I'm fascinated by class, as most Brits are. This reminded me of two things I've read recently:
The 7 types of class in the UK, which shows very few actual working class anymore and a rise of 'emergent service workers': high cultural capital but little actual wealth.
Also Goodheart's somewheres & anywheres idea which really made me think twice about why I am embarrassed by the people I grew up with but also aware I am from a different planet than the people in the circles I'm now in.
UK and European understandings of class really fascinate me. The US absolutely has class, but it's very obscured (think how Bill Gates or other tech billionaires dress like "everyday" folks and you'll see part of how it is there). We rely more on subtle cues, like whether or not someone has good teeth or obvious good health (only the upper classes can afford dentistry). Obesity, limps, poor skin, and other similar treatable conditions are also subtle signs someone is working class, but there are no clear social signifiers. It's really weird.
And also, in the US we ask without asking. The omnipresent: "So what do you do?" in introductions. I've heard Europeans wonder why Americans ask what your job is first, this is why. If you respond with something like Doctor or Stockbroker, you'll get a slightly interested "Oh." And if you respond with something like Cashier or Fast Food Worker, you'll get a dismissive "Hm."
Maybe it's different in America, but here in the UK we've always had the petite bourgeoisie, only we call them the lower middle classes. Since the expansion of education, a whole raft of further education qualifications are required for things that a few decades any school-leaver could walk into and learn as they went along. Now every clerk has a degree or two and sees themself as an intellectual, a rebel and - bizarrely - still a member of the working class. But as they quite obviously are not w.c., they have had to identify more accommodating categories of disadvantage (gender/ethnicity/sexuality etc) in order to continue to claim w.c./p.c. victimhood. The left has totally lost the plot as to what working class is/was. The majority of people concerned with class today are simply middle class and ashamed of it, poor things.
Great, thoughtful (and thought-provoking) review, which reminds me I'm long overdue getting a copy of the book. I exist in the venn overlap between Desolation Radio and The Re/al/ign and this has made me very happy!
Evans attempts to explain via the class framework, but I would propose that a better framework is Studebaker's concept of the "excess Song dynasty civil servant" (read civil servant = intellectual):
"Unable to pursue political power through the conventional pathways, these young men invented a new kind of political theory to make sense of their positions (or lack thereof).
...
As Kim presents it, Dao Learning asserted that human beings were united on a metaphysical level, even though they occupied different social strata in practice. This metaphysical unity consisted in their shared moral nature, which they could realize through the practice of personal morality. This practice was, in their view, open to everyone, irrespective of their social position. Indeed, in the years to come, the Ming-era Wang Yangmin would argue that even literacy is not required for sagehood.
This view allowed the surplus Song elite a conceit–even if they could not achieve positions within the temporal hierarchy of the Song, they could still observe a personal morality through which they might attain sagehood. If sagehood is the aim of life and anyone can attain sagehood, then the failure to achieve high office within the Song state becomes irrelevant to the ultimate value of the lives of these elites."
I work myself work with the idea of elite overproduction from Turchin into my own upcoming book, and it sounds like these are very similar ideas.
Dan Evans does also lay the groundwork for this kind of analysis in his book through a really extensive history of specific government attempts in the UK to increase (over-produce) graduate, non-manual work and also specific property relations.
So I think we're all talking about facets of the same thing.
I am not sure I agree mostly because the overall direction is one of fantasy as opposed to redirection into other, more promising and constructive activity.
Is it better to be a hyper-localized lotus eater or to simply accept that the goal is unrealistic and find other ways to achieve real success, somewhere else, as opposed to pretend success?
I'm curious of the historical examples you are apparently referencing.
The mustached National Socialist was not a surplus elite.
Stalin was not a surplus elite.
Lenin was not a surplus elite.
Mussolini was not a surplus elite.
Garibaldi was not a surplus elite.
None of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America to be - were surplus elites.
Sun Yat-sen was not a surplus elite.
Trotsky and Guevara were not surplus elite.
All of the above were either working class (as in actually working) or children of rich families as in didn't need to work.
The closest I can think of who might be called a surplus elite could be Marx - but even he was a successful lawyer, not a poser with grandiose thoughts.
I spoke of a class, not individuals, but you can look at Russian revolutionaries (most of whom probably qualified, including Lenin and Stalin), Spanish petit bourgeois of the 1930s or the people who made up the officers of the Confederate Army (whom W.T. Sherman remarked would rather die than have to work with their hands for a living) if you insist on examples.
You need to look at the supporting casts. All the artists of Dada and the Futurists were surplus elites; Futurism fed fascism and Dada fed anarchism. In general, coffee shop culture has been where surplus elites mingle and foment trouble. Like that.
Great piece. I think world system theorists hint at what Marx couldn't yet see. The metropoles (US, UK, EU, eg) serve in the larger world as consumers of last instance, as the 'traditional' proletariat is shunted into the peripheries (China now being the exceptional challenger). It can't work without a proletariat, but with this world-regional division of labor, it's easy--from the standpoint of those of us in the metropoles--to think that Marx's surplus value theory is defunct (it's not). Not speaking as a Marxist any longer, but Marxian theories have consistently (so far) proven correct with regard to deskilling and the inevitable advance of proletarianization into every field (thinking now of college TAs as well as fast food workers). What's new(ish), it seems, is the scope and scale of financialization, which has simultaneously captured the whole economy and introduced a treadmill of recurrent risk--a kind of runaway train of collapse and bailout . . . and also communications technology, about which you and others have thought and written as we all try to get our heads around this kind of emergent technofeudalism growing like a parasitic mold on the financialized world system. Neoliberalism has been at its heart precisely financialization (the rest is ideological cover), and it's tottering badly right now, its cascading failures ramifying down through the rest of us as desperate ideological shopping and irritable antagonisms (like culture wars). idk
yeah! so, i keep thinking about that problem where, in the US especially, the left acts like the entire world is post-industrial. I keep trying to insist to people that there's actually much, much more factory work being done (where the fuck does everyone think the stuff they buy on Amazon comes from? Who on earth is making their clothes? etc). It's just hidden from view.
And the financialization stuff is super important to this issue. These "new" classes are mostly made up of people merely moving ideas and numbers around, making nothing. This cannot possibly last.
We live in a unique time in human history. As much as we might want to debate the reasons, truth is we have gone from less than 1 billion to almost 8 billion people in about 200 years. The rise in population was fueled by the results of whatever socioecopolitical amalgam existed. I have tons of problems with it, row farming, feed lots, you name it. Even the factories are not my bag. But this is what I ponder....
In all of this, progress, the human creature has donned itself the king of contemplation (including myself) and has the leisure (even we Petite bourgeoisie who feed ourselves primarily by selling "air") to worry about the why instead of the how and when. So, what happens when the why is no longer valuable? Are we victim to our own "success"? We can feed the poor; we have; they have thrived; now there are 7.x billion souls consuming oxygen and producing waste on the planet. Do we really need to be "more" successful?
I love this. It completely explains why I, as a teacher, am paid 1/4 the hourly rate of my plumber, despite having an advanced degree. And why I wonder about the fact that I am called "middle class" while my plumber is still "working class."
The working class and old petite bourgeoisie I know of are into craft beer, especially IPA’s and more recently Budweiser has been cast into outer darkness - Google Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light. You have been in Europe awhile. The working class and old petite bourgeoisie are quite aware they are held in derision by a certain type of leftist. I live in the Texas/Oklahoma part of California in the south Central Valley. The working class/old petite bourgeoisie Mexican portion of this area have little affinity with woke/social identity leftism. If anything they think it’s stupid. They drink a variety of Mexican beers and craft beers.
I like this analysis Jeff. Marxism through beer goggles. Right on. There is an excellent UK based, Marxian analysis of beer choices / social class or more importantly 'social aspiration' waiting to be written. I enjoy various ales and lagers (The UK is blessed with an abundance) but I have to say any form of 'craft' beer with coriander or other such 'exotic' spices/ flavourings is undrinkable for me. Just plain wrong. I would put such poncey beers in the 'woke' sector but maybe it's not that simple.
I don't know about elsewhere but in the Northwest there are some very "exotic" craft beers that are enjoyed, as far as I can tell, solely by hipsters who seem eager to prove their open-mindedness. Personally I like dark beers, the darker the better, and I'm glad there's something on offer besides Guinness these days, but the peanut-butter-and-jalapeno stouts can stay on the shelf thanks.
I concur on the traditional dark ales front. I absolutely love Jennings Snecklifter and the fine town of Cockermouth in which it is brewed. Sadly some branding consultant or other such agent of capitalism rebranded all their beers a few years ago and I understand Sneck lifter is now only brewed occasionally. Madness! Maybe it's a generational thing - the need to be different form their forebears? I know a few socialists who are very small c conservative when it comes to Ale though. Myself included.
"The working class/old petite bourgeoisie Mexican portion of this area have little affinity with woke/social identity leftism." Same is true in Portugal!
Excellent piece Rhyd. Deserves wider readership. You should reach out to 'Ricky from Council Estate Media' on Substack. Very left, very angry but with a sense of humour as well.
Great article. If you want to go down this path further in the US context Erik Olin Wright’s work is def a good place to start (much of it was or is free on his old website). You may find it unsurprisingly that major national surveys make a Marxian measurement of class a bit tricky due to data limitations.
I painfully relate to too much of this. Ironically my retired factory working father is visiting me in Colorado for the first time in a week.
Colorado, especially the more liberal parts, has almost no working class and does not want it. Being here for 10 years and seeing how those with means start tech and other companies operate without any consideration or close relationships to those who may do the physical labor has definitely changed how I see things. It has definitely helped erode any idea that I’m in any way better than anyone yet I’m still stuck between trying to create something financially sustaining for myself and not fall backward into manual labor for a living. I too do not have a farm to go back to.
I also experienced firsthand the bits about the resentment with student loan forgiveness. On the day the 10k student debt was announced I received a call from my cousin who lives in Ohio an hour after it was announced . He was seething and screamed that he gave his life to his job. He wasn’t wrong, yet I didn’t grow up around factories and never saw that not going to school as an option. It’s such an easy political weapon to use, every time the student debt issue is brought up I see bots on social media everywhere stirring up resentment on both sides between those who were able to pay their debts and those who never took out loans.
If you’ve not read Matt Taibbi’s substack post “The Trillion Lie” I highly recommend it. He directly ties the loan issue to the 2008 financial crisis (credit default swaps) where schools raise tuition, the government raises loan amounts, banks offer loans then sell them to other lending institutions, and in the end it’s a debt swap game of musical chairs that everyone knows is going to collapse but hasn’t yet due to borrowers being unable to file bankruptcy and escape them. Additionally it was eye opening to understand the student loan lenders see outstanding debt as assets. So as unpaid student loans increase they can borrow additional funds as if they have real assets.
Here in lies the literal aspect of not being better than anyone. Every night I go to sleep I wake up more in debt. I am a debt asset to the wealthy, they don’t need my physical labor to accrue wealth.
Fantastic essay, thank you for bringing Dan Evans to my attention.
Your cousin is definitely not the only person who didn't go to college and resents you being let off the hook for your debts. I know quite a few people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and absolutely hate the idea that in some abstract way they're going to be paying for your shortcut through the college fast lane to a higher income.
I'm in a weird place with that myself as a fellow bootstrapper. I don't resent you though. I don't know how to put this in a way that won't come off condescending so I'll just be blunt: I pity you as a victim of fraud that started with the loan and continued with the schooling. I don't like the idea of bailing you out and leaving people like me and aforementioned friends paying higher taxes or suffering from higher inflation to mend your mistake though.
I would be on board for a debt jubilee that made it the bank's problem for making such stupid loans in the first place, relying on government guarantees that should never have existed and could not realistically be relied upon. Isn't it their job to know when they're making good investments? If anyone is responsible, isn't it the loan officer?
It's the demand that the taxpayer pays for it (and the inflation payer, which affects the most those who can afford it the least) that breeds resentment from our side. But of course neolib politicians work in service to financiers and are only trying to appease you to win your votes, so the answer the neolibs came up with was to stick the bill with the people who were never going to vote for them in the first place: people without college educations.
Getting around to the point: redirecting that resentment to finance and politics might be the task. It would help a lot if people on the receiving end of the student loan bailouts could express some genuine anger that their neighbors and peers are being forced to foot the bill. Be on our side, angry that your sell-out politicians are robbing Peter to pay Paul, instead of relieved that Paul's getting paid on your behalf.
Read Paul Fussell "Social Class In America" and become wise.
There is another class to consider, that of Local Gentry. Think of that guy who owns a chain of local muffler shops. He maybe only has a high school diploma or a certificate from a community college, but may be doing quite well for himself. Or maybe he owns an insurance agency. Regardless, the relationship between Local Gentry to location and capital and that of the PMC is very different.
Once you understand that Team D is the political manifestation of the PMC (with various minorities as junior partners), and Team R does the same for Local Gentry (with white Evangelicals as junior partners), All Will Be Revealed.
This was very illuminating! I had been thinking of class strictly in terms of who does and doesnt have a college degree. Some of the more conservative/moderate substacks look at it this way which I've found helpful since college educated people make up the minority in the US, Australia and the UK.
But I also like this explanation as well because I kept seeing white leftist asserting that people with Master's degrees who work at Walmart are working class which I didn't agree with (and it's not clear how true that even is). But I also read in Jason L. Riley's "Please Stop Helping Us" that if you're college educated but working this sort low skill job, you probably grew up poor.
There's a lot to wrap my mind around. Especially since I keep reading about how elites control society but literally no one has a useful framework on how to deal with that.
So it all just feels like squabbling; white leftists want Black people to get over race so that they can have their fever dream of a multiracial working class revolution, Black liberals and progressives just hate white people and have a revisionist understanding of Black political history to substantiate their frustrations while offering nothing material for Black people except "joy". Asians and Latinos, when liberal, often demand obedience from Blacks while also co-opting Black history for their own racial pet projects.
I am convinced that the only way for things to change is a changing of the guards (ie elites) because I genuinely dont believe that any kind of working class uprising or solidarity project is going to happen. There is not only no desire, but people literally dont see issues as pertaining to class; it's race or bust. Even when affirmative action was ruled as unconstitutional, I saw Black liberals making it about "whiteness" and race.
Literally no class understanding or framework available or of interest.
And "working class", thanks to the media when Trump was elected, is now associated very strongly with racist whites.
And having experienced racism at the hands of white liberals, I can't say that I'm super invested in white led political projects. Even though white people are the ones doing all the necessary thinking and examination of these issues. Unless there are secret books bring published, I don't see any useful insight coming from Black liberals or progressives; only the conservatives.
But I liked this write up!! Thank you for your insight.
You've read lit professor Paul Fussell's book CLASS? He claimed later that it was sort of a joke, but for a long time, it was the only book of its type.
My mother always summarized the over-educated, underpaid as "Champagne tastes, beer salary."
I'm fascinated by class, as most Brits are. This reminded me of two things I've read recently:
The 7 types of class in the UK, which shows very few actual working class anymore and a rise of 'emergent service workers': high cultural capital but little actual wealth.
Also Goodheart's somewheres & anywheres idea which really made me think twice about why I am embarrassed by the people I grew up with but also aware I am from a different planet than the people in the circles I'm now in.
UK and European understandings of class really fascinate me. The US absolutely has class, but it's very obscured (think how Bill Gates or other tech billionaires dress like "everyday" folks and you'll see part of how it is there). We rely more on subtle cues, like whether or not someone has good teeth or obvious good health (only the upper classes can afford dentistry). Obesity, limps, poor skin, and other similar treatable conditions are also subtle signs someone is working class, but there are no clear social signifiers. It's really weird.
And also, in the US we ask without asking. The omnipresent: "So what do you do?" in introductions. I've heard Europeans wonder why Americans ask what your job is first, this is why. If you respond with something like Doctor or Stockbroker, you'll get a slightly interested "Oh." And if you respond with something like Cashier or Fast Food Worker, you'll get a dismissive "Hm."
Maybe it's different in America, but here in the UK we've always had the petite bourgeoisie, only we call them the lower middle classes. Since the expansion of education, a whole raft of further education qualifications are required for things that a few decades any school-leaver could walk into and learn as they went along. Now every clerk has a degree or two and sees themself as an intellectual, a rebel and - bizarrely - still a member of the working class. But as they quite obviously are not w.c., they have had to identify more accommodating categories of disadvantage (gender/ethnicity/sexuality etc) in order to continue to claim w.c./p.c. victimhood. The left has totally lost the plot as to what working class is/was. The majority of people concerned with class today are simply middle class and ashamed of it, poor things.
Nail in the coffin! Bravo.
Great, thoughtful (and thought-provoking) review, which reminds me I'm long overdue getting a copy of the book. I exist in the venn overlap between Desolation Radio and The Re/al/ign and this has made me very happy!
Haha, we’ve invited each other as guests to our respective shows over the next months… 😘
omg!
Maybe I should have just surprised you ... :)
Wow, why did this review explain so much about my life/brain 🤯
Told you it was uncomfortable! :)
Evans attempts to explain via the class framework, but I would propose that a better framework is Studebaker's concept of the "excess Song dynasty civil servant" (read civil servant = intellectual):
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2021/03/01/are-declassed-professionals-in-the-united-states-like-surplus-song-dynasty-civil-servants/
"Unable to pursue political power through the conventional pathways, these young men invented a new kind of political theory to make sense of their positions (or lack thereof).
...
As Kim presents it, Dao Learning asserted that human beings were united on a metaphysical level, even though they occupied different social strata in practice. This metaphysical unity consisted in their shared moral nature, which they could realize through the practice of personal morality. This practice was, in their view, open to everyone, irrespective of their social position. Indeed, in the years to come, the Ming-era Wang Yangmin would argue that even literacy is not required for sagehood.
This view allowed the surplus Song elite a conceit–even if they could not achieve positions within the temporal hierarchy of the Song, they could still observe a personal morality through which they might attain sagehood. If sagehood is the aim of life and anyone can attain sagehood, then the failure to achieve high office within the Song state becomes irrelevant to the ultimate value of the lives of these elites."
Replace sagehood for "sophistication"...
Thanks for the link-- I'll read this soon.
I work myself work with the idea of elite overproduction from Turchin into my own upcoming book, and it sounds like these are very similar ideas.
Dan Evans does also lay the groundwork for this kind of analysis in his book through a really extensive history of specific government attempts in the UK to increase (over-produce) graduate, non-manual work and also specific property relations.
So I think we're all talking about facets of the same thing.
This sounds like a surprisingly constructive or at least unbitter way of surplus elites to deal. I like it actually.
Perhaps.
I am not sure I agree mostly because the overall direction is one of fantasy as opposed to redirection into other, more promising and constructive activity.
Is it better to be a hyper-localized lotus eater or to simply accept that the goal is unrealistic and find other ways to achieve real success, somewhere else, as opposed to pretend success?
Historically, surplus elites are the most dangerous class.
I'm curious of the historical examples you are apparently referencing.
The mustached National Socialist was not a surplus elite.
Stalin was not a surplus elite.
Lenin was not a surplus elite.
Mussolini was not a surplus elite.
Garibaldi was not a surplus elite.
None of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America to be - were surplus elites.
Sun Yat-sen was not a surplus elite.
Trotsky and Guevara were not surplus elite.
All of the above were either working class (as in actually working) or children of rich families as in didn't need to work.
The closest I can think of who might be called a surplus elite could be Marx - but even he was a successful lawyer, not a poser with grandiose thoughts.
I spoke of a class, not individuals, but you can look at Russian revolutionaries (most of whom probably qualified, including Lenin and Stalin), Spanish petit bourgeois of the 1930s or the people who made up the officers of the Confederate Army (whom W.T. Sherman remarked would rather die than have to work with their hands for a living) if you insist on examples.
Neither Lenin or Stalin were surplus elites.
Lenin came from a wealthy family, Stalin came from a poor one.
Confederate officers weren't surplus elites - they were elites period.
Any more?
You need to look at the supporting casts. All the artists of Dada and the Futurists were surplus elites; Futurism fed fascism and Dada fed anarchism. In general, coffee shop culture has been where surplus elites mingle and foment trouble. Like that.
That is interesting although the devil is in the details.
Can you point me towards some of these artists feeding anarchism and fascism, respectively?
From my existing view - artists, or successful ones anyway - are more about keeping ahead of the pack (society) than giving the pack direction.
Great piece. I think world system theorists hint at what Marx couldn't yet see. The metropoles (US, UK, EU, eg) serve in the larger world as consumers of last instance, as the 'traditional' proletariat is shunted into the peripheries (China now being the exceptional challenger). It can't work without a proletariat, but with this world-regional division of labor, it's easy--from the standpoint of those of us in the metropoles--to think that Marx's surplus value theory is defunct (it's not). Not speaking as a Marxist any longer, but Marxian theories have consistently (so far) proven correct with regard to deskilling and the inevitable advance of proletarianization into every field (thinking now of college TAs as well as fast food workers). What's new(ish), it seems, is the scope and scale of financialization, which has simultaneously captured the whole economy and introduced a treadmill of recurrent risk--a kind of runaway train of collapse and bailout . . . and also communications technology, about which you and others have thought and written as we all try to get our heads around this kind of emergent technofeudalism growing like a parasitic mold on the financialized world system. Neoliberalism has been at its heart precisely financialization (the rest is ideological cover), and it's tottering badly right now, its cascading failures ramifying down through the rest of us as desperate ideological shopping and irritable antagonisms (like culture wars). idk
yeah! so, i keep thinking about that problem where, in the US especially, the left acts like the entire world is post-industrial. I keep trying to insist to people that there's actually much, much more factory work being done (where the fuck does everyone think the stuff they buy on Amazon comes from? Who on earth is making their clothes? etc). It's just hidden from view.
And the financialization stuff is super important to this issue. These "new" classes are mostly made up of people merely moving ideas and numbers around, making nothing. This cannot possibly last.
" ... (where the fuck does everyone think the stuff they buy on Amazon comes from?"
China, mainly. And while not all of the factory doors in China are locked, lots of 'em are. I suppose that's to keep folks out, eh?
I've been pondering around this for a bit.
We live in a unique time in human history. As much as we might want to debate the reasons, truth is we have gone from less than 1 billion to almost 8 billion people in about 200 years. The rise in population was fueled by the results of whatever socioecopolitical amalgam existed. I have tons of problems with it, row farming, feed lots, you name it. Even the factories are not my bag. But this is what I ponder....
In all of this, progress, the human creature has donned itself the king of contemplation (including myself) and has the leisure (even we Petite bourgeoisie who feed ourselves primarily by selling "air") to worry about the why instead of the how and when. So, what happens when the why is no longer valuable? Are we victim to our own "success"? We can feed the poor; we have; they have thrived; now there are 7.x billion souls consuming oxygen and producing waste on the planet. Do we really need to be "more" successful?
Hmm.
I love this. It completely explains why I, as a teacher, am paid 1/4 the hourly rate of my plumber, despite having an advanced degree. And why I wonder about the fact that I am called "middle class" while my plumber is still "working class."
The working class and old petite bourgeoisie I know of are into craft beer, especially IPA’s and more recently Budweiser has been cast into outer darkness - Google Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light. You have been in Europe awhile. The working class and old petite bourgeoisie are quite aware they are held in derision by a certain type of leftist. I live in the Texas/Oklahoma part of California in the south Central Valley. The working class/old petite bourgeoisie Mexican portion of this area have little affinity with woke/social identity leftism. If anything they think it’s stupid. They drink a variety of Mexican beers and craft beers.
I like this analysis Jeff. Marxism through beer goggles. Right on. There is an excellent UK based, Marxian analysis of beer choices / social class or more importantly 'social aspiration' waiting to be written. I enjoy various ales and lagers (The UK is blessed with an abundance) but I have to say any form of 'craft' beer with coriander or other such 'exotic' spices/ flavourings is undrinkable for me. Just plain wrong. I would put such poncey beers in the 'woke' sector but maybe it's not that simple.
I don't know about elsewhere but in the Northwest there are some very "exotic" craft beers that are enjoyed, as far as I can tell, solely by hipsters who seem eager to prove their open-mindedness. Personally I like dark beers, the darker the better, and I'm glad there's something on offer besides Guinness these days, but the peanut-butter-and-jalapeno stouts can stay on the shelf thanks.
I concur on the traditional dark ales front. I absolutely love Jennings Snecklifter and the fine town of Cockermouth in which it is brewed. Sadly some branding consultant or other such agent of capitalism rebranded all their beers a few years ago and I understand Sneck lifter is now only brewed occasionally. Madness! Maybe it's a generational thing - the need to be different form their forebears? I know a few socialists who are very small c conservative when it comes to Ale though. Myself included.
"The working class/old petite bourgeoisie Mexican portion of this area have little affinity with woke/social identity leftism." Same is true in Portugal!
Excellent piece Rhyd. Deserves wider readership. You should reach out to 'Ricky from Council Estate Media' on Substack. Very left, very angry but with a sense of humour as well.
Great article. If you want to go down this path further in the US context Erik Olin Wright’s work is def a good place to start (much of it was or is free on his old website). You may find it unsurprisingly that major national surveys make a Marxian measurement of class a bit tricky due to data limitations.
I painfully relate to too much of this. Ironically my retired factory working father is visiting me in Colorado for the first time in a week.
Colorado, especially the more liberal parts, has almost no working class and does not want it. Being here for 10 years and seeing how those with means start tech and other companies operate without any consideration or close relationships to those who may do the physical labor has definitely changed how I see things. It has definitely helped erode any idea that I’m in any way better than anyone yet I’m still stuck between trying to create something financially sustaining for myself and not fall backward into manual labor for a living. I too do not have a farm to go back to.
I also experienced firsthand the bits about the resentment with student loan forgiveness. On the day the 10k student debt was announced I received a call from my cousin who lives in Ohio an hour after it was announced . He was seething and screamed that he gave his life to his job. He wasn’t wrong, yet I didn’t grow up around factories and never saw that not going to school as an option. It’s such an easy political weapon to use, every time the student debt issue is brought up I see bots on social media everywhere stirring up resentment on both sides between those who were able to pay their debts and those who never took out loans.
If you’ve not read Matt Taibbi’s substack post “The Trillion Lie” I highly recommend it. He directly ties the loan issue to the 2008 financial crisis (credit default swaps) where schools raise tuition, the government raises loan amounts, banks offer loans then sell them to other lending institutions, and in the end it’s a debt swap game of musical chairs that everyone knows is going to collapse but hasn’t yet due to borrowers being unable to file bankruptcy and escape them. Additionally it was eye opening to understand the student loan lenders see outstanding debt as assets. So as unpaid student loans increase they can borrow additional funds as if they have real assets.
Here in lies the literal aspect of not being better than anyone. Every night I go to sleep I wake up more in debt. I am a debt asset to the wealthy, they don’t need my physical labor to accrue wealth.
Fantastic essay, thank you for bringing Dan Evans to my attention.
Link (the trillion dollar lie)
https://www.racket.news/p/the-trillion-dollar-lie
Your cousin is definitely not the only person who didn't go to college and resents you being let off the hook for your debts. I know quite a few people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and absolutely hate the idea that in some abstract way they're going to be paying for your shortcut through the college fast lane to a higher income.
I'm in a weird place with that myself as a fellow bootstrapper. I don't resent you though. I don't know how to put this in a way that won't come off condescending so I'll just be blunt: I pity you as a victim of fraud that started with the loan and continued with the schooling. I don't like the idea of bailing you out and leaving people like me and aforementioned friends paying higher taxes or suffering from higher inflation to mend your mistake though.
I would be on board for a debt jubilee that made it the bank's problem for making such stupid loans in the first place, relying on government guarantees that should never have existed and could not realistically be relied upon. Isn't it their job to know when they're making good investments? If anyone is responsible, isn't it the loan officer?
It's the demand that the taxpayer pays for it (and the inflation payer, which affects the most those who can afford it the least) that breeds resentment from our side. But of course neolib politicians work in service to financiers and are only trying to appease you to win your votes, so the answer the neolibs came up with was to stick the bill with the people who were never going to vote for them in the first place: people without college educations.
Getting around to the point: redirecting that resentment to finance and politics might be the task. It would help a lot if people on the receiving end of the student loan bailouts could express some genuine anger that their neighbors and peers are being forced to foot the bill. Be on our side, angry that your sell-out politicians are robbing Peter to pay Paul, instead of relieved that Paul's getting paid on your behalf.
Nailed it
Read Paul Fussell "Social Class In America" and become wise.
There is another class to consider, that of Local Gentry. Think of that guy who owns a chain of local muffler shops. He maybe only has a high school diploma or a certificate from a community college, but may be doing quite well for himself. Or maybe he owns an insurance agency. Regardless, the relationship between Local Gentry to location and capital and that of the PMC is very different.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/trump-american-gentry-wyman-elites/620151/
Once you understand that Team D is the political manifestation of the PMC (with various minorities as junior partners), and Team R does the same for Local Gentry (with white Evangelicals as junior partners), All Will Be Revealed.
This was very illuminating! I had been thinking of class strictly in terms of who does and doesnt have a college degree. Some of the more conservative/moderate substacks look at it this way which I've found helpful since college educated people make up the minority in the US, Australia and the UK.
But I also like this explanation as well because I kept seeing white leftist asserting that people with Master's degrees who work at Walmart are working class which I didn't agree with (and it's not clear how true that even is). But I also read in Jason L. Riley's "Please Stop Helping Us" that if you're college educated but working this sort low skill job, you probably grew up poor.
There's a lot to wrap my mind around. Especially since I keep reading about how elites control society but literally no one has a useful framework on how to deal with that.
So it all just feels like squabbling; white leftists want Black people to get over race so that they can have their fever dream of a multiracial working class revolution, Black liberals and progressives just hate white people and have a revisionist understanding of Black political history to substantiate their frustrations while offering nothing material for Black people except "joy". Asians and Latinos, when liberal, often demand obedience from Blacks while also co-opting Black history for their own racial pet projects.
I am convinced that the only way for things to change is a changing of the guards (ie elites) because I genuinely dont believe that any kind of working class uprising or solidarity project is going to happen. There is not only no desire, but people literally dont see issues as pertaining to class; it's race or bust. Even when affirmative action was ruled as unconstitutional, I saw Black liberals making it about "whiteness" and race.
Literally no class understanding or framework available or of interest.
And "working class", thanks to the media when Trump was elected, is now associated very strongly with racist whites.
And having experienced racism at the hands of white liberals, I can't say that I'm super invested in white led political projects. Even though white people are the ones doing all the necessary thinking and examination of these issues. Unless there are secret books bring published, I don't see any useful insight coming from Black liberals or progressives; only the conservatives.
But I liked this write up!! Thank you for your insight.
You've read lit professor Paul Fussell's book CLASS? He claimed later that it was sort of a joke, but for a long time, it was the only book of its type.
My mother always summarized the over-educated, underpaid as "Champagne tastes, beer salary."