08-14-2021, 09:50 AM
My suspicion: Classic X'er has some problem with the ambiguity of his social class, as his work pays well but is still blue-collar. Many blue-collar workers with high pay are unionized employees and recognize that their stake in the consumer society requires membership in a trade union as a gate-keeper for the most competent of blue-collar workers. But he is an entrepreneur, so he does not need a union. He assumes that well-off white-collar workers and of course entrepreneurs are political reactionaries (which is not so reliable as it used to be; common wisdom on demographics is often obsolete).
He would like to believe that he is middle-class, but he is really upper-working-class (skilled labor). If income is not a distinction between the middle class and skilled workers, then culture is. With culture comes spending patterns, and such may be the difference between a motorcycle and a sailboat or between an RV and foreign travel. It could be the difference between hearing the Vienna Philharmonic live and being a high-roller in "Vegas".
Class identity is never a source of virtue. European aristocrats were often the earliest backers of fascism; big landowners of the eastern part of Weimar Germany were among the first to support Hitler in efforts to suppress farm laborers; then came aristocrats who found him amenable to destroying trade unions. A disproportionate share of Vichy collaborators were aristocrats. The most vicious antisemites in Hungary were the rural magnates; many of the worst of the Nazi-like Arrow Cross (whose short period of rule in Hungary coincided with the Holocaust in Hungary) were titled nobility.
Class identity may be the distinction between dignity and degradation, especially in a plutocratic order... and as we have found in the neoliberal era, the greater that class identity determines who kicks whom, the nastier that system becomes. It is generally safest that the class system be one of culture, education, and talent than of either ownership of assets or the wielding of bureaucratic power -- especially if one uses economic or bureaucratic power to abuse "lessers".
He would like to believe that he is middle-class, but he is really upper-working-class (skilled labor). If income is not a distinction between the middle class and skilled workers, then culture is. With culture comes spending patterns, and such may be the difference between a motorcycle and a sailboat or between an RV and foreign travel. It could be the difference between hearing the Vienna Philharmonic live and being a high-roller in "Vegas".
Class identity is never a source of virtue. European aristocrats were often the earliest backers of fascism; big landowners of the eastern part of Weimar Germany were among the first to support Hitler in efforts to suppress farm laborers; then came aristocrats who found him amenable to destroying trade unions. A disproportionate share of Vichy collaborators were aristocrats. The most vicious antisemites in Hungary were the rural magnates; many of the worst of the Nazi-like Arrow Cross (whose short period of rule in Hungary coincided with the Holocaust in Hungary) were titled nobility.
Class identity may be the distinction between dignity and degradation, especially in a plutocratic order... and as we have found in the neoliberal era, the greater that class identity determines who kicks whom, the nastier that system becomes. It is generally safest that the class system be one of culture, education, and talent than of either ownership of assets or the wielding of bureaucratic power -- especially if one uses economic or bureaucratic power to abuse "lessers".
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.