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Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class?

That's the genius of it, surely. Immisserating people and taking away their security while at the same time compelling them to take an interest in capitalist stuff like the monetary value of a house or the performance of the stock exchange. Having an individual 'stake' promoted as a positive where it is mostly a negative as it takes the place of any collective stakeholding.
 
kabbes said:
One of the successful strategies of neoliberalism, though, has been to gradually (and even quickly) close defined benefit pension schemes. And then to create rules around pension drawdown and other ways of not having to crystallise your pension fund at retirement age. If you are in a local government pension scheme that simply pays you a fixed amount per year then no, that pension is not the kind of asset that fosters a PMC financialised subjectivity. But increasingly, that’s not where people are with their retirement planning and reality. Instead, they have a sum of money that (if they’re lucky) corresponds to 10 or 20 times their annual salary, which they are then expected to make sound financial decisions about. And that is a meaningful asset — the kind of asset that changes how your view your personal interests and changes what you see as your relationship to capital.
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This may be the case for some/many people, but it isn't the reality for council manual workers like binmen, which was the original quite specific claim I was challenging.

Some people's pension may be similar/equivalent to what we traditionally view as asset, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's far from everyone.
 
andysays said:
This may be the case for some/many people, but it isn't the reality for council manual workers like binmen, which was the original quite specific claim I was challenging.

Some people's pension may be similar/equivalent to what we traditionally view as asset, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's far from everyone.
Click to expand...
Believe me, I haven’t lost sight of it. But you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there are increasingly few people under the age of 40 that will ever have a meaningful defined benefit pension. They’re even disappearing for government employees, but the real trick for governments is to outsource their activities to private companies, who won’t provide a DB plan. As lbj points out, for the neoliberal actor, switching pension plans to be DC instead is win/win.
 
redsquirrel said:
If the above is the case, if labour is a conservative force then what is the agent for change, and what change are you seeking?
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This is very disingenuous because it implies that 'the working class' have a change that they are seeking. That is only true in the heads of committed socialists, born of wishful thinking. It's not that none of the working class want change, but there is no movement towards the abolition of capitalism or anything even remotely like it. So to say that because you are clear on your political subject you are clear on what they want is just sheer fantasy. You may have things that you want, but that's not much to do with any organised working class expressing its desires, because there is no organised working class expressing its desires.

My position is we need to construct new political subjects and their desires will emerge from the process of forming new collectivities. FWIW I think it's clear that a coalition of downwardly mobile 'middle class' workers with other precarious workers can work to some extent in London so that seems like one sensible organising strategy, but the puzzle is how to connect that to a more socially conservative salaried or self-employed working/middle class. Both groups are very large and I don't think one can do without the other. Do I have more questions than answers? Yes. But it's better than confidently holding to the same answers for 150 years in the face of all evidence and change.
 
kabbes said:
Believe me, I haven’t lost sight of it. But you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there are increasingly few people under the age of 40 that will ever have a meaningful defined benefit pension. They’re even disappearing for government employees, but the real trick for governments is to outsource their activities to private companies, who won’t provide a DB plan. As lbj points out, for the neoliberal actor, switching pension plans to be DC instead is win/win.
Click to expand...
We seem to be talking at cross purposes here.

I may come back to it later...
 
andysays said:
We seem to be talking at cross purposes here.

I may come back to it later...
Click to expand...
The point is that regardless of whether or not a specific bin man has a pension that is meaningfully an asset, the wider group of working-class people (and petit bourgeoisie) increasingly do meaningfully have this asset (or else are excluded from comfortable retirement)
 
kabbes said:
The point is that regardless of whether or not a specific bin man has a pension that is meaningfully an asset, the wider group of working-class people (and petit bourgeoisie) increasingly do meaningfully have this asset (or else are excluded from comfortable retirement)
Click to expand...
...and whether it neatly fits into definitions (and identities) of class is - in some ways - neither here nor there.

It is a location of division and potentially conflicting ideas framed by material interests.
 
kabbes said:
The point is that regardless of whether or not a specific bin man has a pension that is meaningfully an asset, the wider group of working-class people (and petit bourgeoisie) increasingly do meaningfully have this asset (or else are excluded from comfortable retirement)
Click to expand...
Not forgetting the flip-side of assets, debts. Young people are now expected to get themselves into debt in order to obtain a higher education at a university or, increasingly, training in a trade. That turns inequality of income into a moral good: those who took out debts in order to further themselves should earn more than those who didn't. Effectively they took out a capitalist investment in themselves and they are expecting returns on that investment.

The commodification of everything, the removal of the collective interest from the sphere of individual improvement or wellbeing.
 
Private pensions do really fuck you up. Now in my 50s and trying to shovel more money into my meagre pot, I'm painfully aware that the end result and therefore my standard of living depends on the performance of the stock market. A wave of militancy that tanks the FTSE100 at the wrong time could be the difference between just enough money and total poverty.
 
Point I'd want to reinforce would be that forcing people to play capitalist games, whether it's taking out loans for an education or playing the stock market for their pensions, places many people in a worse position than the one they might otherwise occupy.

It's a trick. A dastardly trick because we participate even when we know it's a trick. We have little choice - the only other option is grinding poverty.

But it's a trick that does change people's relations with capital, taking away a collective stake in society and replacing it with an individual stake in assets whose value may go up or down. That's not just the stock exchange. It also applies to education - for example, how many young people have invested thousands in an education for work that will soon be being done by AI? How much will a qualification in radiology be worth in five years' time? Quite possibly nothing.

imo this is a long way from the world Marx described. There are still loads of pertinent lessons to take from Marx, but the landscape has changed. Class relations have changed. Working class solidarity has been massively weakened while middle class security has been kicked away, and in some important senses, the two classes have blended with one another.
 
Brainaddict said:
This is very disingenuous because it implies that 'the working class' have a change that they are seeking. That is only true in the heads of committed socialists, born of wishful thinking. It's not that none of the working class want change, but there is no movement towards the abolition of capitalism or anything even remotely like it. So to say that because you are clear on your political subject you are clear on what they want is just sheer fantasy. You may have things that you want, but that's not much to do with any organised working class expressing its desires, because there is no organised working class expressing its desires.

My position is we need to construct new political subjects and their desires will emerge from the process of forming new collectivities. FWIW I think it's clear that a coalition of downwardly mobile 'middle class' workers with other precarious workers can work to some extent in London so that seems like one sensible organising strategy, but the puzzle is how to connect that to a more socially conservative salaried or self-employed working/middle class. Both groups are very large and I don't think one can do without the other. Do I have more questions than answers? Yes. But it's better than confidently holding to the same answers for 150 years in the face of all evidence and change.
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How are you suggesting that this ‘ coalition of downwardly mobile 'middle class' workers with other precarious workers ‘ is built in London ?
 
The39thStep said:
How are you suggesting that this ‘ coalition of downwardly mobile 'middle class' workers with other precarious workers ‘ is built in London ?
Click to expand...

If, as I suspect, he's got this idea by misreading Dan Evans, then I'm interested in this too.

repeaterbooks.com

A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie - Repeater Books

The petty bourgeoisie — the insecure class between the working class and the bourgeoisie — is hugely significant within global politics. Yet it remains something of a mystery. Initially identified as a powerful political force by theorists like Marx and Poulantzas, the petit-bourgeoisie was...
repeaterbooks.com repeaterbooks.com
 
Red Cat said:
It makes no logical sense, all classes are in relationship with each other, only exist in relation to other classes, it's not possible for only one class to be involved in any activity.

It's been a very long time since I read any Marx, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't very interested in class as something an individual belonged to, but more a dynamic force of some kind. The individual only counts so far as it might change the force, the energy, of the class, and the dynamic between them. I haven't thought of this before, but its likely isn't it that Marx was influenced by theories of energy, and the theory of class conflict is concerned with what the propelling force is at any time.

It's not about whether you like to go shopping using your credit card.
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This ^^^
 
The39thStep said:
How are you suggesting that this ‘ coalition of downwardly mobile 'middle class' workers with other precarious workers ‘ is built in London ?
Click to expand...

It needs a leader with insight and revolutionary fervor superior to almost everyone else. Brainaddict is humble but if the working class* calls upon him then he will, reluctantly, leave his plough.

(* About 14 people in the Greater London area using his methodology.)
 
Brainaddict said:
This is very disingenuous because it implies that 'the working class' have a change that they are seeking. That is only true in the heads of committed socialists, born of wishful thinking. It's not that none of the working class want change, but there is no movement towards the abolition of capitalism or anything even remotely like it.
Click to expand...
To be clear here you are claiming that an analysis based on class struggle is fundamentally false?
Because I refer you back to Red Cat 's post, the working class - labour - is a force. And that force cannot but conflict with the interest of capital, and the position of labour means that is represents the best (only) means of overthrowing capitalism. Individuals that are part of the working class do not have to be seeking a change for labour to create conflict.
You have repeatedly claimed you understand class analysis but this paragraph certainly suggest that you do not understand it.
Brainaddict said:
So to say that because you are clear on your political subject you are clear on what they want is just sheer fantasy. You may have things that you want, but that's not much to do with any organised working class expressing its desires, because there is no organised working class expressing its desires.
Click to expand...
The working class, organised or not, 'expresses its desires' (not a phrase I would use) simply by existing, by being exploited, by producing and by coming into conflict with capital
Brainaddict said:
My position is we need to construct new political subjects and their desires will emerge from the process of forming new collectivities.
Click to expand...
But on what basis? Clearly not on class as traditionally understood, on some new form of 'class'? You have said that a cross-class alliances is required so you must have some idea of what that alliance is?
Brainaddict said:
FWIW I think it's clear that a coalition of downwardly mobile 'middle class' workers with other precarious workers can work to some extent in London so that seems like one sensible organising strategy, but the puzzle is how to connect that to a more socially conservative salaried or self-employed working/middle class. Both groups are very large and I don't think one can do without the other. Do I have more questions than answers? Yes. But it's better than confidently holding to the same answers for 150 years in the face of all evidence and change.
Click to expand...
As opposed to confidently holding to the even older politics of liberalism that you are (when all the wordage is swept away) advocating.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Class relations have changed.
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I see this statement made all the time, but how have they changed? Fundamentally changed I mean.

Because when I read Caferio's Compendium of Capital a couple of years ago what amazed me was not the difference but how absolutely relevant it was to me and my own working conditions.
Sure Cafeiro's (Marx) examples were about artisans, workshops and factories in the 19th Century but the fundamental principles I could see in my day to day work as an academic in a 21st Century - the mechanisation of work, the expansion of the work day, the alienation.
It resonated with me not just intellectually but emotionally.
 
redsquirrel said:
I see this statement made all the time, but how have they changed? Fundamentally changed I mean.

Because when I read Caferio's Compendium of Capital a couple of years ago what amazed me was not the difference but how absolutely relevant it was to me and my own working conditions.
Sure Cafeiro's (Marx) examples were about artisans, workshops and factories in the 19th Century but the fundamental principles I could see in my day to day work as an academic in a 21st Century - the mechanisation of work, the expansion of the work day, the alienation.
It resonated with me not just intellectually but emotionally.
Click to expand...
It just requires a bit more care with the language and I’m sure lbj was just posting without being super-careful with every word, as we all do.

It’s not the structural position and definition of class that has changed. It’s also not the structural power relations between those classes. But the social framework they are embedded in has changed. Neoliberalism creates a different context. The neoliberal subject makes sense of the world in a different way, builds relationships in a different way, constructs their reality in a different way. The way that the subject understands both class and class relations has changed (even if that understanding is distorted from a purely structural perspective). And perception is critical to collective action, which means that the circumstances through which action can occur have changed. (Not necessarily made action less likely, just changed).
 
redsquirrel said:
I see this statement made all the time, but how have they changed? Fundamentally changed I mean.

Because when I read Caferio's Compendium of Capital a couple of years ago what amazed me was not the difference but how absolutely relevant it was to me and my own working conditions.
Sure Cafeiro's (Marx) examples were about artisans, workshops and factories in the 19th Century but the fundamental principles I could see in my day to day work as an academic in a 21st Century - the mechanisation of work, the expansion of the work day, the alienation.
It resonated with me not just intellectually but emotionally.
Click to expand...
One of my points of reference is Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Bit later - start of 20th century - but there is plenty in there that resonates, particularly with the recent rise of the gig economy, zero-hours contracts, etc.

But I agree with kabbes that the way people perceive and create themselves and themselves-with-others has changed. I also agree with redcat that it makes little sense to talk of classes acting on their own. They only exist in their interactions with other classes. But those collective interactions have changed. Many people are many things at once, have more than one kind of economic attachment to society. That's always been true, of course, but I think it's more true now. And many of the signifiers of class, such as a university education or working in an office or indeed working in a factory, no longer signify quite the same thing. It's a blurry picture.
 
Sorry wanky liberal reformist here.

There is the ruling class and there is everyone else. I like the label working class personally. And from a class struggle point of view* that’s all that matters.


(* I acknowledge the vast number of classes are useful for things like marketing and sociology exams, but when it comes to class struggle we are many, they are few and there is power in our union.)
 
kabbes said:
It just requires a bit more care with the language and I’m sure lbj was just posting without being super-careful with every word, as we all do.

It’s not the structural position and definition of class that has changed. It’s also not the structural power relations between those classes. But the social framework they are embedded in has changed. Neoliberalism creates a different context. The neoliberal subject makes sense of the world in a different way, builds relationships in a different way, constructs their reality in a different way. The way that the subject understands both class and class relations has changed (even if that understanding is distorted from a purely structural perspective). And perception is critical to collective action, which means that the circumstances through which action can occur have changed. (Not necessarily made action less likely, just changed).
Click to expand...
I guess this is going to come down to agreement, or not, on whether what you describe (which I'd agree with by and large) is a fundamental change.

Sure the context is different, but the context that Marx wrote Capital in was different to the context of the agrarian development of capitalism, it was different to the period from the turn of the 20th Century to WWII, and different from the post was period. Capitalism changes, but it remains capitalism, for me the fundamental nature of class relations persists.
 
redsquirrel said:
To be clear here you are claiming that an analysis based on class struggle is fundamentally false?
the working class - labour - is a force. And that force cannot but conflict with the interest of capital, and the position of labour means that is represents the best (only) means of overthrowing capitalism. Individuals that are part of the working class do not have to be seeking a change for labour to create conflict.
Click to expand...
These are statements of faith, not analysis. The types of struggle in society have to emerge from your analysis (including empirical data), not be the a priori belief.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Not forgetting the flip-side of assets, debts. Young people are now expected to get themselves into debt in order to obtain a higher education at a university or, increasingly, training in a trade. That turns inequality of income into a moral good: those who took out debts in order to further themselves should earn more than those who didn't. Effectively they took out a capitalist investment in themselves and they are expecting returns on that investment.

The commodification of everything, the removal of the collective interest from the sphere of individual improvement or wellbeing.
Click to expand...
Getting a degree is said to be worth an extra £100k over a working life. Which, assuming a 40 year career and 35 hour week, works out at about a pound an hour. Not really a great return for a lifetime of debt

www.fenews.co.uk

How much is your degree worth? | FE News

| How much is your degree worth?
www.fenews.co.uk www.fenews.co.uk
 
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Pickman's model said:
Getting a degree is said to be worth an extra 100k over a working life. Which, assuming a 40 year career and 35 hour week, works out at about a pound and 36 pence an hour. Not really a great return for a lifetime of debt
Click to expand...
And that’s on average I would assume so perhaps for a lot of folk it has no positive impact
 
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For things like medicine, law and engineering it's going to be a lot more than that for some it's going to be a lot less. I can find you degree holders doing minimum wage jobs.
 
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