Class origins matter – but who are the agents of change?

The celebratory headlines in Australia today are about how the Federal government has just recorded two consecutive financial year fiscal surpluses, which the Treasurer lauded as an example of “responsible economic management” as the government removes from the economy a cumulative sum of $A172.3 billion since it was elected in May 2022. The headlines should have said “Federal government destroys non-government financial wealth over the last 2 years as more people are without work’, which is actually what has happened. Anyway, it is too depressing to see the media fawn over the Treasurer today. So I am going to go abstract and avoid talking about that any further. There was an interesting article in the UK Guardian the other day September 26, 2024) – Take it from me (and Keir Starmer) – you should never pretend to be more working class than you are. I don’t usually agree with the journalist but this article made me reflect on a lot of things.

The article starts by noting that Keir Starmer recently admitted that:

I’m not working class any more.

The point was that “Labour people” are under constant scrutiny and attack from their political enemies – the journalist refers to them as “The right”, which is a stretch, given that on most important issues, the “Labour people” in question are virtually indistinguishable from the “The right”.

The scrutiny arises because many of these “Labour people” appear to have accumulated wealth (real estate etc), have come from well-paid jobs and network with the elites in society.

For that they are referred to, in a pejorative way, as ‘champagne socialists’.

The message of the article is that:

Politicians do need to talk about their origins because it tells us where they’re coming from, in every sense … Class origins matter.

Yes it does matter but what is it?

The journalist appears to take a casual approach to the concept of class.

She refers to the current British cabinet as the “most working-class in history, with some from backgrounds of grinding hardship … Roughly 46% of the cabinet had parents with working-class occupations – well above the average for the rest of the working population”.

There is also reference to the proportion of those “educated privately” as being a marker for membership of the working class.

And then further confusion:

But no, of course they aren’t working-class now: MPs earn £91,346 and cabinet ministers an extra £67,505, while the national median wage is £35,000. But where they come from matters a lot.

And the journalist praises Starmer for not “hankering to inflate … (his) … authentic working class roots” because there is a tendency for professional occupants to claim working class status even though they work in “middle-class occupations”.

Apparently, this is in an attempt to claim virtue because they “have earned their privilege”.

The ‘come from nothing’ narrative.

I know that well – more soon.

The application of the article is to critique the fact that in Britain (and most nearly everywhere else):

… social mobility has gone backwards and the gap between rich and poor keeps widening. People are less likely to escape their roots than when I was born.

And because many in the current British cabinet come from ordinary backgrounds, they have a chance to redress this problem.

But she urges them to admit they are no longer working class.

That is the nub of the article.

I have thought a lot about class over my career and if you read my latest book with Warren Mosler – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure (published July 2015 by Lola Books) – you will see that I also claim to hail from a disadvantaged ‘working class’ background.

From the journalist’s perspective I am also in the same group as Starmer and Co – thoroughly middle class with a high income and a professional occupation.

But if you ask me politely, I will tell you that I am still a member of the working class.

Yet, recently, an old friend said I had become one of the super elites – which was commenting on my housing arrangements in a sustainable community by the coast.

So am I one of those characters the journalist criticises in the article that are among the elites now (high end middle class) in “professional or senior managerial jobs” who are simply trying to legitimise their elite status with these claims to being working class?

Not at all, which is the point.

The journalist mixes class categorisation frameworks in her article, which blurs important class differences.

When I think of ‘working class’ I take a Marxist perspective.

Does the person own the material means of production or not?

Which means are they in a position to extract surplus labour (and hence value) from another or not?

If the answer is no to those questions (‘not’ in the context of the questions) then that person is working class.

That is, they have labour power to sell to an owner of capital as their primary means of subsistence.

And subsistence does have to be defined as penury, which leads us to another dimension of ‘class’ which is blurred by the journalist.

As a student (and later) I closely studied the work of the US sociologist – C. Wright Mills – who sadly died of heart failure at the young age of 45 in 1962.

It would have been interesting to see what his overall contribution to our knowledge might have been had he been in better health and lived longer.

But his body of work was very illuminating.

Everyone who portends to be on the ‘Left’ should read his New Left Review article (No 5, September-October 1960) – Letter to the New Left – which was aimed at the British New Left establishment who were developing a stance that has been termed the ‘end of ideology’ and disappointingly marked the demise of the Left as it would embrace neoliberal ideas in the 1970s with the post modernist incursion in its ranks.

C. Wright Mills identified and eschewed the growing tendency among progressives to think the political role of the ‘Left’ was to moderate capitalism rather than oppose it on class grounds.

Amelioration rather than deep structural change.

He was also critical of what he termed the “labor metaphysic”, which refers to the idealistic continuation of the “working class” as a vehicle for change.

He believed that the modern capitalist state had transcended the early industrial form of the system where the differences between the workers and the bosses was more palpable and more likely to lead to a working class insurrection and overthrow.

For C. Wright Mills, a new change agent was necessary and he considered “the intellectuals” were best placed to serve that role – which was redolent of the student moves in the 1960s to revolt.

And among that group there was a certain animosity towards the ‘workers’ who had embraced mass consumption and had been nullified by the capitalist system – mortgages, hire purchase then credit cards, etc – into be compliant seekers of the material offerings that capital divied out to maintain that compliance – and their place at the top of the table.

In general, the welfare state had mollified of the exploited.

C. Wright Mills wrote:

It is no exaggeration to say that since the end of World War II in Britain and the United States smug conservatives, tired liberals and disillusioned radicals have carried on a very wearied discourse in which issues are blurred and potential debate muted; the sickness of complacency has prevailed, the bi-partisan banality flourished.

He considered the “New Left” had adopted the view that:

The mixed economy plus the welfare state plus prosperity — that is the formula. US capitalism will continue to be workable, the welfare state will continue along the road to ever greater justice.

This is the view of the modern Labour politicians in the UK, Australia and elsewhere, the Democrats in the US, the ‘Socialists’ in Europe and the rest of the mainstream progressive political forces.

C. Wright Mills considered there was still a relevance in the Left-Right distinction but only if we acknowledge the intrinsic differences between the two ‘camps’, an acknowledgement that has given way to blurring and conflation by the modern mainstream progressive forces.

He wrote:

The Right, among other things, means — what you are doing, celebrating society as it is, a going concern. Left means, or ought to mean, just the opposite. It means: structural criticism and reportage and theories of society, which at some point or another are focussed politically as demands and programmes. These criticisms, demands, theories, programmes are guided morally by the humanist and secular ideals of Western civilisation — above all, reason and freedom and justice. To be “Left” means to connect up cultural with political criticism, and both with demands and programmes. And it means all this inside every country of the world.

Which is telling and leads one to reflect on the modern stances taken by those who claim to represent the ‘working class’.

Essentially, he was arguing that it was the “the cultural apparatus, the intellectuals — as a possible, immediate, radical agency of change” rather than hang on to the “labor metaphysic”.

He thought that it was “the young intelligentsia” that, in particular, was “getting fed up” with the failings of Capitalism, who were “getting disgusted with what Marx called ‘all the old crap'”.

In his 1951 book – White Collar: The American Middle Classes – which I read several times as a youngster, he further articulated this view.

He talks about how workers transcend from meniality into what he termed the “middle class”.

They were still selling their labour power but had somehow became alienated from their origins and to some extent become commodified themselves, which reduces the capacity of the ‘working class’ to act as an agency of change.

He wrote:

Estranged from community and society in a context of distrust and manipulation; alienated from work and, on the personality market, from self; expropriated of individual rationality, and politically apathetic – these are the new little people, the unwilling vanguard of modern society. These are some of the circumstances for the acceptance of which their hopeful training has quite unprepared them

And these “little people” were dominated by a cabal of elites in the polity, the corporations and the military – whoc made all the significant decisions and allowed the rest of us to eke out a material dimension that took away our agency and rendered us powerless.

That view was articulated in his subsequent 1956 book – The Power Elite.

All of these issues remain relevant today for the ‘Left’.

Characters like me have become ‘middle class’ even if our roots were ordinary to say the least.

Yet we remain ‘working class’.

When I was growing up, the assistance from the ‘state’ (welfare state), the rise of mass education, and the maintenance of full employment meant that kids from poor backgrounds could transcend the circumstances of their parents.

Those with academic propensities could stay at school and go to university and that educational advantage would move them into the ‘middle class’.

Others without the academic bent, could get trade skills and make a similar transcendence.

And even those who were failures at schooling could get work in various unskilled occupations and achieve a modicum of career progression within that limited horizon to enjoy material security, if not the riches of the others.

The problem is that the non-Marxist class terminology – working class, middle class, upper class and sub-components within each – only goes so far.

A kid from ‘working class’ parents in this terminology can under some circumstances become a member of the higher classes through education etc.

But their backgrounds can easily conflict with their new status meaning they no longer associate with the traditions or values of either their original class membership or their new found class location.

The former are seen as being limited in their horizons and only seeking to be like the middle class that have been bought off by the superficial trappings of materiality.

Neither group have revolutionary potential.

As the UK Guardian journalist noted – “Class origins matter”.

Conclusion

In dealing with the challenges that face our globe and our societies, these considerations are important.

Where is the Left today?

In the early 1960s, C. Wright Mills was clearly disillusioned with where the ‘New Left’ was situated in the debate and considered it had ceased to be a force for change.

One could easily argue that the modern evolution of those traditions are even further removed from being a dynamic that will end the destructive capitalist system.

Just the fact that the Australian Labor Party is ecstatic about running surpluses while poverty and unemployment increases is evidence of that.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2024 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.