Thanks, I figured that when I only saw the first two on BARD…
And as I walked to the grocery store and back (they have this great deal on
Sundays, 12 bagels for $5, and they’re not goyische bagels, either, they’re
quite good, so I freeze them, thaw them out one at a time, and they’re great,
but I digress…), I was thinking about this whole class discussion going on…if
one stops with the definition of working class as those who apply their labor
to nature and produce something, it ends right there. There’s nothing more to
say. And, IMO, it’s rather limiting and even boring. But class can be viewed,
analyzed, discussed from so many sides, it is so much more complex than that.
We live in a society that is multifaceted, and so much goes into where one sits
on the spectrum of that society. Notice, I very purposefully avoided the word
“hierarchy.”
Many years ago, there was an article somewhere or other about the emerging
classes, if you so will, among high school girls…the mean girls, the A girls,
the B girls, the wannabees, and on and on. In my high school days, it was
expected and pretty much held true that everyone who was not the cheerleader,
prom queen, dating the quarterback, rah rah pep rally, type was “inferior.” At
least until the rest of us discovered other things that “saved” us and that we
actually found much more interesting…civil rights and anti war movements,
Indian rights, folk music, hippie culture, coffee houses, poetry, intellectual
discussion in smoke filled rooms if we could get away with that, eastern
religions, music, art, theater, maybe a little pot, on and on. But still, even
though we preferred being there to the vacuous pursuits of the popular kids, as
they were called then, we still knew that to those who made the rules, we were
still outsiders. But in this article, sometimes in the 2000s, one of the
contemporary equivalents of us outsiders of the past said in answer to the
question of whether those other girls were “better.” She answered “Well, they
think they are, but who cares what they think?”
Progress has been made…
I’ve been in contact with the very wealthy, mostly professionally, and I’d look
at them and say, if I could have their money, wouldn’t that be nice. But if I
had to take their lives along with their money, no thank you, I’d rather stay
poor.
On Aug 28, 2016, at 2:17 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alice,
The first two books are on BARD, but the latest is on Bookshare.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice Dampman
Humel
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2016 12:59 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: what is the working class?
Yes,, I think it does.and IMO, you've done a very good job of doing exactly
that in your review of these books which I will seek out and read.thanks!
On Aug 28, 2016, at 10:14 AM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
There's an author, Jay McInerney,who wrote a trilogy, Brightness
Falls, The
Good Life, and just recently, Bright Precious Days. These books are
about a
couple living in Manhattan first in the eighties, then right after
the
attack on the World Trade Center, and finally, during the 2008
crash. These
are beautifully written books and they point out how really
unhelpful, class
analysis can be when you're talking about the lives of real people.
The
husband, Russell, comes from the mid west from what most people
would
describe as a middle class background. But he attended Brown where
he became
friends with people who came from very wealthy backgrounds. He
became an
editor at a New York publishing firm. The wife, Corrine, comes from
an old
New England family, wealthy in the past, much less so now. She
attended a
well known private scool for girls and then, Brown. When they marry
and live
in New York, they mingle with some very wealthy people, partly
because
Corrine's best friend from private school married and extremely
wealthy man
and includes Corrine in social events, partly because Russell's job
as
editor, brings him into contactd with wealthy people and business
socializing makes these contacts necessary. But the couple doesn't
have all
that much money. They rent their apartment which is rent controlled.
They
send their children to public school. Corrine works in order to
supplement
her husband's income. But their tastes and their social habits and
vacations, all of their life style are those of the very wealthy.
And in the
last book, which begins during the Obama Clinton primary campaign,
all of
these very wealthy people are Democrats who ar squabbling about
which of the
two candidates to support. Corrine, by the way, first works as a
stock
broker, then as an unsuccessfulscreen writer, and then for a poverty
organization which feeds the poor in the city. And it is Russell,
who comes
from the more modest background, who has aspirations for wealth,
rather than
Corrine. So does it even make any sense to try to classify them in
terms of
social class?
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice
Dampman
Humel
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2016 1:46 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: what is the working class?
But doctors are not considered working class, neither in capitalist
society
nor in the socialist and communist societies that have existed so
far.
Working class is not as rigidly simple as those who apply labor to
nature to
produce something. I think it does also include less measurable or
tangible, things such as education, income or economic level,
cultural
affinities, behavior, life style, dress, food, And I think both the
Marxist,
the capitalist, and the socialist and communist societies that have
existed
so far all include such things, too. The whole anti-intellectual
actions
seen on both sides historically is an example of that. You grew up
the son
of a doctor? You are going to work in a factory to learn to give up
your
bourgeois ways. My son, the doctor is a far cry from my son, the
factory
worker in most contemporary society. It's not a feeling in the
heart, it's
not entirely subjective, but assuming the actions of the person do
somehow
fit with the words he uses to define himself, then I do think that
where one
places one's self has some validity. What I get a little suspicious
about,
though, is how one person or a committee or other determining body
insists
on critiqueing another, often based on false assumptions and/or
flawed logic
and saying I am/we are working class, but you are not.
If someone calls himself working class and frequents fancyish
restaurants a
few times a week and blows $100 each time, is he working class? And
capitalist commerce has blurred the lines, too. Now, anyone can buy
diamonds
at Sears, so although those diamonds are hardly the quality found at
Fortunoff's or Tiffany's, the working class now has diamonds, too,
and along
with bread and circus, they're deceived into thinking the upper
class has
admitted them to their ranks. And there's that blurring of what
Roger will
accept as class definition and what he rejects. But I think it's all
part of
the same puzzle. And I also think that upper, middle, lower class
has a seat
at the table, too, because it fleshes out this whole class thing.
When is
the last time you saw a debutante in her white dress at her
coming-out
cotillion with her upper class arms and shoulders covered in
tattoos? Maybe
a little rose or butterfly on her ankle or on her tush, but.
All of this is part of an objective reality, too. The difficulty is
how it
fits together, and what the sort of ripple effect does with it. A
classless
society? I'm not sure what that even is or would be. There will
always be
differences, until we're all robots or zombies. And even then. Maybe
more to
the point is that it shouldn't matter that much, and it shouldn't be
quite
so existential. The shuffling money around class certainly
contributes to
making class determine what the lives of others will be, and that is
all
wrong.
On Aug 27, 2016, at 10:21 PM, Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender
"rogerbailey81" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Doctors do useful labor. That is enough for them to be working
class. The fact that they have been granted certain privileges in
capitalist
society does not change the fact that their labor is useful. Trading
stocks
is not useful though.
On 8/27/2016 7:58 PM, joe harcz Comcast wrote:
Roger and Marx did have a good definition though. In fact
working class does not exclude doctors, for example per se. They do
labor of
a certain sort and do indeed alter nature in healing people through
science
and skill.
Income in the capitalist schema doesn't matter to Marxists,
or other schooled socialists in definitional terms.
In other words doctors would be considerred a part of the
working class in a socialist schema.
They probably wouldn't make the average income they do in
capitalist society, but they would still be working class.
----- Original Message -----
From: Alice Dampman Humel
<mailto:alicedh@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2016 7:49 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: what is the working
class?
I do not use the Marxist definition of working
class. Not at all.
On Aug 27, 2016, at 7:35 PM, Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alice, Roger and Carl use the Marxist
definition of working class with Carl
doing a bit of expanding. If we were on an
email list with no members who
were dedicated to the classic theory of
working class, we could talk about
all the complexities. Given that we're were
we are, I'm trying to avoid the
whole question, entirely.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice
Dampman
Humel
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2016 5:10 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: what is the
working class?
to expand on my own message and questions:
who gets to decide whether one is working
class?
If that surgeon, using his own definition of
working class, as Frank wishes
and claims the right to do, sees himself as
working class, does a third
party, including me, have the right to say
he is not?
How much does the life one lives, the
choices one makes to do with the same
wages as the next person, factor into the
working class designation?
Does the factory worker who puts every penny
he can into buying a house in
the burbs cease to be working class when he
and his family move out of their
cramped, substandard apartment even though
he still works in the same
factory at the same job at the same wage?
What about his buddy who earns the
same money laboring at the same job but
blows every paycheck at the local
bar? Is he more working class? Is one
answer, or are both answers, yes or no
stereotyping and profiling?
If my questions indicate nothing else, they
surely indicate quite clearly
that this is a complex question that can't
be left to each person's personal
preference or to some rigid, two-line
definition.
Where does that leave us? ?
That's what I mean when I say that in order
to have any kind of meaningful
conversation that included anything about
the working class
On Aug 27, 2016, at 4:26 PM, Alice Dampman
Humel <alicedh@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
so if you're working class, you're not
permitted to earn a good
living?
. And Bob's arbitrary income and/or
educational measuring standards
seem completely irrelevant. I really doubt
anyone has investments that they
live from that give them such a modest
return. There wouldn't be such a
problem with that.but when those returns for
no labor at all are millions
and millions, it's an entirely different
matter.
and Carl added the requirement that the
working class person must be
working to support the ruling class.
Many people seem to require a certain degree
of suffering and
hardship to qualify for the working class.
Roger quotes a definition that the labor
must be directly applied to
nature.
So it seems to me that everyone has their
own personal spin on it,
and, it also seems to me that many spins
include a certain amount of
exclusion of others and inclusion of the
self based at least in part on
those spins
On Aug 27, 2016, at 10:02 AM, Bob Hachey
<bhachey@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi all,
No doubt, trying to define what is the
working class is not
going to be
easy. One could argue that it means earning
less than a
certain income,
let's say $40,000.00. The flaw there is that
one could be
earning such
income from investments and not working at
all. Also,
picking a number for
the income is problematic at best.
Others might say that it means doing some
sort of physical
labor. But some
folks like plumbers and electricians earn a
pretty good
living doing
physical labor.
Still others might argue that it is based on
one's education
level. But we
all know folks who are relatively well
educated who don't
make much money
and we know other less educated types who
earn more money.
By the way, I
hesitate to use the word earn because it
implies that all
who get money
deserve what they get and that is certainly
not true in
these days of
injustice and tremendous income inequality.
Perhaps the best way to look at this is to
take the approach
that former
SCOTUS justice Potter took in trying to
define what is
obscenity. He said
that he couldn't define it specifically but
that he knew
what it was when he
saw it.
Bob Hachey
