[Cartertonian]

...I wonder what middle class wanker they will find to replace him...

...

...

Now, one of the things I've struggled with in the (nearly six) years I've been a member of PoFo is differentiating between social and economic class. Whether we like it or not, the uninformed majority don't even struggle; they see it as the same thing. Ergo, the 'working class' = the proletariat and the 'middle class' = the bourgeoisie. Yet as I understand what learned colleagues like Pote, TIG, Honi etc have been telling me, this is not the case.

Does the 'inverted snobbery' exhibited by Decky, above, help or hinder the Left's cause?

[layman]

It is very common in the west of Scotland.

It is obviously terrible for the left as many of their supporters and potential supporters are middle class.

[Potemkin]

To be successful in Britain, a proletarian revolution requires at least the tacit support of the lower-middle classes. Decky's brand of 'prolier-than-thou' inverted snobbery therefore hurts the cause of the Left. I happen to share his inverted snobbery, but I'm usually wise enough to curb my tongue, for the reason I've given.

[Social_Critic]

Does the 'inverted snobbery' exhibited by Decky, above, help or hinder the Left's cause?

It´s hard to generalize. Individuals like Hugo Chavez had a deep social resentment, and it showed in his speeches and the people around him. On the other hand Fidel Castro was very middle class, from a Spanish family, and he was mostly a homophobe and a racist who surrounded himself with white folk and didn´t care for dark skinned people.

I´ve lived with leftists all my life, and I see them as mere humans. The only difference I notice sometimes is their two faced nature. They try to pass as freedom and justice loving dudes, then they turn out to be just as bad as nazis when they get the chance. Same shit, different color flag, that´s all.

[fuser]

Ergo, the 'working class' = the proletariat and the 'middle class' = the bourgeoisie

Then who are the rich class? Shouldn't they be the bourgeoisie and poor be working class in this (erroneous) scheme.

If we are trying to juxtapose these two different classification, then I think middle class is basically petite Bourgeoisie and white collar workers. And yes I agree socialism is not the ideology of this white collar worker.

I mean I am one and we also have union affiliated to communist party and we do strike under the red banner but never ever will these people (white collar workers in red union) will actually vote for communists in elections.

[layman]

Point is that Decky and his ilk would 'look down' on a 'white colour' young call center worker with a middle class accent will standing side by side with a train driver or builder on 40k+ a year because of identity politics.

This doesnt match up with the economic reality anymore.

[Rich]

Whether we like it or not, the uninformed majority don't even struggle;

Or do you mean those that haven't bought into Marxist drivel. If we applied economic categories then the Beatles were part of the Bourgoise. Instinctively we know this makes no sense. But of course the leftie ideologues only really want to use economic categories when it suits them. At the time of the 84-85 Miners Arthur Scargill was unambiguously Middle Class. But just look at the Russian Revolution,within a year economically Zinoviev's Smolny institute was no different to a 50's style Golf Club and Freemason societies.

[Heisenberg]

I think it's all just very arbitrary, particularly in Britain (where we're more obsessed with social class than anywhere else that I can think of). What would the prolier-than-thou (fantastic term by the way, Potemkin ) socialists make of the following if they appeared today?

Lenin (middle-class lawyer)
Che Guevara (middle-class doctor)
Fidel Castro (son of a wealthy landowner)
Friedrich Engels (bourgeois factory owner)
George Orwell (landed gentry)

[fuser]

But I can see the point of Decky, considering that how these middle class intellectuals in second half of 20th century virtually destroyed communism in Europe with nonsense of eurocommunism, frankfurt school and the petty sectarianism over trivial theoretical issues.

We do need a surge of working class (blue collar) in upper echelons of the movement.

[Cartertonian]

I don't want to derail my own thread, but...

I happen to share his inverted snobbery

I'd like to know more about the motivation toward such views. To me it seems no different to racism, sexism or homophobia. Someone born to a middle-class family and brought up with middle-class values can't help that, in the same way that they can't help their colour, gender or sexual orientation, but they can at least change and modify their values if they are brought to the realisation that they are misguided.

Point is that Decky and his ilk would 'look down' on a 'white colour' young call center worker with a middle class accent will standing side by side with a train driver or builder on 40k+ a year because of identity politics.

Isn't this the issue? Surely, negative assumptions of social class identity based on accent, mode of dress, nature of employment and other markers are nothing more than symptoms of latent tribalism?

[Rich]

But I can see the point of Decky, considering that how these middle class intellectuals in second half of 20th century virtually destroyed communism in Europe with nonsense of eurocommunism, frankfurt school

Well and why not? It was middle class and upper class intellectuals that created Communism in the first place. Lenin was a noble. Did he do a days manual labour in his life?

and the petty sectarianism over trivial theoretical issues.

Year right and Lenin's argument with Bogdanov was of critical practical importance. Lenin won that faction fight with Bogdanov with the Okrana's help. The Okrana virtually owning the Bolshevik faction inside Russia at the time.

A question for those more knowledgeable of the history of the socialist movement than myself. Can anyone think of another example like Lenin and Trotsky. Two major far left political figures who have separated into defacto different parties who were able to work together after a bitter factional dispute. Extreme sectarianism and factionalism goes right back to Marx. Lenin and Trotsky's 1902 parting of the ways (actually it was in a South London pub) was over a difference of four words in the party programme. It might be less in the original Russian.

[fuser]

Rich, how you managed to miss the "second half of 20th century"?

[Goldberk]

I'm with Carter on this, most of the people Decky describes as middle class are proletarians,

It's an outdated cultural prejudice that hinders the left,

I'm sick of him insulting me with the term just because I live in London, as if that makes me a bad socialist

[Potemkin]

I'm sick of him insulting me with the term just because I live in London, as if that makes me a bad socialist

In Britain, for historical reasons, class hatreds are inextricably intertwined with regional hatreds.

[ThereBeDragons]

Low-level white collar and blue-collar workers are in a similar boat. It is the class of salaried professionals, managers, and small entrepreneurs which constitute the "middle class."

Of these, the salaried professionals are "proletarian", the small entrepreneurs are "petty-bourgeoisie", and the managers are somewhere in-between depending on how high they are up in the company hierarchy. However, none of them identify themselves as "proletarian" and they all choose to think of themselves as "middle-class" instead.

[Goldberk]

Of course, but it's foolish

[Rei Murasame]

Could it be that this whole thing is like a variant of the same thing that happens when Third Worldists apply the theory of 'labour aristocracy' across national boundaries?

It seems that all Decky is doing, is applying it across regions within the UK, rather than to the global south. But that seems weird to me since poverty is certainly not being 'exported' from one part of the UK to another part of the UK. It's pretty uniformly present everywhere in the UK, so if he keeps this up he should logically end up becoming a Third Worldist once he realises that poverty is mostly 'exported' to the global south, and hardly at all to the north-west of England by comparison.

[Goldberk]

However, none of them identify themselves as "proletarian" and they all choose to think of themselves as "middle-class" instead.

I fit into that bracket and identify myself as proletarian.

Could it be that this whole thing is like a variant of the same thing that happens when Third Worldists apply the theory of 'labour aristocracy'

It's similar but less legitimate, it doesn't really apply in the same way across regions (in the UK at least), and Decky is more identifying with cultural difference than a socio-economic argument

[Potemkin]

It seems that all Decky is doing, is applying it across regions within the UK, rather than to the global south. But that seems weird to me since poverty is certainly not being 'exported' from one part of the UK to another part of the UK. It's pretty uniformly present everywhere in the UK, so if he keeps this up he should logically end up becoming a Third Worldist once he realises that poverty is mostly 'exported' to the global south, and hardly at all to the north-west of England by comparison.

For once, I agree with Rei. Decky's inverted snobbery (which is linked with his Mercian chauvinism) is not a politically productive attitude to take. As soon as it is projected onto a global scale, its absurdity becomes obvious.

[Vera Politica]

Point is that Decky and his ilk would 'look down' on a 'white colour' young call center worker with a middle class accent will standing side by side with a train driver or builder on 40k+ a year because of identity politics.

I'm not quite sure that this is right and, if it is, it is a sentiment which I think has been passed on by an older generation. The distinction between white-collar and blue-collar mapped not only a distinction between a type of labor but a distinction between social class that tracked cultural capital. White collar workers tended to be educated, have middle class tastes, etc. Today's call centre worker is not educated, has popular tastes, etc. There are a variety of ways to employ the distinction between white collar and blue collar, but the most important and relevant sense in which it was employed was to distinguish between the educated and non-educated workforce. This has become irrelevant and the distinction is eroding in peoples' minds. That being said, we still do distinguish between middle class jobs and working class jobs, it is just that the collar colors are no longer tracking this distinction. In any case, the distinction is a social, not an economic one.

Low-level white collar and blue-collar workers are in a similar boat. It is the class of salaried professionals, managers, and small entrepreneurs which constitute the "middle class."

Yes and no. There is an important socio-cultural components to this distinction and many small business owners are socially working class, not middle class. They have little to no access to cultural capital, etc. An obvious example would be a recent immigrant running a small family business. In this sense they constitute a different economic class, but it is less clear that they constitute a different social class.