Huh! Call that class war?
Posted on Friday 11 December, 2009
Filed Under Economics
IT’S ASTONISHING how many commentators are unable to discern between a touch of tokenistic populist grandstanding and what they disarmingly insist on labelling ‘class war’. It must surely be apparent to even the densest national newspaper leader writer that Alastair Darling’s decision to tax bankers’ bonuses is an expedient driven by crass electoral calculation, without even a scintilla of underlying ideological conviction.
But I’m not saying that like it is entirely a bad thing. The chancellor’s opportunistic posturing puts the social democratic case for wealth redistribution symbolically back on the agenda, and offers the left the case to argue for its reinstatement in a systematic fashion.
Look at page five the Financial Times this morning, where a subhead above a graphic reads: ‘Financial wealth is skewed towards the rich’. Now there’s a shock finding for you. Presumably the follow-up in Weekend FT tomorrow will detail why people in poverty tend to be poorer than average.
But what is interesting is just how far financial wealth really is ‘skewed towards the rich’. The bar chart illustrates a story based on an Office of National Statistics breakdown on the distribution of wealth – as opposed to income – in this country.
So we learn that the wealthiest 10% own 44% of all wealth, and ‘more than half’ of financial assets and pension contributions. That makes them five times wealthier than the poorest 50% put together, who together own just 9% of UK wealth.
Actually, the FT is being a bit coy here. The Independent also looks at the stats, and reveals that the top 20% owns 84% of financial assets; the aggregate wealth of lowest five deciles – that’s half the population, in plain English – is just 1%.
The article states that figures represent the first occasion on which the wealth gap has been officially quantified, a statement I find mildly surprising, but have no evidence to contradict. It seems we are without a time series, and thus have only a snapshot of the distribution of wealth after 12 years of New Labour in office.
But as snapshots go, it is reminiscent of those ‘before’ photographs routinely produced by Weightwatchers dieters of the year to explain how they were shamed into losing three stone. The disparity between the two Britains runs at 99:1.
What can possibly justify that? Various explanations for such dramatic inequality are routinely advanced; the rich work hard, are cleverer, are more abstemious than the rest of us, we are told. Some of those contentions are empirically contestable. But even if every assertion was true, not even the most extreme free marketeer could argue that this points to any rational relationship between effort and reward.
And such disparities are indeed a matter of life and death. The poor, as we all know, die younger. The utilitarian case for wealth redistribution – a line of reasoning based on liberalism rather than socialism or Marxism – becomes unanswerable.
An increase in taxation for the wealthiest, and a rise in income for the poorest, will represent a net gain for society as a whole. That’s not class war; it’s bog standard social democracy.
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107 Responses to “Huh! Call that class war?”
JimD: Never having read ‘Mein Kampf’, I have no idea what Hitler ways in it. Perhaps you could quote the passage you are referring to?
JimD: Never having read ‘Mein Kampf’, I have no idea what Hitler says in it. Perhaps you could quote the passage you are referring to?
All those people who are insisting that immigration is concentrated among the unkilled, woud they be kind enough to show me where the unskilled jobs are in modern Britain’s economy. I was under the impression that the whole idea was to do away with the ‘workingclass’, turn it into the ‘lumpenproletariate’ (another nasty Marxist term for unorganised, casualised workers). What’s Lobby Ludd’s definition of a ‘proletarian’, I would be interested to know.
Sue R,
You have a politicos’ way of ignoring the points raised, unless it suits, but can I ask you a direct question:
When did you become so hung up about being English, talking to the “English” and worried about immigration ?
When did all of that occur?
“JimD: Never having read ‘Mein Kampf’, I have no idea what Hitler ways in it. Perhaps you could quote the passage you are referring to?”
So you arrived at the same ideas as Hitler purely by chance.
There’s some real bloody intellectual dishonesty going on here. A full throated attempt to shut down free speech, because it does not accord with what JimD and Modernity judge to be ‘official opinion’. I don’t have the same views as Hitler, from what I know of them, but you make a cheap jibe to close down the argument. Modernity asks me when the culrural milieu I mix in became important to me. I don’t know, I guess it’s to do with autonomy and prediction and familiarity. But, I also think the Left needs to discuss the idea of mass immigration and stop hiding behind moralistic commonplaces. There is a distinct desire not to examine what is happening in society. I don’t actally remember claiming that Afghanistani peasants may have been inspired by Western hippies, inspired by their cash maybe and envious of their sexual freedom. Can you provide a quote.
Actually, there’s one question I’d like answered by whoever can do so. ‘Are we closer to a socialist transformation of society now than we were 25 years ago? Discuss.’
SueR:
“What’s Lobby Ludd’s definition of a ‘proletarian’, I would be interested to know.”
Keeping it simple, a ‘proletarian’ is a member of the working class, regardless of their ‘class consciousness’.
“Modernity asks me when the culrural milieu I mix in became important to me.”
Er, no, I didn’t, I wrote:
“When did you become so hung up about being English, talking to the “English” and worried about immigration ?”
If you are going to go on about the subject, on and on, it would be handy if you could actually read English and didn’t mangle it along the way.
Sue R, you are seriously messed up in the head, you can’t even answer a direct question about your own views.
Don’t you ever think about your own views ? Or try and reconcile those festering prejudices with reality?
And just for the record, I’m not trying to shut down your freedom of speech, although I was wondering if you could, in a coherent way, defend your xenophobic and prejudiced opinions?
Apparently not.
It was Marx that decided that ‘proletarian’ should be used to describe the working class. The word was used for various descriptions long before his time. Is a Canary Wharf banker earning salary plus bonus a proletarian?
Sue R. The answer is no. Socialism is a dream by those that want power. Occasionally when they do get it they become the new capitalists.
You know, I wonder about you ‘modernity’. You are such a thing of sound and fury signifying nothing. You sound off about so many things but you never actually venture an opinion. After more than two years of reading your contributions, I am no wiser as to what you really think about anything.
No, a Canary Wharf Banker is not a proletarian. Lobby Ludd goes for a totally objective definition of ‘proletarian’, the subjective factor is not important. Not sure about that, I’ll have to do a bit of looking up. I can see why he would want to argue that though.
Sue. I always thought that ‘working class’ meant someone that worked for a living. You know a person that gets up out of bed and travels to work to feed the weans, pay the bills and keep a roof over the head. A Canary Wharf Banker must be working class.
SueR:
“All those people who are insisting that immigration is concentrated among the unkilled, woud they be kind enough to show me where the unskilled jobs are in modern Britain’s economy. I was under the impression that the whole idea was to do away with the ‘workingclass’, turn it into the ‘lumpenproletariate’ (another nasty Marxist term for unorganised, casualised workers).”
I’m not sure who is ‘insisting that immigration is concentrated among the unskilled’, but I’m sure that many migrants to this country do perform ‘unskilled’ work, cleaners, fast food workers, kitchen porters, shop workers etc, etc.
How your notions of the skills, or otherwise, of immigrants is opposed to your view, Sue, that there is an ‘idea’ to turn the working class into the ‘lumpenproletariat’, I simply do not understand. There does not seem to be any logic to what you are saying.
(‘Casualisation’ can, and does, happen to working practice regardless of the skills of those involved, by the way.)
(As a further aside, I am well aware that the term ‘lumpenproletariat’ is problematic, but I don’t think it was meant to describe unorganised or casualised labour. I think it was intended to mean unorganisable labour, riff-raff, the ‘underclass’, petty criminals etc. That is, people who would never become ‘class-conscious’.)
What on earth are you on about, Sue?
Lobby. During the seventies the building trade had a strike. Unusual thing to happen in such a fragmented industry. Hard to get unity. The Lump was in the form of opportunists mainly from Ireland. A friend of mine (from the dreaded WRP)was supporting the workers by handing out fliers in Campden Town. He went into the wrong pub! shouting stop the Lump and was ejected by the Lumpers. Another young lost cause for Marx.
James, I’m not surprised by what you say about the building trade. I’m not sure what lesson we are meant to get from it, though.
I’ve always believed there are shits out there. It’s whether you think they are invincible or not.
“After more than two years of reading your contributions, I am no wiser as to what you really think about anything.”
Sue R, your comprehension skills are your own problem, but I am not surprised, as in my experience people with prejudices and xenophobic outlooks tend to have a lot of shit floating around their heads.
I have many opinions, but unlike a lot of the English middle classes I don’t feel the necessity to hector people about my views.
If someone asks I am more than happy to venture an opinion
You will notice that I have an opinion on your and Bill Corr’s views, you are both essentially little Englanders with rather narrow views of the world, despite what your own self-image might tell you.
I am naturally slightly mystified how onetime Marxists can degenerate to that state, but I am sure there’s probably any number of peculiar reasons, probably more a question for those interested in the inner workings of the human psyche rather than politics.
But as I said I was surprised, having known a fair few people over the years who were members of the IMG, and whilst I found their obsessions (with Trotskyism and Internationals made up of dozens of people, detach from reality, etc )a bit funny, none of them were bigots such as you, Sue R and Bill Corr.
Lobby. The lesson is that they the shits will shit on anyone to make a few bob. The shits are important. They are working class. If they the shits are not on the socialist message then the big shits have nothing to fear.
Am I right, Modernity, in surmising that you spent the 70s and 80s as a member of the CPGB? Are you a trade union bureaucrat by any chance?
A proletarian is a person who has only their labour-power to sell (in Marxist terms). Highly paid investment bankers usually have a few assets and are not solely reliant on what tehy earn. Assets such as stocks and shares, property and land, portable wealth etc. If they don’t thethey are blitering idiots because everyone knows that teh economic cycle is boom and bust and a wise squirrel prepares for the winter.
“Am I right, Modernity, in surmising that you spent the 70s and 80s as a member of the CPGB? Are you a trade union bureaucrat by any chance?”
No, you are wrong.
I can’t stand the CPGB and I have no sympathises for the Stalinist regimes in the East, etc.
Altho I did work with some tankies on anti-fascist work, and they were less hassle than most (they did what they said they would do).
I am a certified member of the under classes, but if you want more you’ll have to see my profile on Norm’s, the link is on my blog.
Have I got this straight?
Someone peddling dope is a member of the bourgeoisie and a heart surgeon is a proletarian, right?
Dig out Jilly Cooper’s ‘class’ and spend some time reading Paul Fussell on class in the U.S.A.
P.F. claims there are NINE classes from the out-of-sight superrich to the out-of-sight wretchedly poor.
The late John Lennon once said he was half a class above the other Beatles ‘cos his Auntie Mimi – who reared him – had a pocket-hankie-sized front garden.
He was sort-of joking but there was a wee bit of truth in the jest.
No, there isn’t. Stop confusing economic and political class with social class.
PS if the dope peddler is small-time, and doesn’t employ anyone else, then he’s petty bourgeoisie.
Working class is anyone who has to sell their ability to work for a wage or salary in order to live.
Lumpenproletariat is a contentious term, but refers generally to propertyless folk who find ways to make a living other than through a contract (or contracts) of service – often criminally.
Lennon was not being very truthful, Mr Corr. His Aunt Mimi lived in a bloody big house in Aigburth, which is a posh area of Liverpool. As someone once remarked, the fact he called her ‘Aunt Mimi’ rather than ‘Aunty Mimi’ shows he was from a ‘middle class family. Lennon’s father was a sea captain, a petty-bourgoise profession, it requires skills and knowledge, even today, you can’t just walk onto a bridge of a ship and steer it. So I would say that Lennon was more than half a class higher than the other Beatles. McCartney came from a council house background, His dad was a postman. Ringo and Harrison, i’m not so sure about, but I imagine it to have been semi-skilled, two-up two down cottages. I think Ringo may have grown up on the Dingle Estate in Liverpool which is an old 1930s estate of tenements, but I’m not sure about that. i wouldn’t take Jilly Cooper as an authority on anything, not even Polo.
Jesus wept, did someone say Sue used to be a Marxist?
And thinks John Lennon’s class is decided by what he called his aunt?
And doesn’t know what a “petty-bourgoise profession” is? Anyone who has “skills and knowledge” apparently. (Hint: try re-reading the Brumaire.)
With that level of theoretical knowledge I can only presume she was on the fringes of the CPGB or Militant at best.
Sue Arse. Not a lot has changed since I had to sell my labour. The left are still arguing about theory, the petty bourgoise and the proletarian. Meanwhile the workers are still getting fucked. The establishment just dream up a new lefty party when you begin to make sense. Like the PRW! Splitters.
I didn’t say that Lennon’s class was solely determined by the idiolect that he used. By the way, don’t you find your name embarrassing? If I were you I’d change it to somethinglike ‘Archer’ or ‘Robinson’ or ‘Mohammed’. Something normal. Although I can appreciate that it may be a rejection of your family to do so.
If the dope peddler has little of his or her own capital, and so is effectively working for his/her supplier, then he/she is a proletarian.
Hey Jimmy, come back and lecture me on what’s happening to ‘the workers’ when, like me and most other people, you have to sell your labour to survive.
What’s the PRW? You loon.
Geez, Marxists who don’t know what’s what.
I believe, Marx defined the proletariat as the industrial working class, those working in industry.
Whilst it is perfectly possible to be working class and not a “proletarian”, by definition the proletariat are working class, but not all of the working class are proletarian.
I hope that helps, you Marxists understand things.
Sue Arse. It is a noble thing you do selling your labour. I think I may have got the PRW the wrong way round.
Modernity,
got a cite? In my readings I’ve only come across the general proposition that the proletariate are the propertyless class that has to sell it’s labour power, no mention of industry. Thus, teachers, librarians (ahem), doctors who sell their labour power for a wage or salary are as much proletarian as the worker in the widget factory.
‘To be honest I think Britain could do with more migrants and it might do away with the Little Englander mentality that you so demonstrate.
More migrants might help the English realise that there is a world outside the white cliffs of Dover.’
Its comments like this that indicate just how far removed much of the left is from the great mass of ordinary people: polls show over 74 percent(inc many 2nd Gen immigrants) plus want restrictions on immigration and certainly not the position you seem to hold. I also think you may be suprised how many left leaning people have similar opinions to Sue,if not so robustly expressed.
Oi [name deleted on request], quit citing spurious nonsense surveys to prop up your own stinking opinions.
And well done on completely missing the point modernity was trying make.
“In my readings I’ve only come across the general proposition that the proletariate are the propertyless class that has to sell it’s labour power, no mention of industry. “
Two points:
1. Presumably if that were the case and such a definition could be used then you’d end up in a bit of a sticky situation, as a Marxist.
Because if you take that definition as ‘a propertyless class that sells it Labour’, but say apply it to the situation under feudalism, where you would often have a propertyless class which does exactly that, sells its labour.
So would the proletariat exist under feudalism, in that case?
Probably not, as industry is missing.
2. It seems highly unlikely that British doctors would be classified as the proletariat, given that a sizeable percentage of them will eventually own property, have been thru a paid education and mostly come from the middle classes.
Although I concede that if ***all*** they did was to sell their labour, had no financial reserves to speak of, no stocks, no bonds, etc and lived in rental accommodation and didn’t control much of their life then you might be able to suggest they have a greater affinity to the working class, but probably not proletarian.
Of course, I wouldn’t dream of telling Marxists about class
Modernity,
I don’t think a substantial class selling their labour **power** existed in feudalism, and to the extent it did, it was a precussor to the generalised growth of the capitalist mode of production (in fact, the ur-proletarians were the feudal aprentices, most often, but thats’s by the byu).
The qualification of owning property is that to cease being proletarian you need enough property to live on comfortably without sellign labour power, owning your own home (no matter how expensive, so long as you don’t elt rooms out) doesn’t count.
yes the development of capitalism meant removing the means of production from the peasent. (ie ‘property’: Brecht once remarked that when Marxists talk about ‘property’ in connection to this question they didn’t mean your sunday best). Under feudalism the surplus was removed directly by armed men (typically a proportion of produce). Peasents did not typically sell their labour power nor did they recieve wages in return.
Hence one non-Marxist historian suggested that political power to the peasent was a bit like the modern experiance of the dentist. Hopefully you did not see him often, but when you did it was nasty, painful and, above all, extractive. Hence the suspician of the state in areas where the shadow of similar relations (despite many other changes) can still be felt: ie Afghanistan, NW frontier in Pakistan etc.
In modern times the ubiquitous man in a jeep. Whether he represents the state, an NGO, or foreign armed forces not making a lot of difference to those whose experiance of the state is primarily of the dentistry kind.
Red Deathy,
I really don’t understand your problem.
You and other Marxists have been studying this stuff over 20 years and yet basics like “what is the proletariat” seem at issue to you?
It is a bit like a Carpenter not being able to define what a piece of wood is.
I can’t remember much now, but 40 years ago I don’t remember Marxists arguing how doctors and librarians were the “new” proletariat.
I am not saying that they didn’t, but it seems to me that it is a subjective judgement which has been pulled out more recently to meet contemporary political needs.
Still, if Marxists are arguing about such basics then I doubt capitalism has much to worry about, and the working class, well, we’ll carry on regardless
Modernity,
no, it isn’t at issue to me, it’s anyone who sells their labour power, that’s what the books from the 1890′s and early 20th Century say, so I’ll go with that.
We can even look back to Charlie’s wee piece in the back of the Penguin ed of Capital on ‘sweating’ in the service industry.
aye right enough, Red Deathy,
I can’t quite see how a London based GP who might earn over 100,000 pound a year, own a Georgian property, worth £300,000+ and gone through a paid private education is the same class as a factory worker in Birmingham living on a pittance whilst in a run down council flat, is the same.
But I’m sure that some Marxist, somewhere will be able to square that circle.
“History tells us …” is both right and wrong.
We don’t need woman-traffickers, or dope-dealers, or criminals, or muggers or benefit fraudsters.
However, Britain [and the entire First World] actually DO need SOME immigrants but all mature societies – i.e. all the countries in the world these days – are fully entitled to insist on strict observation of quantity and quality rules.
Britain needs at least a thousand good-quality dentists right now, for example. Probably at least as many good-quality plumbers, too.
The short-term answer is to import them, whether as sojorners or as permanent immigrants. But why aren’t British dental schools and plumbing academies graduating enough Brits [of whatever skin colour] is what I want to know, as Eliza Doolittle would say.
Are you really as stupid as you come across, modernity?
Being the same class doesn’t mean there are variations (often pretty big ones) across the class. I can imagine you sitting there labelling little groups “upper-middle wealthy but working class” as distinct from “lower-middle upper working class”.
FFS we all have one thing in common, despite the many differences: selling our labour means that we hold power collectively at the point of production/distribution/exchange.
It’s really quite simple.
“but all mature societies – i.e. all the countries in the world these days – are fully entitled to insist on strict observation of quantity and quality rules”
And immature one’s don’t modernity? I wonder why you introduced that qualification into your peculiar rambling.
Marx used the term proletariat to define a new class of human beings who lived by selling their labour power. This was in contrast to feudalism where such relations did not exist. Importantly peasents who owned their own means of production under feudalism would often be poorer then modern proletarians who did not. This was not only a historical relationship. Until today, in most parts of the world large parts of the population which their own means of production are poorer then those who don’t: sections of the small peasentry, sections of the petite bourgoise in living by buying and selling the produce of the peasentry etc. remain poorer then sections of the modern proletariat (within single countries). Its also true that as Capitalism entrenches itself the new wage labour relation becomes more ubiquitous, requiring new catagories of analyses. At one end of the scale you will have saleried professionals sitting on the directors boards of capitalist companies drawing saleries. At the other end you have their secretaries. A vast range of intermediate class locations opens up. Class is a reflection of relations of exploitation, and the final way of deciding which individuals paid as wage labourers are exploited and which exploiting depends on consideration of how the surplus is distributed (ie whether they benefit or suffer as a result of relations of exploitation). At the extremes this is just bloody obvious but at the margins the lines can appear fuzzy. But do not adjust your television set. The problem is a changing reality, changes built into the very nature of the system analysed by Marx. Its called the capitalist mode of production.
johng is inexplicably blaming modernity for something I wrote.
I was talking about the vexed issue of mass immigration, which interests johng no less than do the delights of Marxist theology.
Only the VERY ungoodthinkful websites, like *American Renaissance* and the BNP website chricle the strenuous efforts which Third World soceties like Malaysia and Mauritius – to name but two – make to keep out the kind of migrants [whether sojourners or long-stay immigrants] that they don’t want.
Mod.,
the Slave of the Roman Emperor would have wealth and power beyonjd that of many patricians and senators. They’d still be a slave. And of course, we all know the contempt house slaves and field slaves int h states felt for each other, but they were all emancipated alike.
A GP owns their own practice (or is a partner therein), but those £100K+ GP’s often employ salaried Doctors beneath them.
I don’t know how to link to things, but perhaps it would be helpful to look up the ‘Encyclopedia of Marxism’ for definitions. As we all know, no source of informtion is untainted, but it does seem to me that this is pretty fair. ‘Proletarian’ is defined as ‘someone who has only their labour power to sell’. It is an objective relation. Interestingly, johng, Engels wrote that ‘religion and mysticism’, do not contribute to being a proletarian, the proletarian sees their relation to the means of production in crystal clarity. I thought that the subjective factor (‘a class in themselves and for themselves’) was important but it would appear not.
I don’t think we should look up the ‘Encyclopedia of Marxism’ for definitions but rely on history and practice. In that case it can be seen that Modernity does have a point when saying well paid doctors are not part of the proletariat. But this is not a fixed law, in other countries Doctors may not paid to the same level. I think I read somewhere that France has twice as many doctors as England but they cost just the same in total. And some individual doctors can be socialists, just as an individual capitalist can. But taken as a group Doctors in Britain have historically been on the right of the political spectrum.
It should also be noted that come the revoluion, there will be no capitalist left standing but there will be many doctors, probably more than exist now.