Image from Who or what is the middle class?
Excerpted from my post in the comments thread at The Rogue Columnist: Can Liberalism Be Saved?
I've got a quibble, and I'll mention only partly to stir the pot: This "middle class" business, and the "saving" of it. (My adolescent dabblings with Marx's paradigm - not "Marxism" per se - have come 'round again.) I'm taking the liberty of conflating Jon's & Walter's posts, since they are to me of an harmonious piece.Update: from today's Archdruid Report:
Walter:"Into this bad mood, the necromancers of the American right conjure a Total Explanation: liberalism is to blame. It makes you share with people who are not like you. It tells you that you're no better than the street thugs jostling you in line."
This. What fertile soil does this seed fall upon? The middle class has always been about codifying and justifying a very un-democratic inequality that is endemic to the post-Revolutionary Republic that has well-masqueraded as "democracy." The easily beguiled "middle class" specialises in the "turning away," it embraces the fiction of justice in this faux meritocracy. It has always been bought off by the so-called elites - and now that the greed of the movers and shakers (and, to a lesser extent - for awhile - the looming resource crunch) is consuming their ability to sate a critical mass of this enabling class, we now lament its demise and ponder its salvation?
Most of us here are, or have been, or considered ourselves, or at least aspired to, middle class. Are we asking ourselves the right questions about our complicity in keeping other classes down in service of our "justified" lifestyles? Now that we are jostling with these "lesser folks," is the right question to be how we make our return as the administrators of class inequality, or do we wake up and look around, and remake our view of America, the world, our fellows?
I put this to better minds than I, here, in this forum.
- Petro
...it’s important to get past the rhetoric of victimization that fills so much space in discussions of social hierarchy these days. Of course the people at or near the upper end of the pyramid get a much larger share of the proceeds of the system than anybody else, and those at or near the bottom get crumbs; that’s not in question. The point that needs making is that a great many people in between those two extremes also benefit handsomely from the system. When those people criticize the system, their criticisms by and large focus on the barriers that keep them from having as large a share as the rich—not the ones that keep them from having as small a share as the poor, or to phrase things a little differently, that keep their privileged share from being distributed more fairly across the population as a whole.
- John Michael Greer
(1 of 3)
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm aware the update you posted weren't your work Petro, but you clearly found them eloquent and I'm assuming (because they were posted without comment) that you agree with them. I'm going to, for now, ignore the meat of the original post (at least in terms of disputing specific points) and focus on the update Why? Because it's what they call in the (dying) newspaper business as "bullshit." Sorry, got that wrong, "Bullshit" with the capital 'B.'
"When those people [the middle class] criticize the system, their criticisms by and large focus on the barriers that keep them from having as large a share as the rich—not the ones that keep them from having as small a share as the poor, or to phrase things a little differently, that keep their privileged share from being distributed more fairly across the population as a whole."
I am, likely, about the very definition of "middle class." I have a nice (not incredible) house, two cars, my family has two jobs, I have a two year old son who I pay a relatively large amount of money to be in daycare five days a week so that my wife and I can make a (relatively) large amount of money for the primary purpose of giving my son everything I can.
(2 of 3)
ReplyDeleteI suppose I should clarify that last point, because Petro's 99% antennae just buried the needed. By "giving my son everything I can" I do not mean Super Sweet 16 parties and plastic surgery at 11 if he's not 100% happy with his nose. I mean giving him tools and stimulation that will (I hope) inspire intelligence and curiosity that (hey, it could happen) might turn him into the next great thinker. Yes, he has toys. Yes, probably more than he needs. But they are part of what I hope will inspire him to do great things, whatever they may be.
So back to the quote. Fuck that guy. Sorry about the bluntness, but he's talking about me having never met or spoken to me. For better or for worse I grew up listening to hip hop, and thus "Mo Money Mo Problems" is more than a shitty Wayans movie to me. Would I like to make a little more money? Of course, it would certainly help in getting my son to Egypt, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney (one of the goals of mine is to have him spend time in all of those cities before he goes to college). Do I want Romney money? Hells to the no. Do I believe it's good for anybody that Romney makes enough to feed all the homeless in Arizona for a year without working? Hells to the no.
But this concept that the middle class. That me, and the people like me, are only concerned with wealth disparity because we're worried about "their privileged share" is just as big of a bullshit cop-out as the right wing bullshit about how the poor would rather collect unemployment than get a job.
I'm sure there are some who think that way, in fact I know there are.
I don't.
(3 of 3)
ReplyDeleteMore than a few of my fellow middle-classers don't. We sympathize with each other, and those less fortunate, and we admire and respect those in the 99% that are out there occupying and pushing their views (kicking and screaming) into the mainstream.
We understand the disparity. We understand the disparity (rich to poor; middle class to poor; AND yes, middle class to rich) and we want it to change. I'm not protesting because of my son, because I believe incremental change is natural (re: evolution) sudden jarring, and especially, forced change is dangerous and irresponsible.
So fuck that guy (said it twice so Petro would have an excuse to delete the post...you know damn well I don't even know who the guy is, I'm saying "fuck his idea"). How about we make a deal?
You don't paint me with some one-size-fits-all greedhead brush, and I won't (out of sheer laziness) paint you (I'm using the superlative "you" here...Petro, the guy who wrote the quote, the hippie in the drum circle at #OccupyWallStreet) as some eager and incredibly naive bunch of guys who are wishing for something that will almost certainly turn into Lord of the Flies.
Deal?
Cool.
Sincerely, a Member of the Middle Class WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE PART OF THE 99% DAMN IT. Swear to God, it's like the guy completely forgot about that...
OK, FaveB...
ReplyDeleteDo you dispute the fact that the lifestyle you enjoy, self-described as "middle class," is subsidized by millions of people who have no chance at similar luxury?
If you dispute this, then I suppose I have nothing to say to you.
If, however, you recognize this fact, then may I also ask if you realize that your lifestyle is also subsidized by the exhumation and release into the atmosphere of massive amounts of carbon that is only temporarily available, and better left interred, via historical and technological accident?
Again, if you do not accept that your (our) lifestyle is dependent on this wounding of our ecosystem, then I have nothing to offer in response.
More to the point: The "middle class" has tolerated a great deal of inequality in this country, and has bought into and defended the idea that the poor "deserve" their station - if not by an explicit nod to the desserts of our "meritocratic" system, then at least through our inaction in ameliorating poverty.
The last positive thing done for our domestic poor was accomplished by that despicable rogue LBJ over 40 years ago, and we stood by as the rhetoric of meritocracy and "motivation" was waved around like a bloody shirt under the Democratic administration of Clinton as welfare was gutted to the satisfaction of the most venal of Republican sentiment.
Lest we claim that these things are the fault of the politicians, I remind you that we, as a whole, display a great deal of passion for those things that we deem important - throughout the fall and early winter we can hear each Sunday the impassioned cries punctuating from homes in American neighborhoods everywhere as we empathetically suffer the pangs of glory and defeat with our favorite football teams - many just "favorite" for the day, for the single contest.
No such passion exists when our government decides to humiliate the poor with "work for welfare" - again, not because we are a passionless lot, but rather because we in our bones have bought into the idea that if you "have", then you deserve to have, and if you "have not," then, well, you must deserve that as well.
Meritocracy.
And, suddenly, we discover that there is a "1%" that has been unfairly gaming the system and we say "hold on there, there's a limit to this meritocracy thing, those guys aren't playing fair" and our dander is up and we just might do something about that.
Many critics of the #Occupy movement point with delight at the "dilemma" faced by the protesters when the homeless and destitute come 'round for free food. I myself see that one solution is to feed themselves (the protesters) first, then what's left can go to the rest. The critics see this as hypocrisy, I see it as emblematic of our modality of self-justification, our supplication to our American belief in meritocracy, so conveniently adopted and accepted by the 5% of the world's population that consumes 25% of the world's resources.