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

[Steel Icarus]

I wasn't irate Si. Only the first sentence was a reply to you. It was a joke back. It's why I used the ^ on that line.

You see if I had any cultural capital I'd have spotted that

 

[Steel Icarus]

, from a social perspective I am middle class.

What does this mean?

 

[friendofdorothy]

Generally people like being liked. They also like thinking of themselves as being nice people. Can you be a truly nice person if you exploit others? Hmmmn. Maybe not. If you are middle class and are better off than others around you, can you still enjoy your undeserved bounty? Aha! Yes, of course you can. If you come from a working class background! (No more uncomfortable guilt. No more worries about street credibility)

Surely all of us in the west live on the back of exploitation of people in other parts of the world we have exported the working class to the 'developing world'. The real hard work at real poverty levels is done elsewhere in the world. Let's all pretend it matters who is in the working class here and who is not.

 

[Treacle Toes]

another thing that stood out a mile from the 7 UP series was pretty much all the working class participants who left school without going to uni and got a random job and a partner also got a mortgage on a house immediately , failing that a council flat.

Err not true... Lynn's job wasn't random for example...she became a children's librarian and stayed in the profession through out her life....she didn't seem to fall into it, she liked it. It certainly didn't seem to be a 'I just do this one' case at all.

 

[weltweit]

What does this mean?

What I meant was - not relative to the means of production - but more socially / culturally I am middle class, especially how I speak, how and where I socialise, behaviour, those sorts of things. My parents were MC and inevitably so am I.

However, I am almost lapsed MC, for example I went to a very middle class funeral a couple of years ago and was surprised to find I didn't fit in with the other mourners. It made me wonder if I am still MC.

 

[mojo pixy]

That’s true, but also also a relatively recent development.

When you think back, as Raymond Williams once wrote, ‘culture is ordinary’.... The decomposition of working class communities as centres of cultural production needs to be understood in the context of the decline of independent working class politics, communal mass organisations and a class capable of excepting demands upon capital.

Right - and isn't this what's largely driving whatever MC appropriation of WC 'style' (for want of a better word)? WC folks don't usually have the confidence to make their own cultural artifacts - it's not about articulacy or ability, we know that - but it is about feeling nobody will care** even if you do make something. MC kids on the other hand feel the world is their oyster and all they have to do is drop an aitch, get tattoos and a bit of cheap jewellery and wham bam they're on TV, the voice of a generation etc.

** Eta, might even take the piss, actually.

 

[ska invita]

Err not true... Lynn's job wasn't random for example...she became a children's librarian and stayed in the profession through out her life....she didn't seem to fall into it, she liked it. It certainly didn't seem to be a 'I just do this one' case at all.

oh yeah by random i just meant a job and its salary you can get straight away as opposed to working up to over a decade
the point of the post was more about how much you could earn r leaving school and get on the housing ladder and how thats changed

 

[ska invita]

Yes but I don't think it's just about your salary. What often gets underplayed in this conversation is asset ownership. If you own your house in a non-precarious way it does change your class position because of your increased stability and the potential access to cash on a rainy day. Thatcher knew what she was doing. If you own assets beyond your own house that give you some income (even if only a few thousand a year) then you are again in another class position. You can own some quite big assets but be on a fairly low income and dependent on that income - it's not an unusual position. It's a very different position from someone on low income and no assets.

And I would include having a good pension beyond the state pension to be significant asset ownership.

posted a few weeks back that i was reading something from sometime around 1990 which flagged up that there was a lot of conversation around the socialist left at the time basically musing "is there a significantly large working class anymore (from a revolutionary point of view)? or have the Tories bought everyone off?" - with the conclusion that yes the tories had so diminished the non-asset holding, low income working class pool that the balance of power was lost for good, and suggested that strategic changes would be required to convince people of a socialist programme.

wish i could remember what it was now, it was an interesting time capsule and conversation.

Id be very interested to see some demographics on the current numbers of home owners/renters/average earnings/etc <does anyone know where to find that kind of thing? I know there's to be a new census in 2021....

 

[hitmouse]

It was mentioned on another thread that WC kids don't as a rule tend to form bands, and that crystallized for me a thought that's been growing for years, about what it really means to be working class as a musician. That world is closed to you, there will always be someone with more money for gear, more and better words from articulate, educated parents, more expensive equipment or a course at theatre school, a better book or record collection, more time to practise .. and always someone else who expects to be listened to, expects the gig, expects the attention. So why bother?

Just get a job.

There's no 'social capital' there, not as i understand the term.

Yeah, there's a lot Mark Fisher was wrong about but this is one of those things he was spot on about imo (and don't ask me where exactly he talked about this because I can't remember off the top of my head) - maybe there's never been a level playing field as such but there's all kind of material stuff that can make that condition a bit easier. Relatively widespread squatting and a dole system that doesn't stress intense JSA/Universal Credit-style hassling of claimants = more freedom for people who aren't coming from money to practice creative activity or whatever kind. Kill those things off and you make it that much harder for anyone except the Ed Sheerans and Bastilles to get through.

At the same time the route from the shopfloor- via the lower management rung - into the intermediate and higher ranks has been choked off, as you put it professionalised. Those recruited into those ranks are normally recruited from outside the organisation.

...and often from outside the industry - they're not required to have any expertise in what the people they're managing do as long as they can show expertise in being a manager. Which can be pretty funny at times tbf, especially with relatively new managers - "you lot, stop slacking off and work harder! Also can you explain to me what exactly your job involves again?"

 

[mauvais]

There seem to be at least three things going on in this thread now:

• actual capital, economics
• social capital, basically how much opportunity you are afforded
• cultural capital/signifiers/whatever, really something involving a measurement of how much you fit in easily

The first buys the second, and occasionally the inverse is true. The third is something else though - you can and even more historically could be rich and still be socially excluded. Having money helps, I guess.

 

[mojo pixy]

• actual capital, economics
• social capital, basically how much opportunity you are afforded
• cultural capital/signifiers/whatever, really something involving a measurement of how much you fit in easily

Also something else. Something like an internalized, conditioned sense of social worthlessness. Best expressed as low expectations. So whatever social capital you may otherwise have (looks, brains, skill etc) you may not be in a position to capitalize (pun intended) on it, because your expectations just aren't high enough.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I think jarvis cocker wrote a song about this.

 

[discokermit]

its not peoples expectations that hold them back.

 

[mojo pixy]

I think jarvis cocker wrote a song about this.

hilariously, being a graduate of a prestigious theatre school his very own self.
ok no, maybe just alumnus, unsure if he graduated or what with. a song, certainly.

 

[mojo pixy]

its not peoples expectations that hold them back.

low expectations can stop you even starting.

I should unpack that a little. It's not about self pity, and it's not about lacking the moral fibre to bootstrap yourself. If your family is always struggling when you grow up, this teaches you what normal feels like. Parent(s) struggling, in debt, working two jobs to make ends meet, working nights etc - or unemployed. Friends working in low-status jobs or unemployed, immediate family all in low-status jobs, or unemployed. This is the 'working class background' we're on about, but it's not just material and economical - it's psychological, it's emotional, it's what you learn to expect, what to accept, maybe eventually what to aspire to.

 

[Threshers_Flail]

I lived in Germany for 6 months, I didn't learn enough to pick up class signals from people there. Here there would be no point in my trying to be anything I am not, from a social perspective I am middle class.

It would be interesting to read of the differing signifiers of class from other countries.

When I lived in Spain I lived round the corner from a private university. Every lad who studied there seemed to have the same floppy hair cut and the same Ralph Lauren Polo top on. They weren't hiding their class, they were revelling in it. Contrast that with the private school kids who were studying when I was at uni who were really into grime and dancehall and wore trackies and said things were peng.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Surely all of us in the west live on the back of exploitation of people in other parts of the world we have exported the working class to the 'developing world'. The real hard work at real poverty levels is done elsewhere in the world. Let's all pretend it matters who is in the working class here and who is not.

Hot take

 

[discokermit]

low expectations can stop you even starting.

I should unpack that a little. It's not about self pity, and it's not about lacking the moral fibre to bootstrap yourself. If your family is always struggling when you grow up, this teaches you what normal feels like. Parent(s) struggling, in debt, working two jobs to make ends meet, working nights etc - or unemployed. Friends working in low-status jobs or unemployed, immediate family all in low-status jobs, or unemployed. This is the 'working class background' we're on about, but it's not just material and economical - it's psychological, it's emotional, it's what you learn to expect, what to accept, maybe eventually what to aspire to.

if you are working class, you are better off not starting a lot of the time. you havent got the connections, the background, the schooling, the financial support, necessary. the middle class have built up over centuries ways to keep all but a select few out.

another thing is this view is one that in my experience isnt born out in real life. if anything its the opposite. ive met plenty who naively had a dream only to see it smashed by reality.

 

[discokermit]

Surely all of us in the west live on the back of exploitation of people in other parts of the world we have exported the working class to the 'developing world'. The real hard work at real poverty levels is done elsewhere in the world. Let's all pretend it matters who is in the working class here and who is not.

my last but one job, five or six years ago, i had to lift five tons of steel into a jig from the floor and back down again twice by hand every shift. just over eight quid an hour, 6-2, 2-10. just cos you dont sweat, doesnt mean nobody sweats.

edited for better maths.

 

[mojo pixy]

if you are working class, you are better off not starting a lot of the time. you havent got the connections, the background, the schooling, the financial support, necessary. the middle class have built up over centuries ways to keep all but a select few out.

another thing is this view is one that in my experience isnt born out in real life. if anything its the opposite. ive met plenty who naively had a dream only to see it smashed by reality.

The bolded bits are pretty much what I'm on about, the lack of internal/external resources to really get ahead or strike out. I'm not sure how your other bit (underlined) fits though? My experience is that apart from a small minority we basically get stuck in low-status work at best, with dreams of more that always remain just out of reach because you don't have the money and/or time and/or confidence to go for it. The 'economy' depends on this, actually.

I dunno now. Working class, or human condition? Maybe the human condition is more malignant without resources to mitigate it. It's not much of an insight, but more important is that the structures that keep it going need to be broken and burned.

 

[likesfish]

If you write for the guardian your not working class.
Frankly your not being shipped south as there are more important passengers for the south Atlantic ring road project

 

[danny la rouge]

Surely all of us in the west live on the back of exploitation of people in other parts of the world we have exported the working class to the 'developing world'. The real hard work at real poverty levels is done elsewhere in the world. Let's all pretend it matters who is in the working class here and who is not.

The last sentence shows you’re seeing this in identity terms. Class is primarily a relationship, not an identity.

 

[seventh bullet]

Surely all of us in the west live on the back of exploitation of people in other parts of the world we have exported the working class to the 'developing world'. The real hard work at real poverty levels is done elsewhere in the world. Let's all pretend it matters who is in the working class here and who is not.

Have you actually worked with anyone from the 'global south'?

 

[purenarcotic]

Surely all of us in the west live on the back of exploitation of people in other parts of the world we have exported the working class to the 'developing world'. The real hard work at real poverty levels is done elsewhere in the world. Let's all pretend it matters who is in the working class here and who is not.

We could always find someone who is ‘worse off’ than us, I don’t think that’s a helpful perspective. It’s of little comfort to someone who’s kids are crying with hunger or who has just had their PiP refused and they don’t know how they’ll put the heating on. It creates a space for people to suggest others should be grateful for the tiny scraps they receive and should just get on with it. Seeing class as a structural relationship enables there to be space to push back, to say it’s not good enough and we deserve better.

 

[chilango]

We could always find someone who is ‘worse off’ than us, I don’t think that’s a helpful perspective.

...and further up it's the logic behind the whining of the squeezed middle who can always find someone 'better off' than them.

 

[purenarcotic]

...and further up it's the logic behind the whining of the squeezed middle who can always find someone 'better off' than them.

Yes! ‘We shop at Lidl now, we can’t afford Waitrose, it’s so very, very hard for us...’ (I am being a bit facetious I realise)

 

[mojo pixy]

...and further up it's the logic behind the whining of the squeezed middle who can always find someone 'better off' than them.

It's often the motivation behind centering identity. You got it bad but at least you're X and only have X to worry about. Pity Y, we have Y to worry about and that's way worse!

 

[chilango]

Yes! ‘We shop at Lidl now, we can’t afford Waitrose, it’s so very, very hard for us...’ (I am being a bit facetious I realise)

...and when people, as is often the case, live, work, school and socialise in 'bubbles' segregated by class, comparison becomes obscured.

 

[purenarcotic]

...and when people, as is often the case, live, work, school and socialise in 'bubbles' segregated by class, comparison becomes obscured.

It also enables ‘that doesn’t belong to me’ / ‘that isn’t for the likes of us’ too I think. Which does feed into class from a perspective of identity opposed to relationship. It also of course helps to maintain the relationship. Not sure if I’m making much sense.

 

[Winot]

...and when people, as is often the case, live, work, school and socialise in 'bubbles' segregated by class, comparison becomes obscured.

“one of the small private schools, quite cheap”