Yes, I didn't use the term 'working-class' but did use 'middle-class'
as a descriptor of the narrative in the Guardian, mainly because I
couldn't think of any other way to describe it.
Pace Christopher's post, what has happened in Britain is that an
increasing amount of people think of themselves as 'middle class' or
something effectively the same, while the reality is that other than
in China and India the middle classes (in income terms) have been
shrinking in numbers throughout the developed and developing economies
while the wealth of the super-rich has been increasing.
The supposed average wage in Britain is now roughly £30,000 per annum
yet the overwhelming majority of those in work earn nothing like that.
2008/5/26 Sally Evans <[log in to unmask]>:
> Both tories and labour are after the "old voters" when they play the class
> card - people aged 80 who voted for the one party all their lives.
> Sally Evans
> http://www.poetryscotland.co.uk
> http://groups.msn.com/desktopsallye
> http://www.myspace.com/poetsallyevans
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 1:12 AM
> Subject: Working Class v Middle Class (was Re: New beats (???))
>
>
>> <snip>
>> Anybody out there willing to define, describe---specify---wot "working"
>> class means to them, to any of us, to UK'ers, to USAmericans, to
>> Australians, to Italians, to Finns? [JP]
>> <snip>
>>
>> My serious and considered view is that in Britain 'working class' is now
>> almost entirely a polemical term, when it isn't just an item of false
>> consciousness. With Britain's two main political parties now firmly and
>> indistinguishably neo-liberal in practice if not in preaching, both
>> (though
>> most commonly New Labour because of the history of the party it destroyed)
>> play the *Working Class* card, albeit in different ways, because they know
>> it induces reactions. And *affect* is what is wanted rather than (say)
>> change.
>>
>> But it was always a baggy term, inclusive both of those retaining
>> jealously
>> guarded skills and those progressively deskilled through automation. Now,
>> like 'ethnically British', a card also used by New Labour ('British jobs
>> for
>> British workers'), it asserts something about origins in a rather
>> delimiting
>> way.
>>
>> Although conventional British wisdom holds that the 'middle class' is
>> expanding, I think that this term too now means extremely little. On the
>> one
>> hand freelance work of various sorts (outsourcing, agency working, what is
>> often figleafed as 'consultancy' and so forth) has blurred the distinction
>> between the two erstwhile classes both in terms of economic relationship
>> to
>> an employer and in terms of overall wealth. On the other the shift towards
>> *immaterial labour* has increasingly deskilled the 'middle class'
>> professional in quite fundamental ways.
>>
>> Once again the curious result of all this is that political arguments in
>> Britain (a sort of 'immaterial labour' in itself) are now not about social
>> realities but are matters of pure presentation. So the 'precaritization'
>> of
>> great chunks of the former 'middle class' goes more or less undiscussed
>> whilst the local benefit which some members of the former 'working class'
>> have undoubtedly received as a side effect of this process is frequently
>> presented as upward class mobility, which is something it is not.
>>
>> CW
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> 'Life is too precious to spend it with important people.'
>> (Harry Partch)
>>
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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