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> the left have lost touch with the lower classes How do you define "lower classes"? If you mean household income then quite the opposite is true: https://www.

> the left have lost touch with the lower classes How do you define "lower classes"? If you mean household income then quite the opposite is true: https://www.people-press.org/2016/09/13/2016-party-identification-detailed-tables/ https://www.people-press.org/2016/09/13/2016-party-identific...

chippy 7y ago
I'll try to describe it. The stats are correct in that the working classes have shrunk. In the UK, Labour was the champion of the working class, now they look upon the same people as "vulnerable people". Losing touch in that way and instead adopting a more paternalist role towards them due to a much larger middle class. The left used to work with the poor, now they work for the poor, if that makes sense? Socialism now is no longer about the working class but about the middle class looking after the working class.
- pytester 7y ago
  >In the UK, Labour was the champion of the working class, now they look upon the same people as "vulnerable people" This is false. Labour is undergoing a reversal in the policy of the blairite years where they tied their mast to corporate/NGO elites and decoupled themselves from unions. Unions now have a lot more power (including official voting power / influence over the NEC) in the Labour party than they ever have and corporate influence has waned almost completely.
  - youngtaff 7y ago
    Let's face it the union fat cats want power and they want it so they can get their industries nationalised because it gives them more power rather than for the good of the general UK population. We've got better things, more urgent things to spend money on that nationalising utilities etc. (we can control them through regulation anyway)
    - JetSpiegel 7y ago
      > we can control them through regulation anyway If that would be true, the level of service wouldn't have degraded to the point nationalization is a reasonable (and popular) proposal.
  - ggm 7y ago
    This is false. Taking this sentence and considering the context of widescale argumentative and vituperative language do you think another way of saying this, like'thats not right' or 'thats not correct' or 'i think you are mistaken' might actually be important?
- tossAfterUsing 7y ago
  If any of you think you're not working class, I would suggest a thought experiment: Could you stop working permanently today, continue to thrive & not experience a change in lifestyle? if the answer is 'no', you're still working class. 'class consciousness' includes these three categories: - Working - Managing - Ruling The managing class is there between the ruling & working classes, doing it's job to tell you what to think & tell the ruling class how you're responding to leadership.
  - chosenbreed37 7y ago
    I agree with you reasoning. I think in the UK the term "working class" tends to mean something different from what you're describing generally speaking. By your reasoning I'd say well over 95% of the population would be working class. However if ask people on the street many would say they're middle-class. Some might even admit to being upper middle class but the vast majority of them still have get out of bed Monday to Friday and do something that earns money.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - alasdair_ 7y ago
      Exactly. "Working class" means, typically, that they are from a family of blue-collar workers. "middle class" is essentially white collar "upper class" really means the aristocracy/ long-term establishment. Even a CEO making millions a year would be called "upper middle class" unless they came from an old established family.
  - svachalek 7y ago
    This sounds like something from the 1800s. At least in the US, "working class" is more or less synonymous with "blue collar". It's hard to define exactly and a lot of people in this category would call themselves middle class instead. But, I've never heard anyone say that a doctor is "working class" because they're not independently wealthy.
- InvisibleCities 7y ago
  This was definitely true during the Blairite New Labor days, but it's extraordinarily disingenuous to claim that Corbyn doesn't understand the needs of working Britons.
  - chippy 7y ago
    "working britons" is not the same thing as "the working class" In fact, the Conservatives adopted a similar term in their campaigns of a few years ago "Working People". Apparently it didn't do them any good but it's worth pointing out. I think Labour does understand working people and they understand working class people too - they just have lost touch their their working class roots and are middle class now.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      The Tories brought their narrative of "hard working families" to implicitly stigmatise those not working. Such as those too sick to work, and receiving the benefits the Tories were busy cutting. Even though most benefit recipients are in work.
- tunesmith 7y ago
  The working class should be the middle class. If they've diverged, then the answer why points to what kinds of problems need to be solved.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    That's an American definition of "middle class", though, and the problem with it is that's rather fuzzy, since it merely delineates some arbitrary income range. In the UK and other places, the term was linked more to being your boss (e.g. being an independent professional and/or owning a small business). Of course, now that (as a song in my country put it), "one has to study to be a slave", this may be harder to cleanly distinguish.
alasdair_ 7y ago
>How do you define "lower classes"? If you mean household income It's interesting that in the USA "class" refers almost exclusively to wealth. In the UK "class" has a slightly different meaning and relates to everything from genealogy to which school you went to social grace. As an example, a "Lord" who went to Eton and comes from an old family will always be upperclass, even if they are bankrupt and worth less than nothing, with no income at all. It's not quite a caste system as class mobility IS a thing but it's not simply wealth either.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  I don't think it does correspond directly to wealth in the US; it's sociological. There are rich working class people; my former landlord was a high school graduate who put in sheet rock for a living and ran a jiu jitsu studio. He made his dough the old fashioned Horatio Alger way: thrift and hard work. Same age as me, and a lot better off. I, his tenant had less money than him and am solidly upper middle class in lifestyle, from my foamy coffee drinks, to my Subaru, salary, education and occupation. We're the same age, and he has more dough, but he can't move in the circles I can, and his upside is probably capped at owning a couple of residential apartment buildings. He's also crippled from arthritis, and I'm not. Most of the time, though, upper middle class people have more money than working class people. It's more subtle than the UK system, but roughly speaking this is the model for the world. Professionals constitute a social class. The fact that professionals have mostly taken over the left wing parties and turned them into Blairite/Clintonite "who cares about the poors" neoliberal parties, the middle and working classes are basically in revolt against them. All over the world. Trump, Brexit, Giletes Jaunes and so on. It's not going to change until there are economic reforms which accrue some wealth to lower classes. This will almost certainly involve immigration reform (as in stop importing so many new residents and making labor so cheap), taxation (professionals can pay more tax) and economic protectionism for important unskilled labor groups. Which of course, the upper middle professional classes absolutely freak out about because it's against their class interests.

chippy 7y ago

I'll try to describe it. The stats are correct in that the working classes have shrunk. In the UK, Labour was the champion of the working class, now they look upon the same people as "vulnerable people". Losing touch in that way and instead adopting a more paternalist role towards them due to a much larger middle class. The left used to work with the poor, now they work for the poor, if that makes sense? Socialism now is no longer about the working class but about the middle class looking after the working class.

pytester 7y ago
>In the UK, Labour was the champion of the working class, now they look upon the same people as "vulnerable people" This is false. Labour is undergoing a reversal in the policy of the blairite years where they tied their mast to corporate/NGO elites and decoupled themselves from unions. Unions now have a lot more power (including official voting power / influence over the NEC) in the Labour party than they ever have and corporate influence has waned almost completely.
- youngtaff 7y ago
  Let's face it the union fat cats want power and they want it so they can get their industries nationalised because it gives them more power rather than for the good of the general UK population. We've got better things, more urgent things to spend money on that nationalising utilities etc. (we can control them through regulation anyway)
  - JetSpiegel 7y ago
    > we can control them through regulation anyway If that would be true, the level of service wouldn't have degraded to the point nationalization is a reasonable (and popular) proposal.
- ggm 7y ago
  This is false. Taking this sentence and considering the context of widescale argumentative and vituperative language do you think another way of saying this, like'thats not right' or 'thats not correct' or 'i think you are mistaken' might actually be important?
tossAfterUsing 7y ago
If any of you think you're not working class, I would suggest a thought experiment: Could you stop working permanently today, continue to thrive & not experience a change in lifestyle? if the answer is 'no', you're still working class. 'class consciousness' includes these three categories: - Working - Managing - Ruling The managing class is there between the ruling & working classes, doing it's job to tell you what to think & tell the ruling class how you're responding to leadership.
- chosenbreed37 7y ago
  I agree with you reasoning. I think in the UK the term "working class" tends to mean something different from what you're describing generally speaking. By your reasoning I'd say well over 95% of the population would be working class. However if ask people on the street many would say they're middle-class. Some might even admit to being upper middle class but the vast majority of them still have get out of bed Monday to Friday and do something that earns money.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    Exactly. "Working class" means, typically, that they are from a family of blue-collar workers. "middle class" is essentially white collar "upper class" really means the aristocracy/ long-term establishment. Even a CEO making millions a year would be called "upper middle class" unless they came from an old established family.
- svachalek 7y ago
  This sounds like something from the 1800s. At least in the US, "working class" is more or less synonymous with "blue collar". It's hard to define exactly and a lot of people in this category would call themselves middle class instead. But, I've never heard anyone say that a doctor is "working class" because they're not independently wealthy.
InvisibleCities 7y ago
This was definitely true during the Blairite New Labor days, but it's extraordinarily disingenuous to claim that Corbyn doesn't understand the needs of working Britons.
- chippy 7y ago
  "working britons" is not the same thing as "the working class" In fact, the Conservatives adopted a similar term in their campaigns of a few years ago "Working People". Apparently it didn't do them any good but it's worth pointing out. I think Labour does understand working people and they understand working class people too - they just have lost touch their their working class roots and are middle class now.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    The Tories brought their narrative of "hard working families" to implicitly stigmatise those not working. Such as those too sick to work, and receiving the benefits the Tories were busy cutting. Even though most benefit recipients are in work.
tunesmith 7y ago
The working class should be the middle class. If they've diverged, then the answer why points to what kinds of problems need to be solved.
- icebraining 7y ago
  That's an American definition of "middle class", though, and the problem with it is that's rather fuzzy, since it merely delineates some arbitrary income range. In the UK and other places, the term was linked more to being your boss (e.g. being an independent professional and/or owning a small business). Of course, now that (as a song in my country put it), "one has to study to be a slave", this may be harder to cleanly distinguish.

alasdair_ 7y ago

>How do you define "lower classes"? If you mean household income It's interesting that in the USA "class" refers almost exclusively to wealth. In the UK "class" has a slightly different meaning and relates to everything from genealogy to which school you went to social grace. As an example, a "Lord" who went to Eton and comes from an old family will always be upperclass, even if they are bankrupt and worth less than nothing, with no income at all. It's not quite a caste system as class mobility IS a thing but it's not simply wealth either.

scottlocklin 7y ago
I don't think it does correspond directly to wealth in the US; it's sociological. There are rich working class people; my former landlord was a high school graduate who put in sheet rock for a living and ran a jiu jitsu studio. He made his dough the old fashioned Horatio Alger way: thrift and hard work. Same age as me, and a lot better off. I, his tenant had less money than him and am solidly upper middle class in lifestyle, from my foamy coffee drinks, to my Subaru, salary, education and occupation. We're the same age, and he has more dough, but he can't move in the circles I can, and his upside is probably capped at owning a couple of residential apartment buildings. He's also crippled from arthritis, and I'm not. Most of the time, though, upper middle class people have more money than working class people. It's more subtle than the UK system, but roughly speaking this is the model for the world. Professionals constitute a social class. The fact that professionals have mostly taken over the left wing parties and turned them into Blairite/Clintonite "who cares about the poors" neoliberal parties, the middle and working classes are basically in revolt against them. All over the world. Trump, Brexit, Giletes Jaunes and so on. It's not going to change until there are economic reforms which accrue some wealth to lower classes. This will almost certainly involve immigration reform (as in stop importing so many new residents and making labor so cheap), taxation (professionals can pay more tax) and economic protectionism for important unskilled labor groups. Which of course, the upper middle professional classes absolutely freak out about because it's against their class interests.