Working class ... just because I make less than $1,000 a month. Nonsense!! Why, I teach at the post-secondary level! With as much as 10 weeks of job security, in the first week of the term.
"Working Class." That was back when I was being called in a day at a time to haul boxes off the box line, put price stickers on items, stack paint cans for stacking onto pallets by store ... when I had literally 0 hours job security. That is working class.
Why, when I ignore the amount of time required to do my job and focus on the amount of time I am paid for, I will have you know that I am paid at a quite reasonable rate. If I could get 40 paid hours, which would be 60-80 hours of work, I would be making well over $2,000/week! I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
It has been the masterful trick of the latter class to create divisions within the workers so that white collar workers look down on the blue collar workers, who look down on the pink collar workers who look down on the farm laborers.
That they don't realize that a strong labor movement would benefit them all is one of the masterstrokes of corporatist propaganda achieved during the 20th Century.
I've long advocated an advertising campaign along these lines: Famous personality in sports or entertainment or the like say: "I'm a member of XXX union which provides me with benefits and looks out for my interests. Perhaps you should see if join the labor movement can do the same for you."
This can be repeated with workers from other sectors: teachers, police, firefighters, etc.
The concept of class solidarity seems to have died out somewhere around 1940 (at least in the US). Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
This has been the program of all political parties in Finland over 100 years. Previously the question was about agricultural land where the left tried to create "working class" farm laborers from rental farmers and the right tried to make part of them landlords. Politics never revolved round the economic questions. It is just a tool to achieve political power. 100 years ago it was noboby's political interest to liberate the rental farmers, today it is nobody's political interest to liberate labour. It was the land question then and IMO it still is.
If the "class" in working class is taken seriously, then it would depend on whether they are living on their own accumulated private wealth and the pension is a bit of extra pin money, or they are living on the social (public or private) pension. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
(The [quantum physics] professor is the scruffy guy in the small car, that the girl gets excited about) The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler
