Dublin Opinion

A couple of people have commented on the analysis of class as presented in Tuesday’s post. It was taken from Michael Zweig’s book, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret (Cornell University Press, 2000). It is such an excellent piece of work that I’ve decided to carry on with doing my bit to popularize Zweig’s book, and as such have summarized the second chapter, “what we think about when we think about class”.

Bear in mind, though, that Zweig’s book is about the American class system. In terms of media and cultural representations of class, however, I think it has a lot to say about Ireland as well.

UPWARD MOBILITY

Zweig begins his chapter by asking, “why has the working class disappeared from public view?” His main point has to do with the almost complete dominance of middle class culture in all aspects of media, popular culture, and political discourse - the effect of which has been to push working class identity to the margins. His argument holds a relevance to the situation in Ireland, where a similar predominance of middle class “values” exists.

Even though the middle class is only about thirty-six percent of the workforce, almost every aspect of politics and popular culture, with help from the media, reinforces the idea that “middle class” is typical and usual status of Americans. Four strands of thinking have combined to promote the idea that we’re all middle class and to dissolve working class identity: 1) idea about upward mobility, 2) the promotion of consumerism, 3) the politics and ideology of the Cold War, and 4) media coverage of class and economic issues.” (p.39)

“Upward mobility” needs no introduction to Ireland. It forms the basis of every positive analysis of Ireland in the past ten years, with the focus firmly on the growth in real incomes and living standards. The emphasis on wages and material possessions is one that resonates with American ideas surrounding mobility as well.

One common understanding of upward mobility is raising family income. Since working class families now earn much higher incomes than they did fifty or a hundred years ago, who can question the reality of upward mobility and the good life workers have under capitalism? This argument is often made in terms of lifestyle: almost everyone lives a “middle class lifestyle” now (except the rich and the poor), so most people, including workers, must be middle class.
… But an increase in personal possessions doesn’t catapult workers into the middle class. The lifestyles of the middle class have also improved dramatically - to say nothing about the capitalists. It makes no sense to compare the workers of today with the middle class of 1945.” (p.40)

Zweig states that class structure is not a rigid caste system, and it is wrong to confuse one with the other. There is a limited form of mobility, and individuals can “get on” through hard work, honest living, and some luck as well. However, Zweig argues that not everyone can move up or improve themselves, because there has to be something for them to move up into. In other words, the amount of social mobility is bookmarked by the demands of the economy.

Since the working class includes both white collar and blue collar people, the fact that the son of a steelworker is now a bank teller says nothing about the disappearance of the working class through upward mobility. Some may believe that standing behind a bank counter is a “better” job than standing in front of an oxygen furnace (although it pays about half as much). But such occupational mobility is not mainly the result of the hard work and good character of the person who has gotten the better job. Rather, it comes from the structural changes in the economy that have shrunk the steel industry and opened up the financial sector…
The same workings of the economy contribute to the fact that some children of the working class have made it into the professional and managerial middle class. These occupations have grown somewhat in relation to the overall labour force, so it would not be possible for all the people who are currently middle class to have been born that way. No amount of hard work and good character could have made as many working class kids upwardly mobile if the “higher class” jobs had not been created by economic changes that had nothing to do with individual strivings.” (p.43)

In other words, classes are here to stay, as long as we have a capitalist economy, and we should organise our politics accordingly. This is because the class system is built into the very fabric of every capitalist economy. Social mobility is also limited by the fact that the majority of middle class positions stay within the middle class itself. There is upward movement, but it is not in any way the defining principle. The son of a postman might end up becoming a doctor, but the son of a doctor more than likely will. The idea that more wages and arbitrary advancement - for the children of working class parents anyway - is an improvement on robust social benefits provided by a functional social democracy, needs to be challenged by any social democratic party worthy of its name. And the popularity of more wages and arbitrary advancement as a worthy alternative to representative party politics, is tackled by Zweig under the headings of consumerism and the media.

CONSUMERISM

The rise of consumerism as an identity was consolidated in the years after the Second World War. ‘As leisure time increased’ writes Zweig, ‘the consumer boom flourished, and “keeping up with the Jones” seemed to become the very purpose of life.’ He argues that ‘the consumption patterns of the middle class [have been] taken up as a model and presented through advertising, films, television, the internet, and other popular entertainment. This middle class, middle-income standard of living is close enough to what the working class can afford, especially with all the encouragement to go ever more deeply into debt, to serve well as a magnet and as a source of ready comparison. (p.47) This trend has continued, and ‘consumption still holds our attention as people try to find fulfillment and identity beyond work.’ More wages in an alienated workplace has led people to buy more stuff in an attempt to find meaning through possessions.

Zweig’s argument, though, is not only with the façade of consumerism, but also with the effect this façade has had on popular ideas around state services and privatisation. He argues that the outward appearance generated by a consumerist identity gives the impression that the working class and the middle class are, essentially, the same.

The improved living standards the working class has achieved over the past century has brought a wide array of consumer goods. The middle class and the better-paid, unionised working class experience a rough equality: most own a house, a car or two, a stereo system; they both go to the movies and take paid vacations. To many people, the fact that the money to buy these things has come from very different work environments with different degrees of power makes no difference. And the fact that the middle class family will tend to have a bigger house, a fancier car, and a longer vacation seems a minor point against the argument that the working class, through consumption, is essentially the same as the middle class. (p.47)

‘Once again’ argues Zweig, ‘class differences at work and in the political arena are eclipsed, lost from view in the glitter of lifestyle.’ The underlying power structures of a capitalist economy are not changed by façade, however much advertising may tell us otherwise. In this change in identity, from one defined by workplace to one defined by consumerism, ‘we have lost something vital.’

A steady consistent representation of workers as consumers undermines working class identity and weakens solidarity, to the disadvantage of workers everywhere. Ironically, the weaker working class are in their confrontations with employers and with the capitalist class in the larger society, the less will workers be able to improve their wages and so their status as consumers.” (p.49)

Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the demands for the privatisation of public services. In Ireland we’re watching the privatisation of the health service, and pensions, in the name of consumer choice. Again, this is a myth. The working class is stretched, credit-wise, to keep up the consumer façade. This cannot translate into health and pensions. It can, however, for the genuine middle class.

Zweig devotes an entire chapter to this topic alone, but in summing up he says that ‘the point is that working people are called to support privatisation with appeals to their identity as consumers. When this identity dominates our stance toward government, the purpose of government shrinks and the political process is trivialized into a question of consumer choice.’ (p.50)

THE MEDIA

Representations of class and social issues in the popular media reflect and also help to create the misconceptions that erode our awareness of the working class and promote the idea of the United States as a middle class country. (p.54)

Zweig, of course, is talking about America, but the same points relate to the Irish media as well. As stated before, representations of the working class in Irish culture and media is something that bloggers, at least, have begun to address. As a body of professionals, the Irish media is, in the main, conservative and right-wing. Its coverage of Irish society is one where the working class arrive only when they have problems. Again, it is a situation in common with American media - admittedly an altogether more right-wing and conservative bunch. Zweig writes that ‘the newspapers may occasionally run a human interest story on the life of a particular family in hard times. But rarely do they attempt any analysis of what these stories tell us beyond the individuals shown.’ This is the ‘falling through the cracks’ approach, where heartbreaking stories are run of people who’ve been left behind by the system, or forgotten altogether. It acknowledges problems, but usually portrays them as human error, rather than as fundamental fault-lines. In Irish media commentary, social problems seem to be linked to government funding. Again, the idea is that it is the mismanagement of funds, rather than the system itself, that’s at fault. Given Eamon Gilmore’s recent performance on Questions and Answers, where is defended the Irish economy but criticised the government’s allocation of taxation, it is an analysis with which the Labour party agrees.

With regard to media itself, Zweig has this to say.

Workers are seen, when they are seen at all, as faces in a crowd or in sound bites, rarely as people with thoughtful things to say about their condition and their country. In the media, the working class is truly the silenced majority. (p.57)

The working class does exist in the media, but hardly in the most identity-cherishing way. When the majority does arrive, it is as consumers, through surveys of what we’re buying, where we’re going, where we’re living. Zweig’s point that the idea of consumption not as an activity but as an identity is reinforced every evening on the news. And in Ireland, this process has easily taken place over the past ten years, and continues to do so. In America, it’s been going on since the 1950s.

Of course, Irish media is not just journalism. Again, this topic has been brought up elsewhere, and here at other times. It’s an ongoing debate, and one with a lot of scope with regard to blogging. Zweig argues that talking about class issues in terms of class is not the negative experience that the media demand that it should be. ‘On the contrary’ write Zweig, ‘most people have a pretty good sense of who they are and where they stand in the larger society. Class talk can strike a chord among working class people.’

To our ears, it seems incredulous that talk of class in Ireland could meet a positive response. Thing is, where is that derision coming from? Media commentators? Columnists who poo-poo class issues? Are these really the people with the finger on the working class pulse? The Sindo bra-fondlers? Have we really had an honest debate about class, especially one where those making the argument for class analysis are coming from a reformist, social democratic background?

Is it not the case that the language of class has been the prerogative of both the far-left and the right-wing in Ireland? What we need is an analysis that accepts the fact that we’re going to be living in a capitalist economy for the foreseeable future, and until we work out a viable alternative, we should get down to the brass tacks of protecting ourselves from the powerful interests who are out to make billions on the backs of our labour. (€131 billion in mortgages and counting - all gone to the building industry, banks, estate agents, and ancillary services.) These brass tacks include a strong working class party to protect our interests in government - to be our Galway tent, so to speak - as well as a strong trade union movement to do the same in the workplace.

This is a reformist agenda. In Ireland, in this day, at this hour, I might as well be talking about syndicalist co-operatives given the usual comments thrown at reformists in this country. However, until the current ‘common sense’ view of Ireland is challenged, we will always be at stage one, rolling the dice to land on the snake, never the ladder.

It will not be easy, and to succeed it needs to be fought not only in the political arena, but also in the cultural and educational areas. It means linking up with groupings such as Irish studies, the Council of Religious in Ireland, Sinn Féin - in fact, all who question - at whatever level - the current cultural hegemony of this state.

It’s ambitious. However, we’ve tried having no ambition, and that hasn’t really worked out well for us now, has it? It’s time to be ambitious.