Middle Class Self Loathing

vimothy

yurp
That value system was also imposed on the middle class in a similar timeframe as well. Life didn't always revolve around career, lifestyle and leisure activities.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Also I think one of the points K-Punk was making was that teaching/lecturing was becoming increasingly precarious and proletarianised. Which is correct, but that has broadly happened to all workers in recent history.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Unfortunately, right-wing politicians and the media entities that support them have got extremely good at persuading the struggling lower middle classes that their plight is due to the indigence and greed of the people lower down the ladder than themselves - immigrants, 'scroungers', single mums, all the usual suspects - instead of directing their anger upwards at the cunts that are running (and ruining) the whole show. So what's needed is a political movement that can appeal to workers in the most general sense, regardless of whether they sit at a desk or a checkout.

And that's not going to happen while the left is fractured between old-school socialists who still talk about 'the bourgeoisie' like they're The Enemy, because to them 'middle class' means stockbrokers who live in big houses in Surrey, and middle-class students who see the world only through the lens of identity politics and have a strong suspicion that working-class people - the white ones, anyway - are a bunch of ghastly ignorant racists.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The 'champagne socialists' thing is interesting, because it's essentially saying that you've no right to wish to change or abolish a system from which you've benefited (and in all probability continue to benefit from). I guess the idea is that 'champagne socialists' aren't doing more than playing at being socialists, because, if push came to shove, they wouldn't want to give up their bourgeoisie accoutrements for the sake of egalitarianism.

Perhaps this is something to do with it. Is BSL a liberal/left phenomenon, for the most part? I doubt the sort of middle class people who read The Daily Mail are self-loathing, although they may still deride liberal/left people as 'middle class lefties', I suppose. There's this guilt, among liberal middle class people, surrounding the enjoyment of privileges which we're conscious of not 'deserving' - because we believe (in theory, at least), in egalitarianism, and therefore feel a profound anxiety over our own enjoyment of quinoa and Glastonbury Festival.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
As for the broader question, middle class self loathing is probably an OK price to pay for being middle class.

I suspect that it is only really something that affects more socially aware middle class people though.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
True up to a point, but the middle classes in many countries - certainly this one - have been getting absolutely shat on since 2007-8. Having a degree from a Russell Group university and knowing how to pronounce 'quinoa' are not the ticket to a decent job that they once were.

At this point it's probably worth distinguishing between class as a cultural phenomenon and class in purely economic terms, because really, contra Tony Blair, the great majority of people are economically working class, in that they sell their labour to an employer, regardless of whether they're a teacher, a bus driver, an engineer or whatever. Going by this classification, most people you'd call middle class have far more interests in common with working-class people than they do with the upper middle class, who increasingly are looking like the aristocracy of days gone by, in that they don't actually 'work' at all but generate wealth simply by owning wealth (the investor/speculator/landlord class).

I do agree with your first paragraph, but important to qualify what that means in reality. That SOME middle class people (mostly under 35) are finding it much more difficult to get a decent job than they once did. Certainly. But, if you look at most professions, they're still colonised by middle class people - there's a hell of a lot of people still walking into high-flying jobs who aren't anything special but have the right class profile. Plus middle class people aged 35-50, say, they have the track record sown up already (whether they're useless in reality or not) and so didn't get shat on in the same way.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I suspect that it is only really something that affects more socially aware middle class people though.

Yeah, I think it is more of a leftist thing. I guess left-leaning people just generally feel guilty and depressed about the whole social system as a whole. And being middle class is in a sense being complicit in that system, whereas if you're working class you're sort of in opposition to it. (Because you're losing it.)
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Perhaps this is something to do with it. Is BSL a liberal/left phenomenon, for the most part? I doubt the sort of middle class people who read The Daily Mail are self-loathing, although they may still deride liberal/left people as 'middle class lefties', I suppose.

The middle class oscilates between self-guilt and self-righteousness.
 

vimothy

yurp
Another related question is whether "middle class self-loathing" is directed against the middle class as a class or whether its a broader notion of the self that the middle class is able to distance itself from.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
As you've not read much of his material you should be able to provide a reference for the bits you have quoted?

The piece that really sticks in my mind was him writing about feeling his heart swell with working-class pride at the sight of obese mums passing their obese kids pies and burgers through the gates of a school at lunch break, thereby sabotaging that awful middle-class do-gooder Jamie Oliver’s healthy school meals programme. It’s like, following the collapse of heavy industry and most kinds of traditional manual labour, the best way for working-class people to express their class identity is by eating as shitty a diet as possible to spite ‘do-gooders’? It just struck me as amazingly puerile and nihilistic – and, quite frankly, snobbish. As if it’s somehow appropriate for working-class people to eat mass-produced crap. The sort of attitude a cartoon toff might have, but with the value judgement reversed – just like zhao used to do all the time with race stereotypes.

(BTW, I totally get the Jamie hatred. I think his healthy school meals crusade is largely earnest but his insistence on aping the diction and mannerisms of a 1950s cockney barrow boy despite having had a reasonably privileged upbringing is extremely grating.)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But, if you look at most professions, they're still colonised by middle class people - there's a hell of a lot of people still walking into high-flying jobs who aren't anything special but have the right class profile.

Sure, but I think the point I was making is that the gap in wealth and opportunity between the top and bottom ends of the middle class is a lot bigger than that between working class and lower-middle. Or to put it another way, does it make sense to put a teacher earning 25k and an executive earning ten times that in the 'same' social class?
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Or to put it another way, does it make sense to put a teacher earning 25k and an executive earning ten times that in the 'same' social class?

Depends on where you put your emphasis on. Both groups may have a very similar formal way of education (both groups college educated), but likely differ in terms of not only income, but also values/political views.

Probematic also when being used ("collage graduates vote this") as a category regarding social science/polling/explaining election results. Add to that, there are still relatively high paid blue color jobs out there.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Sure, but I think the point I was making is that the gap in wealth and opportunity between the top and bottom ends of the middle class is a lot bigger than that between working class and lower-middle. Or to put it another way, does it make sense to put a teacher earning 25k and an executive earning ten times that in the 'same' social class?

I think you're right on wealth, but wrong on opportunity (to make that wealth), which is the more important factor in the whole argument To the question - yes, up to a point, because mostly they came from the same strata of opportunity - the rest depends on their choices. Not to put too fine a point on it, I had all the middle class advantages to be able to go and make a sizeable amount of money in my early 20s if I had wanted to - it was a choice not to, not a direct choice not to make money, but to work in another part of the economy where money is less plentiful. Perhaps more fool me that I didn't...

the attributes of middle classness gain you access to all kinds of opportunities, if you want to take them. I think anyone who denies that is fooling themselves. That said, obvioulsy more middle class people have been squeezed since 2008, no argument with that.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think you're right on wealth, but wrong on opportunity (to make that wealth), which is the more important factor in the whole argument To the question - yes, up to a point, because mostly they came from the same strata of opportunity - the rest depends on their choices. Not to put too fine a point on it, I had all the middle class advantages to be able to go and make a sizeable amount of money in my early 20s if I had wanted to - it was a choice not to, not a direct choice not to make money, but to work in another part of the economy where money is less plentiful. Perhaps more fool me that I didn't...

the attributes of middle classness gain you access to all kinds of opportunities, if you want to take them. I think anyone who denies that is fooling themselves. That said, obvioulsy more middle class people have been squeezed since 2008, no argument with that.

You also need to take into account the critical importance of a university education for many (most?) worthwhile kinds of careers these days, and how much this now costs. We're now looking at significant numbers of young people whose parents got a university education for free but who will either choose not to go at all, or will go and suffer the financial effects for years and perhaps decades after they graduate.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
"I am privileged with my nausea, my nausea is a privilege."

Middle class self-loathing, resentment, etc is a form of slave morality that helps keep the middle class (all classes) complaisant & betwitched, by operating as a material obstacle for creating friendships/groups that cut across class lines. The subversive political move must be to externalize privilege, where it exists, into concrete actions, á la Engels, in other words, to spend it, instead of internalizing functionally depressing identities. "Check your privilege" means, in effect, "Subjectivize yourself as an unhappy consciousness." That is, put yourself under the control of a crypto-priest.
 

mind_philip

saw the light
When I was growing up in Southampton (in the 1980s) I felt resolutely middle class, by virtue of the fact that my mum fixated on middle class signifiers like accent and behaviour when we were young, and because (as far as I was aware) we lived in a reasonably nice house in a reasonably nice part of Hampshire. I think I might even have been taunted as posh at one point because my dad made sure our shoes were polished every day before we went to school (he had a skilled job outside of the traditional professions).

Then I went to university (first generation in my family to do so) and wound up working at a big tech company in London. Pretty much everyone I have worked with subsequently was privately educated, had university educated professional parents, yet would identify as middle class if challenged. So, you can go from middle class posho to oily prole in this country just by changing where you live.
 
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