Different schools of sociological thought have characteristic confusions about the concept of social class: whether it refers to individuals or households; whether it is about social inequality, social change, or social mobility; and whether the relevant inequalities arise from differences in being (identity), having (resources), or doing (activity, especially working activity). http://rss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/190
http://rss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/190
When people start talking about social class, whether it's on the television or in the pub, I try to walk away. It is partly because the concept, like "race" and "nation", exercises people's sense of identity and therefore their emotions. But even apart from the emotion the incoherence and conceptual confusion - sheer bollocks in ordinary parlance - always seems to overwhelm any attempt to say the reasonable and important things that need saying about the subject. ... I married into the working class; in conventional terms they were quite well down the scale, my wife being the eldest of six children of a foreman-labourer (it says "gangerman" on our marriage certificate) with a variable income. They lived in a council house within sight of a steelworks and a chemical plant and many of the things that the middle classes take for granted were out of the question, including motor cars, holidays and restaurant meals. The furthest they ever got was a day out in Whitby, a place of which they remain inordinately fond. To make matters worse my father-in-law was killed in a road accident when five of his children were still in full time education. All six of them are now prosperous, successful and well travelled; five of the six have degrees from good universities. They represent everything that is most admirable about post-war Britain and some government department or other should be investigating them to find out what went right. Their assets were native intelligence, self-discipline, a sense of humour and a modicum of ambition. (Only a modicum: I've known all of them since they were young and I wouldn't describe any of them as either driven or hung up about their background.). Both objectively and in their own terms they were "working class", but their practical outlook predestined them into the middle class. To compare their success with the probabilities facing anyone in a lower class environment now is a disturbing exercise. Even if a propertyless youth on the streets of Knowsley had the native intelligence they are unlikely to possess the other assets which my in-laws had. ... If you are a Christian or certain kinds of fundamentalist humanitarian or egalitarian then the lower class really matter. One lost sheep is more important than ninety nine. But if you are a Utilitarian the 12% only have to be taken into consideration; the consideration does not necessarily work out well for them. ... we could somehow cherry pick those with some prospect of emancipation. Or we could let them get on with it - and legalise all substances. Lincoln Allison retired from an academic career in 2004 to become a freelance writer and broadcaster. He remains Emeritus Reader in Politics at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor in sport and leisure at the University of Brighton. http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001751.php
When people start talking about social class, whether it's on the television or in the pub, I try to walk away. It is partly because the concept, like "race" and "nation", exercises people's sense of identity and therefore their emotions. But even apart from the emotion the incoherence and conceptual confusion - sheer bollocks in ordinary parlance - always seems to overwhelm any attempt to say the reasonable and important things that need saying about the subject.
...
I married into the working class; in conventional terms they were quite well down the scale, my wife being the eldest of six children of a foreman-labourer (it says "gangerman" on our marriage certificate) with a variable income. They lived in a council house within sight of a steelworks and a chemical plant and many of the things that the middle classes take for granted were out of the question, including motor cars, holidays and restaurant meals. The furthest they ever got was a day out in Whitby, a place of which they remain inordinately fond. To make matters worse my father-in-law was killed in a road accident when five of his children were still in full time education.
All six of them are now prosperous, successful and well travelled; five of the six have degrees from good universities. They represent everything that is most admirable about post-war Britain and some government department or other should be investigating them to find out what went right. Their assets were native intelligence, self-discipline, a sense of humour and a modicum of ambition. (Only a modicum: I've known all of them since they were young and I wouldn't describe any of them as either driven or hung up about their background.). Both objectively and in their own terms they were "working class", but their practical outlook predestined them into the middle class.
To compare their success with the probabilities facing anyone in a lower class environment now is a disturbing exercise. Even if a propertyless youth on the streets of Knowsley had the native intelligence they are unlikely to possess the other assets which my in-laws had. ...
If you are a Christian or certain kinds of fundamentalist humanitarian or egalitarian then the lower class really matter. One lost sheep is more important than ninety nine. But if you are a Utilitarian the 12% only have to be taken into consideration; the consideration does not necessarily work out well for them.
... we could somehow cherry pick those with some prospect of emancipation. Or we could let them get on with it - and legalise all substances.
Lincoln Allison retired from an academic career in 2004 to become a freelance writer and broadcaster. He remains Emeritus Reader in Politics at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor in sport and leisure at the University of Brighton.
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001751.php
Part of the problem may well be the size of the potential pool of such candidates. I have the sense, but not the statistics to validate that sense, that organized labor in Britain has taken about as big a hit in the last 30 years as it has in the US. Reagan and the Bushes vs. Thatcher and John Major. And it seems that the Trade Union Council in Britain has gotten about as little from Labor as has the AFL/CIO from the Democrats in the USA. In both countries the problem has been getting a political return on the support that labor has provided during the elections. In the US labor will likely get new organizing abilities from the new Congress and Administration, and this could lead to a reversal of the decline of organized labor as a percentage of total labor, which would tend to consolidate the position of the Democrats as the new dominant party.
In the US labor unions can support candidates of their choice in elections. That support can be an important part of the "ground game" come election time and is going to be much more pronounced for a candidate who supports labor issues. An increase in the number of union members can make disregarding the interests of labor more difficult for Democrats in general. But for this to be true Democratic elected officials and union leaders will need to learn better ways of communicating with union members and of addressing their concerns so the Republicans cannot siphon them off on bogus "social wedge issues."
The situation is very different in Britain, as "New Labor" has been in power for a long time prior to the present financial crisis. It is hard for me to see how the Conservatives would deal with this crisis in ways that would better benefit workers, unionized or not. Has education rather than origin come to be the new divide in Britain as it has in the US. Can the Trade Unions Council find a way to make its voice better heard while Brown remains in office? What is its role likely to be in the upcoming election? As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Or if they did, they would find themselves with little influence with the already established metropolitan elites. It's a rather self-serving coterie of professional apparatchiks. keep to the Fen Causeway
Those who do their jobs well within the constituency can gain very valuable experience about the issues that effect people locally, the realities of day to day life. Being out campaigning on the doorstep is a real eyeopener if your constituency has poor areas and blocks of council estates. If you then go one step further and actually talk to these people, engage them, get them along to surgeries and genuinely listen (some do!) then that approach is hugely valuable.
Trouble is (whatever party) many MPs are not really the link between their constituency and the Parliamentary process that they should be. So decisions get made without having a ground level view of what the impact can be for people, or at least a very selective or distorted view. Ad astra per aspera
but those who entered the union heirarchy directly from university and made the right alliances there and then. They still have little experience of real work.
This is the kind of view one usually gets from the right - a a bit like ValentinD :-) - never mind all this academic theory, WE understand the real world from our experience of "real work".
In fact "real work" - cf TBG: "a white collar working class who do crappy menial office jobs - working in call centres, accounts, basic IT maintenance, salesandmarketing, training." - is likely to give you a competence in a few routine skills and very little general understanding of the world, while a GOOD academic education can quickly expand horizons and understanding enormously. Unfortunately too much higher education is very narrow in focus - just like much work. We fund education so that people don't have to try to learn everything over again from experience.
It's no surprise to me at all that, as Drew said:
The college kids running the Obama campaign did better than I've ever seen the unions do.
2.I was referring to Helen's comment about "real work", not to experience in general and certainly not to trade union experience, which can often be an education in itself and the unions have encouraged members and especially union representatives to continue their education.
3. Let's look at the guy mainly responsible for the NHS, Bevan - it supports my argument :
[He] became a trade union activist: he was head of his local Miners' Lodge at only 19. Bevan became a well-known local orator ... In 1919, he won a scholarship to the Central Labour College in London, sponsored by the South Wales Miners' Federation. At the college he gained his life-long respect for Karl Marx. ... Upon returning home in 1921 - [he was mainly out of work until] In 1926, he found work again, this time as a paid union official... ... In 1928, Bevan won a seat on Monmouthshire County Council. With that success he was picked as the Labour Party candidate for Ebbw Vale ... The new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, appointed Aneurin Bevan as Minister of Health, with a remit that also covered Housing. Thus, the responsibility for instituting a new and comprehensive National Health Service, as well as tackling the country's severe post-war housing shortage, fell to the youngest member of Attlee's Cabinet in his first ministerial position. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
How about the PM - Atlee - "In 2004, he was voted as the greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of professors organised by MORI."
He was educated at Northaw School, Haileybury and University College, Oxford, where he graduated with a Second Class Honours BA in Modern History in 1904. Attlee then trained as a lawyer, and was called to the Bar in 1906. [A bit like Tony's background. Of course general experience can be very important too:] From 1906 to 1909, Attlee worked as manager of Haileybury House, a club for working class boys in Limehouse in the East End of London run by his old school. Prior to this, Attlee's political views had been conservative. However, he was shocked by the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with slum children, and this caused him to convert to socialism. ... Attlee became a lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1912, but promptly applied for a Commission in August 1914 for World War I. [And the latter would have been quite an education - nothing like ordinary "real work".] After the war, he returned to teaching at the London School of Economics until 1923. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee
[A bit like Tony's background.
Of course general experience can be very important too:]
From 1906 to 1909, Attlee worked as manager of Haileybury House, a club for working class boys in Limehouse in the East End of London run by his old school. Prior to this, Attlee's political views had been conservative. However, he was shocked by the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with slum children, and this caused him to convert to socialism. ... Attlee became a lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1912, but promptly applied for a Commission in August 1914 for World War I.
[And the latter would have been quite an education - nothing like ordinary "real work".]
After the war, he returned to teaching at the London School of Economics until 1923.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee
Bevan was famously driven by his ferocious sympathy for people who did 'real work.'
Do you think that sympathy originated at the Central Labour College, or during his time as a trade unionist?
Likewise with Attlee, whose views were conservative in spite of his impressively broad academic education, and were only changed when he worked with and for people who did 'real work.'
In fact "real work" - cf TBG: "a white collar working class who do crappy menial office jobs - working in call centres, accounts, basic IT maintenance, salesandmarketing, training." - is likely to give you a competence in a few routine skills and very little general understanding of the world, while a GOOD academic education can quickly expand horizons and understanding enormously.
Clearly I was talking about much of "real work" today and its routine narrowness. Nor was I saying that education is the only thing that counts. In my reply to you I said that general experience is important and I noted that the experience Atlee had in the East End was very important.
Having "sympathy" is one thing, understanding what to do about it and how to operate in complex political situations at a national and international level is another. Clearly Bevan went beyond being sympathetic to workers, as no doubt most workers were, to get a broader education which included the study of Marx, which he thought very important. Obviously unions thought it was not enough for their representatives to have their hearts in the right place, which is why they sponsored the education of people like Bevan. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Not sure what you mean, but it shouldn't be surprising for one simple reason: A bunch of old UAW guys in Ohio aren't going to be able to make sense of new technology. A bunch of college kids in North Carolina will, because they use it every day.
I don't think it has anything to do with an academic education. There are plenty of older, college-educated people who don't get it. (And obviously it's not universal. There are many older people, college-educated and not college-educated, who are more up-to-date on this stuff than most younger people, and there are many younger people who don't have a clue.) Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Outside of the big cities, organized labor is pretty worthless as far as the ground game goes. They organize about as well as GM sells cars (as Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and Hillary Clinton have all discovered). The college kids running the Obama campaign did better than I've ever seen the unions do.
Union endorsements also carry very little weight with actual members, because union members do what they want at the polls. It's not a sufficiently solid bloc to warrant any great amount of attention. Kerry took about 60% of union members. Obama took about the same. They deliver endorsements, but they can't deliver the votes. The return on investments in new and sporadic voters are much higher than on the unions.
Which isn't to say we shouldn't support unions and their efforts to expand. We should, because it's the right thing to do. But let's not suffer the illusion that the unions are really getting us anything electorally. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
An increase in the number of union members can make disregarding the interests of labor more difficult for Democrats in general. But for this to be true Democratic elected officials and union leaders will need to learn better ways of communicating with union members and of addressing their concerns so the Republicans cannot siphon them off on bogus "social wedge issues."
Unionisation worked well when relationships between workers and owners were very concentrated. Now that they're not - at least not in most Western economies - something more diffuse and inclusive could be more effective.
As long as worker pressure is split along occupational lines, it's far too easy to play divide and conquer.
So yes, not only does social mobility occur - some research indicates that, contrary to popular belief, social mobility is actually more prevalent in Europe than in the USA - and also the whole basis of "class society" is changing, with manual occupations increasingly marginalised, and other indicators - education level, income range, life chances at birth etc. - being used as proxies to assign class affiliation.
Central to any class analysis, however constructed, is the notion that whatever the political aspirations to equal citizenship may be, there is great real inequality within Capitalist society, and that the interests of the owners of capital (however philanthropic) and the interests of those whose primary source of income is their labour, are not the same, and sometimes, indeed, those interests can be diametrically opposed. notes from no w here
These are physically less demanding, but far more stressful intellectually and ethically, because many workplaces are set up to encourage competitive backstabbing, performance goals are carefully monitored and all-but impossible to achieve, and management has little interest in practical results and more interest in maintaining hierarchies and - in extreme cases - authoritarian bullying and abuse.
There's also a swarm of so-called freelancers and consultants who are upmarket temps employed on limited-term commissions and projects. This can be lucrative, but it's almost entirely dependent on outside factors.
It's much harder to organise in these fluid environments, so there's very little prospect of effective unionisation.
It's nice that people today have inside toilets and central heating, which they mostly didn't before WWII. But work environments have moved from one kind of abusive harshness to a different one, and I don't think anyone who works below the level of middle management is going to pretend that they're in a happy workers' paradise.
I don't think anyone who works below the level of middle management is going to pretend that they're in a happy workers' paradise.
Not true. I'm below middle management, and I get to pick my own boss. And when he makes me angry, I can go stand in front of his house and shout obscenities without getting fired.
Beat that. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
