pay and conditions putting them in the middle class:
I think that certainly has, traditionally, been a possibility. My grandparents probably fell into that category. When they taught being a teacher was a secure "job for life" with a reasonable chance of progression into management, a wage that enabled surplus to be saved and invested thus building sufficient capital to (by retirement) be some what freed from wage dependence.
That's just not the case anymore for many (most?) teachers.
Wages, whilst still generally "good", don't allow for the same surplus and accumulation (unless you're something like a childless teaching couple on the UPS or management).
Indeed wages, pensions and conditions are under frontal assault right now, and in many sectors the battle is lost.
The academy down the road from me has a salary cap at about £30k (still an ok wage, but a wage that won't allow for capital accumulation - and that's the top of their scale.) with longer hours.
Tenured contracts are increasingly rare. Rolling one or two year deals are commonplace and job security is vanishing.
There's little remaining in the lot of a teacher that allows for any serious application of the term "middle class".
I think that certainly has, traditionally, been a possibility. My grandparents probably fell into that category. When they taught being a teacher was a secure "job for life" with a reasonable chance of progression into management, a wage that enabled surplus to be saved and invested thus building sufficient capital to (by retirement) be some what freed from wage dependence.
That's just not the case anymore for many (most?) teachers.
Wages, whilst still generally "good", don't allow for the same surplus and accumulation (unless you're something like a childless teaching couple on the UPS or management).
Indeed wages, pensions and conditions are under frontal assault right now, and in many sectors the battle is lost.
The academy down the road from me has a salary cap at about £30k (still an ok wage, but a wage that won't allow for capital accumulation - and that's the top of their scale.) with longer hours.
Tenured contracts are increasingly rare. Rolling one or two year deals are commonplace and job security is vanishing.
There's little remaining in the lot of a teacher that allows for any serious application of the term "middle class".
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Never! But most people's perceptions of class certainly differ from the Marxist delineations.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
whose delineations would you say come closer to most people's perceptions?
_angel_
.
The lack of autonomy compared with the past must be huge now, too?
seventh bullet
sovietwave
What is it for Marxists, though? To do with the division of labour within the working class?
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I don't know - but most people seem to think it's about inherited culture, profession, 'taste' and education, rather than capital.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I don't know - you tell me! I've been told I'm middle class by some Marxists and working class by others. Nobody seems to know!
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
weber? bourdieu? some other thinker?
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
Then it's an odd and not especially helpful delineation for a discussion about who is and isn't suffering genuine hardship. Which is the subject of this thread.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
True, but then the term 'squeezed middle' is more related to statistics than class, surely? Maybe we've got a bit side-tracked by the 'c' word!
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
Depends what you define as surplus and accumulation. Only a vanishingly small number of teachers have opted out of the pension scheme, and I'd be prepared to bet nationwide that most teachers are homeowners/mortgage holders, which is significant investment. Fewer in London, of course.
After only five years, salaries range from £29,533-£34,204 in inner London. After ten years (assuming standard progression through UPS, and requiring no middle management responsibilities), that goes from £35,805-£43,927. I've not heard of any salary capping academies, and they're clearly at present, in a tiny minority.
Teaching *is* well-paid compared to the average uk salary (which a quick google tells me is £26,500). Yes conditions are under assault, but in my recent intensive job searching period I saw no temporary contracts and no probation periods being advertised. Hardly rare then, to find a tenured post.
The thing about the "squeezed middle" is not that it should be a race to the bottom: yes we need to fight to protect our pay and conditions... But the idea that someone earning way over the national average is deserving of sympathy when so many are living hand-to-mouth is a bit hard to take.
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
Which is why I said we should put relationship to the means of production to one side in my original post, which is what you objected to in the first place.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Yes, but your post mentioned class a number of times. Just saying.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
spanglechick your experience is (thankfully!) a little luckier than mine then!
Salary caps at the UTC chain's franchise, whilst governers I know in other schools admit to an "unofficial salary cap" as far as they won't employ beyond a certain point on the salary scale.
Whilst I was job hunting (and I looked at a couple of hundred positions!) temp contracts were pretty common I'm afraid. This is the whole aim behind the free school and academies push. Well one of the at least! You might not have been unlucky enough to face these things yet, but they're coming for you!
Anyway, I think looking at things from the perspective of "sympathy for the destitute" plays into the whole divide and rule strategy and unwittingly undermines the idea of solidarity, replacing it with charity.
Salary caps at the UTC chain's franchise, whilst governers I know in other schools admit to an "unofficial salary cap" as far as they won't employ beyond a certain point on the salary scale.
Whilst I was job hunting (and I looked at a couple of hundred positions!) temp contracts were pretty common I'm afraid. This is the whole aim behind the free school and academies push. Well one of the at least! You might not have been unlucky enough to face these things yet, but they're coming for you!
Anyway, I think looking at things from the perspective of "sympathy for the destitute" plays into the whole divide and rule strategy and unwittingly undermines the idea of solidarity, replacing it with charity.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
You're asking the wrong person. I haven't read either.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
perhaps you should broaden your intellectual horizons.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I have to read Capital first!
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
get to it then and don't spend so much time posting here
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
You should read it in the original German. There are some wonderful puns. Or was that Nietzsche? Macht's nicht.
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
i think characterising it as "sympathy for the destitute" is cheap hyperbole. The average person in this salary earns a lot less than the majority of teachers. They don't have to be "destitute". They're just doing all the same stuff on around ten grand a year less. And that's the average earner. Most people in this country are struggling a hell of a lot more than people on 'professional salaries' and they are less likely to have their voices heard in the well-remunerated media. Acknowledging that isn't "divide and rule". It is about checking your privilege.spanglechick your experience is (thankfully!) a little luckier than mine then!
Salary caps at the UTC chain's franchise, whilst governers I know in other schools admit to an "unofficial salary cap" as far as they won't employ beyond a certain point on the salary scale.
Whilst I was job hunting (and I looked at a couple of hundred positions!) temp contracts were pretty common I'm afraid. This is the whole aim behind the free school and academies push. Well one of the at least! You might not have been unlucky enough to face these things yet, but they're coming for you!
Anyway, I think looking at things from the perspective of "sympathy for the destitute" plays into the whole divide and rule strategy and unwittingly undermines the idea of solidarity, replacing it with charity.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
This is the bit I was disagreeing with:
My point is really that we need to move away from "sympathy" and towards "solidarity".
Chopping off the "top half" of the working class because they earn more doesn't help with that.
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
i disagree. i think complaining about tightening your belt when you're comparitively wealthy is a bit of a shit thing to do, regardless of what bloody class you are. Solidarity by all means: protest, volunteer, donate to foodbanks... but have the grace to keep quiet about the luxuries you're having to go without if you earn significantly more than most.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
seventh bullet
sovietwave
spanglechick your experience is (thankfully!) a little luckier than mine then!
Salary caps at the UTC chain's franchise, whilst governers I know in other schools admit to an "unofficial salary cap" as far as they won't employ beyond a certain point on the salary scale.
Whilst I was job hunting (and I looked at a couple of hundred positions!) temp contracts were pretty common I'm afraid. This is the whole aim behind the free school and academies push. Well one of the at least! You might not have been unlucky enough to face these things yet, but they're coming for you!
Anyway, I think looking at things from the perspective of "sympathy for the destitute" plays into the whole divide and rule strategy and unwittingly undermines the idea of solidarity, replacing it with charity.
Charity is shit I agree, but then so is being prodded and poked, or even ignored, by those who might unwittingly reproduce the same divisions re labour, assumptions based on background, the use of social and cultural capital etc, but nevertheless being sincerely organised against in building this solidarity you talk about, in whatever forms of 'from the bottom up' activity that could conceivably take place. I earn less than half the average (talk of such a thing is a joke to a lot of people I know), have no higher formal education (only done it on my own since leaving school with no qualifications) and negligible social capital. It doesn't matter how many books I read, or acquire through effort the skills with which to 'read' certain books, how many languages I learn, or the other ways I might 'improve' myself. It is not pessimism in terms of what could be, nor is it prolier than thou talk, but what is social change (or revolution even) to me and others like me, if people building solidarity with us (and I include those 'others' too in that), perhaps unconsciously, merely expect us to make the tea and fetch the biscuits?
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