21 ms·

Class Bullshitters

• PaulHoule 5y ago
  A "working class" person in the US is blue collar. "working class" is a subaltern identity in the UK, that is a victim of social pathology, probably not even actually working. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_to_Labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_to_Labour I'd say though that culture studies today talks about "race, class and gender" but largely ignores class. I know plenty of white people who have black problems including a tendency towards meaningless but dangerous contacts with the police, but if you never got more than 50 miles from the coast you might not know there is such as thing as a hillbilly.
  • codeflo 5y ago
    It is talked about, but maybe not to the extent that it could be. For obvious historic reasons, race and class are highly correlated. I think this causes certain class issues to disguise as race issues and vice versa. To be clear, both kinds of discrimination exist, both are terrible. But people are sometimes bad at separating correlated variables intuitively. And, how do I put it, the social sciences don’t have the reputation to always use the most statistically sound methods.
    • Forgeties79 5y ago
      I’d say it’s less “disguised” and more lack of awareness of the Venn diagram going on.
    • laurent92 5y ago
      Also, people discriminate so much on class that it may not be an advantage to be of a higher class. I can’t count the ways people invent criteria, such as “street cred”, to prefer some people upon others. “Humble”, “son of worker”, “comes from the hood” are other criteria people use to justify unfairness. Ironically, streed cred is so cheatable that the only ones we let down are the actual middle classes with strong sense of work, because they pass as supposedly rich. The middle and higher classes end up with heaps of resentment which harms society (I remember events such as a girl telling me “I ruined your reputation at school but I was wrong, you were the good guy. Oh sorry for your high school btw.”) Class warfare is no good thing.
  • samhw 5y ago
    > probably not actually working This is how we got the hilarious "but I don't work!" clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXZ52-XgUjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXZ52-XgUjA
  • pjc50 5y ago
    Quite a lot of people who identify as "working class" are retired, which produces even more policy nonsense.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• vmception 5y ago
  Would love to have this conversation about the US but UK class system just doesnt influence enough to be so complicated
  • exdsq 5y ago
    In what way doesn’t it influence enough? The political system in the UK is fairly broken such that PPE at Oxford will get you a long way in your goal to being an MP, and going to a public school gets you a long way towards getting into Oxford, which is a classist system with practical output
    • vmception 5y ago
      I was thinking enough outside of the UK, or that the UK isn't big enough and more irrelevant with its new isolationist direction
      • exdsq 5y ago
        Still the 6th largest economy with seats on the UN Security Council and others - it might be going the way of Switzerland (that’s the model most Brexiters I know want) but that doesn’t mean it’s fading away into obscurity on the global stage (This is coming from someone who left the UK for the US and hopes to move to Asia afterwards, so mildly biased but not that much)
    • nailer 5y ago
      So does doing well at a grammar school (which in turn is determined by your ability rather than your class).
      • exdsq 5y ago
        Doing well in a grammar school works to an extent but still disproportionately less than say Eton. You can see this by just looking at current cabinet ministers
  • ghaff 5y ago
• karaterobot 5y ago
  Understating your class background is a way to get around a couple of different problems: if you are successful in life, your successes are magnified because they are self-made, or even made despite the odds being against you. On the other hand, if you are not as successful as you'd like, a rougher background offers a handy justification for that. The underlying message is "my successes are more impressive, my failures aren't really my fault".
• dijit 5y ago
  I get quite annoyed at this because personally I have faced extreme adversity and only through sheer dumb luck of loving computers from an early age have I been able to escape my circumstances. I’ll say it clearer for anyone who missed that: luck. A lot of social issues in the uk are primarily class based, you won’t even be aware of the jobs you’ll be looked over for because you didn’t go to the right school, and those “right schools” pre-select based on background. “Daddy is a barrister, I guess we let this one in?!” In the event you are born with privilege you prefer to be underestimated, I don’t think I’ve met many upper class people who are genuinely happy being removed from the masses. Maybe it’s a grass is always greener thing. Myself, I speak with a middle class accent, desperate not to be thrown back to where I came from.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • dimgl 5y ago
    > only through sheer dumb luck of loving computers It's not healthy to frame it this way in your mind. It almost sounds like you're ashamed of how easy it was for you to escape your circumstances. Remember that the good times don't actually last forever, and you might reach a ceiling in your career that other people in other professions don't have to deal with. Also, being a software engineer isn't the only profession that pays well. It just so happens that due to modernity, it's extremely accessible.
    • haliskerbas 5y ago
      Genuinely asking, as someone who frames my own circumstances similarly, what would you say is a healthy way to frame things?
      • sugarpile 5y ago
        Fwiw I disagree with it being unhealthy and I view myself the same way. It IS lucky that my only hobby/interest I’ve ever really had also happens to be something that pays so well. Nothing unhealthy about recognizing one’s luck and being correspondingly grateful for it.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  People are trying to say, “I worked for/earned what I have.” I think it’s as simple as that. If you’ve see the show Schitt’s Creek, think of the two adult children in that show. People want to not be seen as that.
• nailer 5y ago
  > They did all the cleaning, all the cooking, all the entertaining, and all the decorating and did really well. If you’re cleaning foeces off the side of someone else’s room toilet you’re working class. I’m not sure why the author thinks it’s obvious that “her grandparents owned a hotel” means she’s not, like the quote above doesn’t count for anything.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • achenet 5y ago
    Historically, those who owned property were the haves, and those who worked it were the have-nots. Médiéval lord/peasant, Cotton plantation owner/African slaves, Captialist/worker, etc. As such, owning a hotel, which is a business that can provide you with revenue without you working (obviously in this case the grandparents did choose to work, but could have chosen to have other do the work for them and still reap the profits), generally makes you upper class. For another argument- If you own a hotel, you have a net worth greater than at least 80% of the population, and hence are upper middle/upper class. A hobo on the street corner might work less, but has net worth 0, hence is lower class, which is often used as a synomym for working class
    • nailer 5y ago
      > obviously in this case the grandparents did choose to work, but could have chosen to have other do the work for them and still reap the profits Why is that obvious? It seems to me the profits weren’t great as indicated by the grandparents cleaning.
• devoutsalsa 5y ago
  I'm a 1st level bard / 1st level fight / 12th level psionicist.
  • cudgy 5y ago
    Interesting combo. Did you start out as a drunk bar singer with a propensity for fighting and later decide to pursue the art of mind control? Or were you a devout mind control expert who dabbled with the guitar and a few Martial arts classes along the way?
• rayiner 5y ago
  This is kind of an odd framing because the traditional notion of class is hereditary. If you look at it one way, my wife and I are the same class—professional degrees from the same school working for similar professional firms. At one point we lived in virtually identical 1950s split levels, on opposite sides of the country. But my family was affluent landowners for generations “back in old country” and my wife’s family comes from a poor rural part of the Oregon coast. Our acculturation and is completely different. My dad thinks and acts like someone whose dad had sharecroppers tending their farm, and her dad thinks and acts like someone whose dad hunted game to add protein to the family’s diet. And my dad raised me and her dad raised her and we still think and act differently as a result. It wouldn’t be a “lie,” as the title suggests, for her to say she comes from a working class background and for me to say that I don’t.
  • lozenge 5y ago
    I would say she comes from a working class background and is middle class or "middle class passing". Meaning when she goes to a job interview, or meets people socially, they think she is middle class. The concern the author of the piece has is that if she says she's working class, it will suggest she overcame adversity to get to where she is, but from your comment, it's possible she grew up in an area with good middle-class-school-district-funded schools. Or maybe she went to a bad school and qualified for financial aid, I don't know. Our parents' attitudes which you're talking about can affect us, but so does our material circumstances and environment. In the UK where there's a stronger class based system, middle class is expressed through your accent and dialect, how you dress, etc.
  • dan-robertson 5y ago
    Well it’s somewhat hereditary. I often see class in the US described as exactly equivalent to which bucket of income/wealth you fall into, which is certainly not hereditary and feels obviously wrong too: I think a poorly paid academic or teacher is likely to be considered higher class than a successful used car dealership owner. I say it’s somewhat hereditary because it seems at least a little malleable over people’s lives, at least with university and certain professions socialising people into the middle class. I don’t really understand the subject of the article mattering much in life though. Social class matters a lot in the U.K. but no one asks which class you identify with before they decide how to treat you. Instead, it matters which class you present and I suspect the middle-class-identifying-as-working-class will present as middle class both in obvious ways (e.g. accent, grooming, dress) and more subtle ways (e.g. choice of words or phrases, being able to comfortably/knowledgeably talk about certain things). I also don’t really understand the politics of class or the class people identify as today. Maybe I just have a simplistic view of history, but it seems the ideas of working/middle/upper classes don’t really fit today’s society and I’m often surprised when I see contemporary political arguments based on this class system.
• ecshafer 5y ago
  A marxist class analysis clears this issue up pretty well, as its based on the relationship to labor and capital. The example interviewee would be working class based on their relationship to capital. Grandparents that own a hotel (assuming its not a large chain) would be petite bourgeoisie, as they own a small amount of capital, but must work to make it productive and are therefore still a kind of working class. The accountant father is still working class, as he must work for a living, but would be considered Private Managerial Class, as they are rewarded well for their skills within capital.
  • reedf1 5y ago
    This is true, but British social class is much more complicated than that.
• jonathanstrange 5y ago
  Is "class" still considered a meaningful term in sociology? Does it even exist? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm interested in a scientific answer.
  • tjader 5y ago
    I am also interested in this. I don't understand how it makes sense to talk about "class" in such a discrete way. Is a FAANG engineer who earns $250k/year really an oppressed proletarian? Is the small bakery owner who struggles to make ends meet really a bourgeois because he owns a mean of production?
    • orthecreedence 5y ago
      If you're looking at it through a Marxist lens, then it depends. Is the FAANGer a part owner of the company? Is the baker using their control of the MoP to extract value/profit from employees who have no stake or say in the bakery? I think people get wrapped up in how difficult something is perceived to be and how much a particular occupation is compensated (ie, the modern version of "class"), but underlying dynamics are much more important if you're talking about working class vs owner class. The assumption here is that the baker works hard and gets little from it, therefor it's fine if they exploit labor, and the FAANGer plays ping pong all day and gets an assload of money for it, therefor it's okay if they have no say in their place of work. Granted, then you get into things like the stock market, and suddenly most people are absentee owners in some company they've never set foot into, so things get weird...
      • leetcrew 5y ago
        the example kinda shows that a basic Marxist analysis doesn't reveal much useful insight about the modern world. the faang engineer's stock is probably worth more than the bakery to begin with, but it doesn't actually give them any control over the MoP. if they really wanted to, they could become the bakery owner. but that would be an indulgence, not a smart financial move.
• mvc 5y ago
  But "solidly middle" is still working class really. My sister has a degree, and is a nurse of a about 5-7 years. Her husband also has a degree (and even went to private school) and does local government procurement paying ~35k. I'm sure the author would describe both as "solidly middle". They're still wondering how on earth they're supposed to pay for childcare, energy, mortgage. If the car breaks down, they're in trouble.
  • brimble 5y ago
    Discussing this is a mess for a bunch of reasons, including that no-one bothers to agree on a framework before starting to argue over it, and that there's overlapping terminology, and there are major differences between countries. So you've got "lower/middle/upper-middle/upper" (or more nuanced versions like Fussell's that add a few more), you've got "working/professional/upper", et c, and terms get recycled such that some will say "lower" in the first is the same as "working" (and distinct from "middle") and so on. Then, on top of that, it's all different in Britain. Plus there's the distinction between income and socialized class, which are tied up together, but which aren't identical, and lots of discussions take place without anyone bothering to specify which they're talking about. [EDIT] Oh and then of course there's Marxist analysis. Folks should lead with explaining their angle and definitions, otherwise discussion about class tends to be a bunch of people talking past one another.
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Because our moral values are wrong. We should be celebrating richness, not poverty. Unfortunately, victimhood is trendy these days and I feel most of it can be traced back to marxism. Why should we celebrate richness? If you're richer than your peers you did something that society considered valuable. Money is the ultimate form of direct democracy. Now, we can argue that people in Wall Street are screwing up people left and right, that governments can print off money and that governments can force people to give them money. These are serious issues and I'm the first one to say something should be done about these - but still, the people in Wall Street are providing financial services that businesses find useful. And those businesses provide useful services to people, so the richness of Wall Street can be traced back to useful services. Governments printing money affects the market via inflation. Nothing much can be done about governments taking money from people under the threat of incarceration (unless you have an army), but the government is, in most countries, a form of indirect democracy - so the government still end up providing some value to end users with the money they forcefully took. Sure, part of it get burned in the inefficiency of centralisation and bureaucracy but most of it keeps going around (eg. by paying contractors to fix the roads). Therefore, I think becoming rich can absolutely become a moral value and I think the world would be better that way. In the words of the working class hero 50 cent: Get rich or die tryin'.
  • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    That's an antique notion that died in the '80s? Once the rules changed, the rich started skimming from every transaction (money tranfers, dividends, security exchanges, and on and on) until they have almost all the money. The rest of us serve at their pleasure. That's not how it was supposed to work. You were supposed to succeed from being part of the generation of wealth. Not just sitting and skimming while everybody else works. And then passing it on to your heirs. I wish it worked as you describe. That's where we need to get back to.
  • pjc50 5y ago
    > If you're richer than your peers you did something that society considered valuable Get born of the right parents? Meet the right oligarch?
  • 5y ago
• fredley 5y ago
  I think one of the things going on has to do with a decade or so of 'reality' TV being a primary source of entertainment for many (most?) people. And in particular one aspect: the 'sob story'. On any TV show, and in the media in general, there are a few different competition formats (a la Bake Off, The Apprentice, BGT, etc.) but all include a 'sob story' element, particularly near the end as we get to know more about the contestants. Every single person selected by the producers for these shows has some factor in their life that they've overcome to get this far. Individually, this makes for an engaging TV show, we warm to the characters because they have a good story, but overall the effect is damaging, I think. The effect is to create a system that only allows people to feel successful if they've overcome some terrible adversity. It's not enough to come from a comfortable, middle class background, do well in school and then lead a moderately successful life. What have you really achieved if you've done this? Most people in the UK live reasonably comfortable, stable lives (modulo class). Since—according to my theory—people need to feel like they have something to overcome in order to be allowed to feel successful, people will overstate hardships, and focus on and amplify negative events and circumstances in their lives in order to feel validated.
  • newacc9 5y ago
    Victimhood is equated with morality, furthermore victims are entitled to compensation. There's incentive to be seen as a victim, because it screams both "I am moral, and I am entitled to compensation" It happens at both the individual level and at group levels. Its sort of a key to understanding modernity.
    • thelettere 5y ago
      Also, being a victim and being privileged are generally seen as mutually exclusive, so it's a way to avoid guilt. And with the infinite torrent of knowledge (including of the amount of suffering in the world) at our fingertips, guilt is an ever-present temptation for anyone with means.
      • newacc9 5y ago
        You see this with public figures, they do something horrible/super-unpopular and then they whine and say "I've been getting death threats" to posture as victims (maybe they are getting threats and maybe they aren't, but the effect is the same -- ie that they are transformed in the public consciousness into moral beings)
• Biologist123 5y ago
  Contrarian opinion: the class system in Britain is the legacy of an ethnic hierarchy which has (1) matured and become a little fuzzy over the course of a thousand years, and (2) is obscured by the fact all ethnic groups are white. Normans at the top of the hierarchy (Queenie is a descendant of William the Bastard), Angles, Saxons, Vikings in the middle, Celts at the bottom. This ethnic difference contributes to quite different class cultures. I read this is relevant to the US, as Celts by and large settled the Appalachian uplands where soils were poor, and the population of the mountains has maintained a distinct Celtic culture and position in the US class hierarchy. Additional aside, UK weird hostility to red heads (often remarked upon by visitors) is in fact legacy hostility to Celts.
  • starwind 5y ago
    See "Surnames and social mobility in England, 1170–2012" https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60593/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Cummins,%20N_Surnames_Cummins_Surnames_2015.pdf https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60593/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRAR...
    • dash2 5y ago
      Or the book The Son Also Rises. (All Greg Clark’s book titles are Hemingway puns.)
  • brimble 5y ago
    > I read this is relevant to the US, as Celts by and large settled the Appalachian uplands where soils were poor, and the population of the mountains has maintained a distinct Celtic culture and position in the US class hierarchy. These are largely the "Scots-Irish", as we call them in the US. They originate as the Borderers, that is, the lowland folks who lived on the border of Scotland and England (an effectively lawless region for a long stretch of time). At some point a bunch of them were shipped off to Ireland, then a bunch of those moved to the US. Hence, "Scots-Irish". The history of their migration paints a picture of a people disliked basically everywhere. Kicked out of the Border country, then kicked out of Ireland, then kicked out of Pennsylvania, before finally settling in Appalachia (and being hated there by almost everyone outside that country—it's still socially acceptable to say all kinds of horrible things about them). We (I'm very, very much of that "stock" on one side of my family) seem to be some real bastards.
• humanistbot 5y ago
  Because you can easily lie about your class background, especially to yourself.
• unfunco 5y ago
  I'm from a working class family but have done okay for myself, my salary, house, and lifestyle would be considered by most people to be middle-class now, but I still consider myself working class because I don't feel you can change classes. However, if I were to have children now, they would grow up in a middle-class household and would be middle-class forever, but I am and will always still be working class.
• klodolph 5y ago
  Classism is definitely more pervasive in the UK than the US. This is one part of the story about the dominance of US in tech... during WWII, seems people in the UK were too busy waging war to bother as much with classism. War ends, and people with the "right breeding" come in and take over some of the tech projects, rather than the people with the right skills. Paradoxically, working in tech is seen as somewhat low-class. Keep in mind that this is a simplification, it's only part of the story, and it's a story about a particular time in UK history, and I'm not trying to draw larger conclusions about meritocracy in the US and UK. (Should go without saying.) Also note that the narrative of British technological "decline", often cited as lasting from 1870-1970, is usually quite exaggerated and distorted. Entire books have been written on the subject. Classism is a piece of the puzzle but history defies simple explanations.
  • brimble 5y ago
    > Paradoxically, working in tech is seen as somewhat low-class. Fussell (though writing about the US) may have some insight here. For one thing, working is kinda low-class; for another, being concerned about the latest-and-greatest of technology is, separately, kinda low-class. He writes (I'm paraphrasing) that American old money is more likely to drive a 30-year-old truck, to have ancient kitchen appliances, maybe even fairly old entertainment-related electronics, than to have a flashy new sports car and top-end appliances—because caring about new technology is "low", so is something those sorts of people have been socialized not to care about (much of it's the "help's" problem, anyway, after all). The US has a similar thing going on, along the "working/professional/upper" axis: many programmers make "professional" levels of money (e.g. doctor, lawyer, upper management at mid-level corporations, that kind of thing) but as a society we seem to have decided it's not proper to treat them as professionals, so they remain working-class in many respects (along with actual engineers).
    • klodolph 5y ago
      Yes, there's a lot of similar stuff going on in the US. However, the new money / old money distinction in the US seems to not have the teeth that it does in the UK, at least, from the mid 20th century onwards. The thing about old money having old cars and appliances applies to the UK too. If you're upper-class in the UK, you might wear Wellington boots and go hunting with your dogs in your Subaru hatchback. At a glance, it might look indistinguishable from something you might find someone doing in rural Montana. The Gilded Age in the US is absolutely fascinating... it seems like at that point in history, the US was trying its hardest to ape European conventions for class, and simultaneously, there was a ton of economic growth fueling the noveau riche. That's when we got people like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. It's the time when Wharton's The Age of Innocence was set (highly recommend this book). Old money went to the opera at the Academy of Music Opera House, and new money went to the Metropolitan Opera House. (Guess which one is still around.)
• nineplay 5y ago
  In the US, at least, people's thoughts on classes seem all over the map. Some people think of 'working class' or 'blue collar' as people without degrees but if a teacher makes less than a plumber than who is in what class. OTOH calling yourself 'rich' is going to sound braggy. Someone with a comfortable 6 figure income and a 2 million dollar house may sound like they are downgrading themselves by saying 'upper-class' but if they say 'rich' a lot people are going to think that 'rich' means private island in the Caribbean, not two weeks in Hawaii. It's best to just stay away from it.
• throwaway9980 5y ago
  Maybe people just don’t have clear class identities? I grew up middle, perhaps upper middle class in the US. Both of my parents, especially my mother, came from lower social economic backgrounds than what they provided for me. I was very close to my mom’s extend family as a kid. My grandparents grew up very poor. No running water, dirt floors type of poor. By the end of their lives they were upper middle class. Some of their kids did even better, others regressed to the mean. We’re all still part of the same family. The shared values among the family are much stronger than any shared values across class identities. Class just doesn’t offer much explanatory value to me. I suppose I am upper middle class today, but I don’t think “oh yes, let’s instill some upper middle class values in our kids.” I don’t even know what those would be.
  • woodruffw 5y ago
    Class identities are much weaker in the US: they're much more tightly tied to economic status and are thus fungible (almost anybody can move up or down the US class ladder by gaining or losing wealth.) We have a "cultural class" system as well, but it's similarly weak (with opportunity, nearly anybody can join the starving intelligentsia). The author is in the UK, where class identities are much stronger and are not intrinsically tied to wealth (but are frequently associated with wealth, thanks to generational privilege). An upper-class British acquaintance recently related to me that they'd never eaten certain foods that Americans think of as "quintessentially" British, because those foods are lower-class foods. They weren't afraid of eating them or snobbish about it, it just hadn't occurred to them that it was part of the international perception of their culture (because, to them, it just isn't their culture).
    • ska 5y ago
      > Class identities are much weaker in the US I think that they are weaker in the US, but also stronger than Americans think they are. Which can lead to confusion.
      • Macha 5y ago
        I think the patterns and consequences of American racism has resulted in a lot of what would be class tensions elsewhere being subsumed into race tensions in the US. The system is the US has resulted in a very high correlation between being working class and being Black or Latino. So a lot of stereotypes and harassment of working class people have been applied to that group, as well as on the other end attempts to improve the situation.
• subjectsigma 5y ago
  1. In my liberal tech social circles, I hear so much talk about "eating the rich" and how the wealthy and privileged are ruining society that I'd be insane to self identify as anything but middle class. 2. It's all relative anyways. By HN standards I'm making a measly salary, but my salary is over double the national average. 3. The richer you are, the more likely people are to ask you for things. Money, favors, etc. This is both locally and globally true. 4. Some of it is a mindset. Growing up I was absolutely not poor, but the way my parents talked about money felt different from others. For example I didn't get a cell phone until the end of middle school because it was "too expensive". Everyone was always asking for my phone number and I had to tell them I didn't have a phone. In the grand scheme of things this is really inconsequential, but at 13 it felt like my parents were ruining my social life with their penny pinching. Cars were another big thing. Our cars were ancient and my parents refused to buy new ones. We never went to a mechanic unless we absolutely had to. On Saturday mornings my dad would wake me up and tell me we were doing $X to the car and I knew I would be cancelling any plans that day. I didn't actually mind fixing the car, but I hated telling my friends "I can't go play basketball, I have to help fix the car" and having them wonder aloud "Why can't you just take it to a mechanic?" because it made me feel poor.
  • spacemanmatt 5y ago
    • subjectsigma 5y ago
      "You should get therapy" is becoming the new "fuck you, touch grass" on HN. You have absolutely no idea who I am or what my situation is, so there's no way you're actually recommending me therapy with any intent to help me. So you must be insinuating that my comment is so deranged that only someone who needs professional help would write it. You are just insulting me for no reason. Stop this bullshit.
      • giraffe_lady 5y ago
• jmyeet 5y ago
  I hate to break it to the author but peole lie about pretty much everything. People will lie about their incomes on anonymous surveys. People lie in anonymous polls about their voting intent. You can boil this down to: 1. People lying to themselves and then reflecting that lie to others. A common one I see here is, for example, "it only takes me 30 minutes on the bus to get from SF to work". At 1am on a Tuesday with a tailwind maybe. It's a form of cognitive dissonance; and 2. People lying to others. This is for personal gain and because the person cares about how they're perceived by others. So if you take an example from the post (eg working class family background) it could be either. I've known people who really believe they're working class heroes but they're clearly middle class. It can be woven into their identity. It can just be virtue signaling. It can be to fit in. It can be aspirational. The 2000 election had Al Gore vilify the "top 1%". A survey at the time found that 19% of people thought they were the top 1% and another 20% thought they would be some day. So with this lie they've told themselves (knowingly or not) you've dended up alienating 39% of voters. Ultimately though a lot of these lies can be reduced to people feeling good about themselves even if that means making other people look bad. A lot of social media is built on such "flexing". Instagram in particular. Even Tiktok has all these videos where people post these "how am I so amazing?" videos. You just need to realize it's pretty much all lies. Oh and as for this specific example from the post (ie fetishization of a working-class background in the UK) this is interesting because my experience in the UK was there's a lot of value in signaling your upper class background, how you went to Oxford, Cambridge or Eton, the BBC accent (now this is really the modern RP accent) and so on. The UK is still quite classist (IME). Up until 20-30 years ago, university applications asked your father's occupation.
  • brimble 5y ago
    > People lie in anonymous polls about their voting intent. Political scientists have had to develop a separate category, along with methods to identify its members, in order to capture actual "swing voters", for related reasons. Lots of folks like to classify themselves as "centrist" or "independent" or "on the fence" or what have you, while in fact voting party line every single time just as reliably as someone who self-identifies as being highly partisan. Actual swing voters are a tiny minority of the people who identify as such (which is why "get out the vote" is, not-so-secretly, far more important than courting those voters—lots of seemingly odd behavior by politicians makes way more sense when this is factored in) Bad political reporting (which is lots of political reporting) won't bother to make the distinction, which results in misleading coverage, graphs, et c.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  I had an interesting conversation about class in the UK the other day. I took my friend and our four boys (all around 10) to a football (soccer) game. It turned out that my friend had grown up with a different accent to what he currently speaks with. He'd grown up in a rough part of Essex, going to a school where kids normally don't even think about university. After about two weeks at Cambridge, he realized he was different. To sum it up, almost nobody at Cambridge speaks like an Essex boy. That's despite Cambridge being not terribly far from Essex. I noticed something similar. My family are refugees, so spread all over the world, including an aunt North London who gave birth to six cousins. They speak English a certain way. Coming as an international student, I noticed a lot of accents at Oxford (hello Brummies, Scots, Welsh, Scousers) but not a lot of "council house between hackney and Romford" accents. If you've followed British politics, you've heard of something called the Bullingdon Club. Cambridge has something similar. Neither of the two of us knew much about it when we were there, but we did know there were some veeeery posh kids around, because they speak a certain way and often have a pretty expensive style about them. So that was the fathers. Working class? Well if you're upper class traditionally it means you have a title, and not many people do, so in some sense it's legit to call yourself working class. It doesn't say much when your job could be anything between chronically unemployed and hedge fund manager, though. For dinner, we took our boys to a restaurant. Being around the age of the 11 plus exam, the conversation turned to private schools. It turns out one of the boys had gotten into one of the most expensive selective schools in the country, which I pointed out (this is why I am so sought after as a dinner guest). Since they're kids, they still have naive ideas about money, and the vogue among kids at the moment is to aspire to be an influencer. "I'll make a YouTube channel and millions of followers will see it". Thus followed a little talk about how many views you actually need to make enough money to pay for two kids to go to the most expensive school in the country, and perhaps also a house and something to stave off starvation. I'm also the kind of exciting person who has official statistics about income distributions in his head. A rough tax rate is also part of that spiel, in case I find an uninformed primary schooler. Realistically, you either need to be in the top 1% (£175K/year) or the top 2% (£120K/year) with a second income (£50K is around 87th, so maybe two ~97th at ~£100K ) to be able to pay for two kids to go to a £30K/year school, pay a £30k/year rent/mortgage, maybe eat and holiday for £15K, and also pay the tax man. That's what the numbers look like, and I'm not surprised at all that kids don't know them. What are the chances when you're sitting around at your school that you've been told is famous, that basically every single one of your classmates has either a top 1% earning parent or two top 3% earners? If you knew you would certainly think you were very lucky indeed. So this kid, who is quite bright and has a place at a top school that sends dozens of kids each to his dad's alma mater, can still claim to be working class by heredity. That is what this article seems to be about. People mostly want to feel that they deserve what they worked for, and certainly kids in prep schools work hard. But it's also true that you almost never see anyone doing ordinary jobs. It's not actually that weird that a kid thinks being a lawyer or trader is an ordinary job, when his entire class has parents that both do something like that. It's not even that hard to imagine them thinking their parents work really hard. Certainly a couple of the other parents in my kid's year are always traveling or working late.
• Ancapistani 5y ago
  I think the answer here is simple: "class" means different things to different people. I'm an American, and I consider myself "middle class". I was born when my mother was 17. She finished high school and went on to work and get a two-year degree from a tiny business college that no longer exists. She married in her mid-20s, when I was in first grade, got a job at a company and is still there over three decades later. She went from making minimum wage in 1991 to in the ballpark of $350k / year today. My father - the man she married, not my biological father - was a public school teacher. I attended school in a very poor area, and my experience in high school was far more comfortable than my peers. My dad bought me a very inexpensive truck when I was 12. It was ~20 years old, the bed was badly damaged, and the engine didn't run due to a combination of overuse and neglect. We parked it outside our garage and he taught me how to work on it, return it to operable condition, and sell it for profit. With his guidance I pulled and completely rebuilt the engine and transmission. We went to scrapyards on the weekends, and eventually found a steel bed for it in good condition. We kept all the receipts. The total cost, including purchase price, parts, and a couple of services like having a machine shop mill the engine block flat for the new head, was ~$2k. By the time I turned 14, when I could get a "learner's permit" in my state, we sold that old truck for $4k. I then had my choice - I could take that $4k (of which I had earned about half through my labor) and buy whatever I wanted, or my parents would sell me the truck my dad already owned for the same price. Because I'd done so much work on "my" truck, I jumped on that offer; I knew that his truck was well-maintained, and I didn't want to have to rebuild a vehicle that I was going to rely on. By 2002, when I graduated high school, I think my parents were making about $175k/yr combined. I went to college on an academic scholarship and my life fell apart almost immediately. After a couple of years of struggling (and my parents paying for mental health services), I was finally diagnosed with severe depression and ADHD. It took me until I was 23 before I was "functional", and another two years after that before I felt at all confident that I wasn't going to fall back into that pit of despair. Throughout that dark period of my life, my parents were there both emotionally and, to a reasonably limited extent, financially. They weren't paying all of my bills, but I knew they wouldn't let me die hungry and homeless. Today, I'm 38. I've been with my wife since were 14, married her at 21, and now have two daughters. We live in a five-bedroom home that we purchased in our name, with money that we earned and saved. While we don't feel like we have a huge safety net for ourselves yet, we are definitely "financially stable" - and a big part of the reason we feel like we don't have that safety net built is because of the depth of the financial safety net that my parents were able to provide. So... in summary, while I consider myself "middle class", objectively I'm firmly in the "white collar" world. My wife doesn't work for anyone outside our home, is able to run a side business primarily for personal fulfillment, and our children are happy, well cared for, and want for little. My wife's parents' story is very different from ours. Her dad was "working class", and retired from Walmart as a cashier in "Tire & Lube Express". He has a large but benign brain tumor that is becoming more and more of an issue as he ages. Her mother has struggle with mental health issues and has never been able to hold down a job more than a year or so at a time. My wife moved between her parents' home and her grandparents' home multiple time growing up. While they have their own problems to deal with, I think they really did the best they could raising my wife. One of the highlights of my adult life so far came a couple of years ago, when my wife's parents' car broke down yet again. They had asked us a couple of times to take them to doctors appointments, and while I have offered fixed their vehicles a few times over the years, they will not ask me to do things like that. I sat down with my wife, looked at our finances, and decided that we could reasonably take responsibility for their transportation needs from here on out. We looked at reliable used cars, but decided that buying a reasonable new car would mean a warranty and that the total cost of ownership amortized over the expected lifetime of the vehicle would be comparable. Plus, her parents had never owned a new car; at best they were able to buy a reliable used car a couple of times in the past. We bought them a new Kia Rio S. It's cherry red, and her parents cried when we gave it to them. It's still in my name, so I put it on our insurance and bought a service contract through a local shop. The only thing they have to pay for is fuel. (continued in a reply to this post)
• 12ian34 5y ago
  The whole idea of social class is so disgusting and dehumanising that whilst I think it's important to talk about Social Mobility and how we can improve that - I wish people would stop self-classifying and talking about classes like they actually exist. To me, the whole idea of classes revolves around the gatekeeping of opportunity by (generally) the most fortunate. I always refuse to classify myself. Aside from demographic studies by governments to improve social mobility, what good can it do the world to know the class of an individual?
  • zardo 5y ago
    > Aside from demographic studies by governments to improve social mobility, what good can it do the world to know the class of an individual? In large part, government decision makers are made up of people from dominant classes. They can hardly be relied upon to improve social mobility, as it's people like them who stand to lose from increased social mobility. An oppressed class that doesn't recognize itself can't organize as a class to combat that oppression.
• tyjen 5y ago
  Unfortunately, many people from privileged backgrounds love to lie about their background by creating a "struggle story." They repeat the story enough that they genuinely believe that they faced adversity equivalent to people who literally lived through those circumstances. A frequent "struggle story" I´ve heard, is claiming to be a high school dropout, then attending attending a 60k a year an elite liberal arts college. They didn't dropout due to poor life conditions interfering with school, but they claim the association for credibility. Then it bleeds into, "Well, if I could do it, why can't they?" It's really an extreme form of mental gymnastics. I'd like to call this behavior, "poorfishing."
• closeparen 5y ago
  I am a “class bullshitter” within the American class system because I stubbornly refuse to believe that selling my labor for a high price and paying a lot of rent puts me in the same class as people who buy labor and collect rent. I also don’t think these are identity traits of mine; rather they are contingent facts about living in a HCOL area. If I were slinging code 9-5 in e.g. Chicago then no one would doubt I was middle class.
  • xemdetia 5y ago
    I would agree. In the US any class is defined by the social safety net they have and in the current workforce it's often entirely self funded with many parents/older generation reaching into the pockets of their children for labour or money. Even people living a 'middle class lifestyle' are one bump or bruise away from losing everything. Since the UK has a different expectation of a social safety net I can see how things might go in a different direction. If I was not constantly under the risk of healthcare costs blowing up what little I have built up then I probably would consider myself middle class. But since my income stops as soon as I stop and I don't have a huge runway to get going again I don't feel like I'm in the middle at all.
• spacemanmatt 5y ago
  HN needs to attract some actual sociologists to talk with.
  • giraffe_lady 5y ago
    We chased them all away so we can invent panopticons from first principles in peace.
    • motohagiography 5y ago
      Hello, fellow traveller! I wonder if we should we be even commenting, as it messes with their timeline, but brilliantly put.
• foogazi 5y ago
  Why would we ever allow others to label us based on our ancestors choices? Don’t let your past define you
  • WJW 5y ago
    > Why would we ever allow others to label us based on our ancestors choices? It seems quite understandable that people whose your ancestors were kings, presidents and other notable figures would be in favor of being given a leg up based on the status of their ancestors.
• paulpauper 5y ago
  In the US, there is a huge cultural and economic divide between the processional/educated class vs. the low-skilled class, whereas elsewhere in the world not so much. In the US, the goal or aspiration is to escape being working class, as epitomized by the likes of JD Vance and others, whereas elsewhere being working class is not something to be so ashamed of or to escape from.
  • jessaustin 5y ago
    If JD Vance epitomizes anything then it might be something very close to the "bullshit" considered in TFA. He writes as if from Appalachia while in reality he was raised in suburban western Ohio. Mostly he just writes to confirm that everything is fine in the land of capital and we really don't want to inconvenience rich people like his boss Peter Thiel.
  • annoyingnoob 5y ago
    More Educated != Skilled Less Educated != Unskilled Skill is a matter of practice (even if you have natural talent). I know plenty of very skilled people that earn less than they are worth. I know plenty of educated people that are unprofessional and earn more than they are worth. The world just is not a fair place.
• ggm 5y ago
  Age can play to this. My brother is 9 years older than me, born into postwar food rationing, a time my family would have been teetering on the edge of financial stability for complex reasons and hugely stressed about money, and financial stability. I was born into the 1960s boom years, The emergence of ubiquitous consumerism, plastics, technology. We have different perspectives on class, roots, class identification. Not that we were ever working class but we own different perceptions of our relative class status.
• IntFee588 5y ago
  The "protestant work ethic" promotes this vague notion that labour, toil and suffering on earth brings one closer to god. This is more deeply rooted in western cultures than you'd think and feeds into the "work hard and you'll make it" attitude of western exceptionalism. Because of this, people have a vested interest in glorifying their own struggle, even if they had circumstances that led to their professional success. They're not going to admit that they had things handed to them on a silver platter or got lucky, they'd think of it as some sort of moral failing. They think success needs to be justified.
  • rq1 5y ago
    It’s not a western value at all as exclusively as you describe it.
    • spdionis 5y ago
      It's a strong value in most of the protestant west.
      • rq1 5y ago
        It’s at least as old as Abrahamic religions.
        • pessimizer 5y ago
          I'm not sure that's true. A lot of Abrahamic religion is about prioritizing prayer over work. Over the physical world in general.
          • InitialLastName 5y ago
            The original Abrahamic religion includes a day where you are expressly prohibited from doing anything that even remotely looks like work _every week_.
          • rq1 5y ago
• lawrenceyan 5y ago
  How does class work in Asian cultures like India, China, Japan, Korea, etc.? Technological growth and automation seems to have played (and is increasingly so?) a much larger factor than anything else in the past century. I assume I'm probably biased here though.
  • thematrixturtle 5y ago
    Those are all wildly different cultures. India is very hierarchical and has a caste system with considerable overlap to social classes. In Japan, something like 80% of the country consider themselves to be middle class, but there's an increasing divide between full-time salarymen (genuinely middle class) and contract workers (unstable at best, frequent outright poor).
  • screye 5y ago
    The class system in India is presently under historic overhaul, but here is how it has been for the last 50 years or so. Class is geographically concentrated and inherited. It isn't as simple as caste. This is primarily because the top class of India is not very Hindu. Inherited classmen are descendents of local kings, cultural empire builders (kapoor family), descendents of top civil servants in the British Empire and descendents of oxford-cambridge educated freedom fighters. Children of industrialists are let in, but it might take a generation or two. These communities are concentrated in the Mumbai and Delhi region. Ties to the Gandhi-Nehru family also helps. As a normie, there are only a few ways to enter this class. Early schooling at international schools(Ambani), residential schools (Doon) and select Army schools is the easiest way. If you grow up in the right neighborhood in Mumbai or Delhi, you will find yourself sharing space with them. Eventually you'll make friends and be let in. Select professions such Western Liberal Arts academia, Economics, Architecture or Journalism/think-thanks are ways to get some access. But, it is important that the accolades be from western institutes. Sometimes, running an NGO with the right aesthetic gets you there. The historic overhaul is happening because of 3 reasons. First, the elite have lost political power and their free patronage. Unlike the US, where until recently, the upper class pretty evenly split between 2 political parties. In India, the upper class exclusively operated under the blessings of the Congress party. The rise of the BJP has been disastrous for them, especially journalists and political insiders. Second, as the country sheds its socialist skin, credentials in the armed forces and civil service simply do not matter as much. The introduction of hard examinations to enter any of these institutions blocks off the lazy elites, which in-turn makes the institutions lose some of their 'elite' status. (this is why Harvard still keeps legacy admissions. The bar HAS TO BE low for the real elites to maintain eliteness of your institution) Lastly, new money is snatching away cultural power. STEM grads are taking over Netflix & Youtube. The new Billionaires are all Tech folks. There even have a new mecca in Bangalore. However, the upper class still influences the messaging in elite American outlets, admission procedures at Ivies, western think tanks and Bollywood. The smart ones have been front of line to welcome the likes of Netflix or have used their massive wealth to buy into the tech revolution by turning into investors instead. Those who have stuck to old ways are dying a slow death. IMO, India's next upper class is going to be incredibly technocratic. Top IITs (Engg.), AIIMS (Med.), IIMs (B.schools) are treated with a never seen before level of reverence. But this is my personal conjecture. We will see if it works out.
• readme 5y ago
  In the US I have not been tempted to flaunt the fact that I am from a practically welfare background. I mean no joke, I lived in section 8 housing. In general people don't deduce this from me and sometimes assume I came from privilege, and honestly I definitely prefer it that way.
  • giraffe_lady 5y ago
    I just wish I didn't have to hear the nasty shit people in tech say about my people when they're assuming everyone who does this job has a similar background.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      "my people" is a curious phrase in this context, no?
      • giraffe_lady 5y ago
        Felt right to me at the time and I'm not able to come up with a better alternative right now so offer one if you got it. I'm talking about people who are influential but not necessarily close, mostly friendly but I've fought some of these folks too. The people I come from but not my family. My people. Still seems fine honestly.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• moralestapia 5y ago
  Nice read. Just as there's times where middle class could (kind of) play both roles, there also some situations where you get the downsides of both. For instance, a middle class acquaintance once told me about his years in high school that "the rich guys didn't like me because they thought I was poor, and the poor guys didn't want me because they thought I was rich".
• sudosteph 5y ago
  I've felt what the author describes, but would probably call it "Class Imposter Syndrome" over anything else. I never thought I was anything other than "middle class" (American middle class) growing up, since my mom owned a home and had an office job, but whenever I'm with my family (who have most the hallmarks of being lower class southern mountain people) I'm reminded that we're a little different. I don't know if there's something about how I carry myself, or talk, but sometimes I wonder if people see it. Like I have memories of telling people the street I lived on and people assuming I lived in the trailer park, even though the street was mostly houses. And I remember little things like staying the night at a friend's house, the kind of look of pity on her parents' face when I was astounded by actual maple syrup being a different thing than Aunt Jemima, and trying in vain to explain that to my own parents. The end result is that even though I am very comfortable in the company of lower class people, I'd feel like a faker if I described myself like that. But when I'm around classier people, I feel so obviously uncultured and out of place, I end up trying to find ways to explain it, and just lean into being southern which is just another proxy for class in some ways. stereotypical southern mountain person = thick accents, living in trailers, drug issues, run ins with the law, lousy jobs, relationship drama, lots of children born out of wedlock
• MaxMoney 5y ago
• rendall 5y ago
  In NYC, I fell in with a crowd who had quite a few extremely successful niche entrepreneurs. A kombucha maker, a boutique paper maker, some kind of avant-garde film editor, fine-art photographers, a fabric designer, this kind of thing. They were all so sought-after that they could spend only a few hours a week on their craft. Beautiful homes, expensive clothes, vacations. It took me some time to figure out that they were not successful entrepreneurs, but that these were fronts to cover for rich parents. Personally, I don't care if someone has rich parents. Covering for it in this way felt a bit like unearned prestige, though.
  • hattmall 5y ago
    Is it really a cover? Or is it just what they do and make money off it by already being rich and having connections as well as being supplemented by their parents.
    • opportune 5y ago
      It depends on the person, plenty of children of rich people run actually successful businesses, but there are definitely “businesses” that are a kind of pomp around not actually doing anything. I don’t think kids or parents necessarily see it as some kind of scheme, probably it’s more like the parents want their kids to be successful, but the kids don’t have any idea what to do and are super comfortable having their rent paid + a parent’s credit card + a salary paid for by their parent’s investments, so they don’t really try that hard because there are no consequences for failure. And the parents don’t care too much either because they’re proud their kid has a business and think it’ll be valuable experience even if it doesn’t do well.
      • rendall 5y ago
        One of my first jobs was for a man whose parents were quite wealthy. I found his business decisions to be incomprehensible until I understood that his business was basically something he could point at so his parents would give him more money. Something internal to their family, I guess. He would have been quite fine with doing nothing at all, but then his parents would have cut him off.
• Thorentis 5y ago
  If somebody works hard at a working class job, enough to become their own boss by either e.g. starting their own cleaning company, or buying another business like a hotel that they cleaned - are they no longer working class? Can they no longer claim to be of working class background? This seems absurd to me. They were not born into money. They had to work hard to get to where they were.
• softwarebeware 5y ago
  Most people without an inheritance probably miss the fact that tons of people they know do. You often have journalists as friends for example who unbeknownst to you are “subsisting” on their parents’ wealth and who secretly have millions of wealth in the bank. I recall meeting a “guitarist” in local bands in Seattle who confessed after a good amount of alcohol one night that his father had given him and his brother a million each when they turned 18 and he had decided to grind out the “starving musician” life until he “made it.”
  • zapataband1 5y ago
    gd my parents wouldn't even shell out for a guitar
  • draw_down 5y ago
• efitz 5y ago
  Any time you set up any kind of system that organizes people into groups and where members of a group have disparate privilege or prestige versus non-members, then people will try to find all sorts of ways to get into the privileged group whether they “qualify” or not. We’ve had class impostors forever. The OP mentioned a race imposter (we also have a sitting US senator arguably guilty of that) But it’s any group. Class, race, gender, first class, frequent traveler, club member, veteran, first responder, whatever. IMO the solution is egalitarianism, but people hate that too, because they not only want the privilege but also the prestige- the feeling that they are better than you are. Whatever the solution, legitimizing behavior that separates privileged and non-privileged makes things worse, not better.
• dash2 5y ago
  I’m an Old Etonian. After that, I went to Cambridge. I will inherit a large sum very shortly. When my parents got divorced, Mum wouldn’t take any cash from Dad. She was in her 50s and had been a housewife for 25 years. So we turned off the electricity to save money. I grew up reading by candlelight and cooking literally on an open fire. I know which kind of newspaper is best to wipe your bum with. (Sunday papers are thicker and crinklier because of the coloured ink.) Fun game to play, no?
• Aloha 5y ago
  A combination of Wealth and Education is increasingly becoming the class distinction in the United States. I sound like a college educated person, who might have a graduate degree. There is usually a long pause when people figure out I'm a high school dropout who had "some college". I grew up in a 'bill of the month' club house, and remember multiple times the electricity being turned off due to non-payment. But I picked up skills over time, and had the advantage of being both smart, a fast reader, and have reasonably good (better than my peers according to them), ability to absorb and synthesize information. From that I built a career, I've done a little bit of everything, security, truck driver, telecom engineer, IT guy, now I work on two way radio gear doing product development. I get and can see the class distinctions, even now, because I tend at times to dress in a way that does not look.. like I have two nickels to rub together, even though I can buy basically whatever I want - I have trouble getting places to give me the time of day. Between the awkward pauses when people try to talk to me about college life, and being able to see the class distinctions about money and style of dress, I get this, and get it pretty intuitively. I'm also very aware that some doors are just not open to me because of my lack of credentialing - even jobs that I would be otherwise very qualified for based on experience.
• peter_retief 5y ago
• cardiology-fat 5y ago
  This is interesting, but it overlooks the way people often bullshit their way into a higher class. Boris Johnson is a common example of this: he's sort of an everyman's stereotype of what an upper-class person is like, and he plays up to it, but he's certainly not upper class himself.
• cardiology-fat 5y ago
  Just a note for American readers. In the US calling someone 'middle class' means that they are fairly ordinary salt-of the earth folks living a normal life, but who are not poor and not living paycheque to paycheque. This is not true in the UK. To call someone middle class here means that they are above average in money and social status. It would probably be similar to calling someone 'upper-middle class' in the USA.
  • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    That sounds more like the upper middle class: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_Kingdom#Upper_middle_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_Kin...
    • cardiology-fat 5y ago
      Well people use the terms differently, but I think upper-middle class in the UK corresponds roughly to the lower-reaches of the upper class in the US: lots of money, interested in high culture, maybe expensive private schools and multiple houses, but probably not aristocracy/senator/private jet level.
• dynamohk 5y ago
  For most using HN, the standard of living is likely better than all the pharaohs and kings of the past by a considerable margin. Gratitude is important, all the rest is relative.
• goto11 5y ago
  The English and US notions of class are very different. In the US, class basically mean income bracket. In England, class is more akin to "caste", a basically hereditary status which correlate with wealth, but it not determined by it. A broke aristocrat is still an aristocrat, a working class person winning the lottery is still working class, even if they stop working. A family may migrate from one class to another, but it takes multiple generation. The angle of the article seem to be that the English notion of class is bullshit, because it does not directly correlate to wealth and privilege. Maybe so, but class is still a real thing in the sense it affect peoples attitudes and interactions in real way. It is like saying "race" in US is bullshit. But it is still a very real thing that affect peoples lives.
• germandiago 5y ago
  There are clearly two classes, supposing someone is not handicapped: the ones who parasite others intentionally and the ones who are net tax payers. It is not about amount of income but about role.
• einpoklum 5y ago
  Being in the "middle" is not a class. Social classes - certainly in Marxist theory, but also in other classes analyses of society - are not the rungs on a ladder: Low, Middle, High. Rather, they are characterized by their social role (e.g. role with respect to production, distribution, ownership etc). And a social class may have more or less power and wealth, depending on circumstances. Centuries ago, people who owned land, workshops etc. but were not nobles were referred to as the "middle class" - the middle between the peasantry and the nobility. Today that moniker is meaningless, though it persists - even though people of "middle" wealth are in no way not a distinct class.