WHY BOTHER WITH CLASS ANALYSIS?
Sep 22nd, 2007 by Conor McCabe
The middle class has had a decidedly mixed experience. Some professionals, lover-level managers and small business owners have lost ground. These tend to be people more closely associated with the working class - social workers, teachers, store owners in working class neighbourhoods, community college faculty. Others have prospered dramatically - corporate lawyers, sophisticated tax accountants, professionals in the financial industry, people closely involved in the maneuverings that have brought brought vast fortunes to those at the very top.” (Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority, p.68)
This week has been about Michael Zweig’s book, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret. On Friday (21 September), Pavement Trauma asked about Zweig’s views on how power in the workplace could possibly pass over to power in wider society. Pavement wrote that, “I can see how wealth can certainly have undue influence - political donations etc. - but being a middle manager? Or a shop owner? How do they exercise undue power by dint of their positions, rather than by economic clout?” A fair point, and one that deserves a fair answer.
Zweig’s argument is not that the middle class wield enormous power, but that the working class loses power when it is incorporated into the middle class. The middle class is not the opposition, as such. The opposition is comprised of the elites in society who have enormous power over the economy, culture, education, and the political system. Within this dynamic the middle class is what it says on the tin: it’s in the middle.
For Zweig, the working class needs to be aware of its position in order to challenge it. The working class needs to be aware that it is not the middle class. In Working Class Majority, he says,
To exercise power, you need to know who you are. You also need to know who your adversary is, the target of the conflict. When the working class disappears into the middle class, workers lose a vital piece of their identity. In political, social, and cultural terms, they don’t know who they are any more. To make matters worse, they lose a sense of the enemy, as the capitalist class vanishes among “the rich”. As the capitalist class disappears from view, the target of struggle disappears, too. (p.74)
Zweig does not see the rich as the enemy. Writing of the American experience, he says, “real wages haven’t fallen, unions aren’t weaker, multiple wage earners aren’t a necessity in almost every working class household because Sylvester Stallone and Madonna are rich.” For Zweig, “capitalists tend to be rich, yes, but more important is the fact that they are capitalists.”
When the capitalist class disappears, the middle class, and particularly workers, who are thought to be middle class, seem to confront… whom? The rich? It is relatively easy to trivialize and ridicule class politics when it appears to be a knee-jerk attack on the rich. Not least, this is because most people would like to become rich themselves, to live the good life with ease. To attack the rich is to attack what many people hope for in their own futures. It seems to rob people of their aspirations.” (p.75)
This is why Zweig’s insistence on ‘identifying a working class is not a word game. It is not just a matter of semantics to say that workers are in the working class, not the middle class; it is a question of power.” In the following quote, Zweig is talking about the American experience. nonetheless, it’s one with some resonance with today’s Ireland.
Since the 1970s, employers have argued continuously that workers get paid too much, that unions put too many restrictions on management (either directly or through their influence in politics), that workers have to give up past gains to help business regain competitiveness. Politicians complain that labour is “a special interest” that threatens the middle class; any talk of the working class and class conflict is considered a ridiculous throwback to outworn dogma. These are all direct attacks on labor by capitalists. It is a class struggle, but only one side seems to know it.
Although most people do not look at social issues in class terms, many business leaders have a keen appreciation of the matter. For twenty-five years they have mounted a deliberate and public attack on working class wages and power. While working and middle class people have been disregarding class, others have been astutely conducting class struggle - on behalf of capitalists. (p.74)
Zweig’s insistence on a class analysis is that it helps us to see what is happening in the economy - the recent changes in distribution of wealth, for example; analyzing class allows us a better understanding of power within the economy and society; to talk of a working class is to acknowledge the existence and experience of working people, of the dignity of work, and to acknowledge their identity as working people. That identity has, to put it mildly, “suffered eclipse.” “A resurrection of working class social, political, and cultural life” writes Zweig, “proudly defined as such, would contribute to the strengthening again of working people’s sense of dignity, as well as increasing the power and authority of working people in the larger society.”
So. Where does this lead Pavement Trauma’s middle manager, or shop owner? This goes back to the opening quote - the “decidedly mixed experience” of the middle class. In Irish terms, the ongoing calls for privatisation of the health service and pensions are made to appeal to the “middle class” taxpayer, as well as to the cultural trope of ourselves as consumers. Representations of the working class - in broadcast and print media - do not show working people. Instead, the poor and “underclass” are portrayed. The working class, understandably, begin to feel they belong with the middle class, because the alternative is not the most attractive. This is not to say that the cultural tropes surrounding working class life are intentional - but they have been accepted, even by the well-intentioned.
In terms of power, a middle manager may feel sympathy for his line-workers, but is s/he going to back them in a pay rise, or is s/he more likely to do h/er job and support the company line. Take the recent disputes in the health service. However sympathetic middle management may have been to the nurses’ pay dispute, that management structure is there to implement policy, not change it. Does the shop owner vote for what s/he sees as h/er interests, or those of the working class? In all of this, the middle class have a choice, albeit an uneasy one. Social critic Barbara Ehrenreich, puts it thus:
There is not, ultimately, an objective answer to the question of whether the middle class is an elite or something less exalted - an extension, perhaps, of the working class. and thence there is no easy answer to the much harder question of whether it is ‘naturally’ inclined to the left or to the right. Is the middle class, by nature, generous or selfish? Overindulged or aggrieved? Committed to equality or protective of privilege? These are not only possible answers, but choices to be made.” (Working Class Majority, p.68)
In Ireland, middle class people, in middle class professions, have to make that choice for themselves.
Top class (sic) analysis as always conor. but seriously….lay off prosperity. just cos it’s not the irish “our friends in the north” doesn’t make it the enemy….
I’ve watched episode one and episode three now. It’s awful ,cliche-ridden stuff. Drunken fathers from “de flats”? Single mothers at “de shops”? It’s everything I’m saying about cultural tropes. all in one show.
high production values, though. Never mind the content, feel the width.
One last point, the drunk has both a fry and cornflakes for breakfast? Whoever wrote that knows nothing about drinking either. He’d have nothing, ‘cos his stomach wouldn’t be up for it - not after years of drinking. But… how would they know even that? As I said, they looked up the working class dictionary, and got what they needed from that.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair conor. No-where in the promotion of this show has this been billed as a portrait of working class Ireland.
Instead it’s one take on four characters who are entirely alienated from modrern irish society. I’ve actually been very impressed by how it’s tried to get accross the mundanity of life for many people in this country.
I agree with you of course on the drinking/cornflakes point, but the same episode had moments that rang true to me, the character of Georgie in the show (a skilled upholsterer) reminded me of an aquantence of my family in the same trade who similarly ran out of work once the argos age began and took to the drink, finally resulting in the break-up of his family.
The father-son relationship in the same episode had elements i recognised from a friend of my father’s complete inability to connect with his daughter after the break-up of his marriage, eventually ending in him drinking himself to death a few months back.
I, like you wish that there were more honest and less “issue” led depictions of people from ordinary working class backgrounds, but it doesn’t mean there’s no room for drama’s like prosperity either.
There ARE single mothers staying in b&b’s on a day by day basis in the city.
There ARE seperated fathers who have become little more than an embarressment to their own kids and who have no idea how to connect with them once their more traditional roles have been removed.
It can’t be wrong to make a drama about these people just because you don’t make sure there are plenty of positive role-models from the same area to balance things out.
It is not the fault of this show that many of those who watch it will view it as a “working class” drama. It has not billed itself as such, and in fact I think the structure of the series (one main character who is on screen for the full hour) makes this much more of an intimate character-led series, than a study in class.
I’m working on a review of the series which i’ll pass on to donagh after tonights final episode, but so far, despite admittadly having some cringe-worthy moments, when they just get the dialogue wrong, I think it’s been a very strong series.
Regarding whether or not it bills itself as a working class drama or not, we only have to look at the title. Prosperity is supposed to suggest that in a land of plenty there are those who get left behind. There is no doubt that these hard luck stories exist, indeed many times over, but the problem with the program is not what it deals with but what it leaves out. By concentrating on certain victims it turns them into anomalies, while leaving the larger issue of poverty and the political realities of it untouched.
Also, from an artistic point of view, by concentrating on victims they missed the opportunity to have a much richer and more complex drama. When I saw it I saw so much that had been done before. It wasn’t challenging at all, but rather conformed to types.
That’s great about doing a review Donal and look forward to reading it.
The two I’ve seen centered on people coming from the same socio-economic background. The ad I saw for the one I’ve missed - the tracksuit kid - ditto. It may have elements of a character-led drama, but its entire make-up is saturated in a particular socio-economic group. and that’s deliberate. This drama is calling itself “prosperity” - it’s setting its stall out as a social commentary - and social commentary on a particular socio-group that it has labelled with dramatic, and familiar, images. I mean, it’s not a radio play. It’s on TV, so the imagery talk to us as well. The imagery is as much about intent and characterisation as the dialogue or plot line.
My point is that this ADDS to the already accepted cultural tropes in Ireland. I didn’t say it caused them. I’m saying it’s adding to it.
with regard to alcoholism - hardly a class-based issue. But, they’ve made it clear that this is a class-based drama - because all four characters are coming from the same socio-economic grouping. So. did they want to make a drama about alcoholism, or about alcoholism within a socio-economic group? you cannot say that it’s only the viewers who are seeing this as a working class drama, when the makers have set out to use the very cliches our society demands of its working class people.
for all of its issues, in fact it’s a very conservative drama. and, it’s using Irish working class imagery, because that’s what it wants to say about the characters. It wants the fact that he’s an upholsterer to talk to us, it wants the fact that his ma lives in the flats to talk to us, it wants that bloody demin jacket he wears to talk to us.
The makers of this is drama are not just saying that these people are working class - they’re kicking us in the bollicks with it.
Also, a bit of a straw man with the “but it doesn’t mean there’s no room for drama’s like prosperity either.” I didn’t say there was no room for it. In fact, there’s plenty of room for it. I’m just saying it’s shit. and god know, there’s always room for shit in Ireland.
Having said all that, I’m looking forward to the review! Seriously. Always good to read your stuff, Donal. wish we had more of it. you’ve a real talent.
Does anyone criticise Dan and Bec’s or the clinic because it is only from 1 socio-economic group? Or do we expect “working class” shows be more social commentary commentary the “upper class” shows
Ask the writers of Prosperity that. They’re the ones who’ve set out to tell us something about this socio-economic group - as the advertisiing for prosperity said, those who’ve been forgotten by the celtic tiger.
the other thing is that the clinic, or bachelor’s walk, or pure mule, are well written and avoid cliches to establish their characters. All three i’ve praised in the past for those very reasons.
you don’t have that with prosperity, which relies completely on cliches because it doesn’t know what it’s talking about. That’s my point about the breakfast scene in the third episode. The alcoholic has a fry for breakfast - and cornflakes as well - because that’s what the Irish working class dictionary has down for “breakfast”, even thought it doesn’t ring true. And… if you’re setting out to tell us something about a class in society, “doesn’t ring true” means you’ve failed, no matter how big the production values are.
We deserve more than “at least they’re trying”. Why should we settle for steve staunton when it comes to working class drama in this country? We should have, and demand, Roy Keane.
The alcoholic has a fry for breakfast - and cornflakes as well - because that’s what the Irish working class dictionary has down for “breakfast”, even thought it doesn’t ring true.
I haven’t seen the scene in question, but if I was writing a screenplay about an alcoholic (and I’m not), I might have him eat a fry for breakfast because he’s fooling himself into thinking that this is the day he’s going to sort his life out. Proper breakfast, proper start to a new day, etc.
Maybe my indignation is on the blink but i honestly don’t think we can hold tv drama up to the microscope to this extent and be left with anything to watch.
What is it about track-suits and hoopy earings that make people so sensitive? I for one am not going to check working class cred at the door to writing anything set outside foxrock. If a character in a tv-show is a golfer and a prick i don’t immediately think “cliche” i think “yeah. a lot of golfers are pricks”.
As far as “ringing true” goes i’ve already explained two ways in which the show has for me already. I can add a third. In the opening episode the single mother stacey was anything but cliched. In fact in my experience of teaching teenage girls many of those who have had to leave my classes to have children in their teens were very much like stacey. Not cynically exploiting a system. Not sexually promiscuous. Just Sexually naive and unlucky.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that the show doesn’t hit bum notes. What I am saying is most drama does; I laughed un-selfconsciously at Davor in the first series of Bachelors walk (a borderline racist Croat-Lothario-Cliche). Dan in the clinic began the first series as an almost pantomime smarmy brit toff. And though i’m not as familiar with pure mule i’m sure if you were from edenderry you wouldn’t have to look to far to find something to be offended by.
My point is when we see the track-suits and the hoopy ear-rings we get the microscope out. Even Roy Keane would struggle under that scrutiny.
Ok. Let’s step back from the microscope.
My point about Prosperity in the article is that it is part of a tradition of Irish class-based dramas that see the working class through its problems and nothing else.
What you’re telling me here is that it does that very well.
My point has to do with cultural production in Ireland, something you have not addressed in any of the comments. you’re arguing for Prosperity as a divorced, artistic, piece of work. fine. But, within a wider class analysis, Prosperity is not a divorced, artistic, piece of work. Although, its director, Lenny Abrahamson, would seem to be happy with that type of critical approach. He told The Ticket on Friday that, “My interest is in exploring the possibilities of film-making. It’s not campaigning political activism.” The social reality of life on the margins as an aesthetic. It has an aesthetic. But to treat it as an aesthetic?
My indignation, as you call it, is not the track-suits and hoppy ear-rings. It’s about the wider issue of cultural production. And I’ve talked about this before.
http://dublinopinion.com/2007/09/18/class-in-ireland-an-immodest-proposal/
http://dublinopinion.com/2007/09/14/modern-ireland-shrivelled-dragons-hysterical-energy/
http://dublinopinion.com/2007/06/19/this-is-ireland/
http://dublinopinion.com/2007/06/17/defining-working-class-in-ireland/
I’m not saying anything new in my criticism of Prosperity. In fact, given what I’ve written up to now, it would be quite surprising if I were to suddenly go all Harold Bloom and say, well, maybe Prosperity should get a free pass and be seen in aesthetic, instead of cultural production, terms. you know, fuck it.
This leads me to ask a question (or two) of you. Should Irish cultural production be exempt from a materialist approach, or is it just Prosperity? Or, even more general, Is a materialist approach just wrong?
Oh. One more thing. The single mother is a cliche - that is, it’s been completely overused in this type of drama. single mothers are real (and, by the way, I never said they weren’t). In social dramas, however, they’re a cliche.
I do understand that i’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent from the original article without addressing it’s real content. And I know that the way you’ve approached the show is in a wider context with other articles you’ve written.
And yes i believe your approach has huge potential in terms of understanding the relationship of culture and class perception in Ireland.
I just felt to begin with that the show’s repeated appearance in your articles this week as almost shorthand for everything thats wrong with how the working class is seen in popular culture wasn’t giving the show a fair crack of the whip.
Having watched the last episode tonight i still think it shouldn’t be dismissed on the basis of a materialist analysis alone. Perhaps its a contradiction to both agree whole-heartedly with your artcles main thrust while saying that it can’t be the only angle we take when assessing cultural output. Still that’s how i see it.
Hope the spanish class went well by the way!
Hugh, you mustn’t have seen Leaving Las Vegas. Like you, the prostitute Sera thought that all Ben the alcoholic screenwriter played by N.Cage needed was a good feed to sober him up. ‘You haven’t eaten for days’, she squeeled, as Ben, with red rimmed and swollen eyes, looked down at the food on his plate. He then cleared the table with one of those dramatic Hollywood arm sweeps and reached for the half finished bottle of vodka.
The guys stomach was in no shape for food.
Now maybe the character in Prosperity wasn’t as far gone. On a side note I remember hearing that in order to reherse for his part Nicholas Cage decided he needed to go somewhere where a lot of drinking gets done. So he got on a plane to Dublin. However, Nicholas Cage is kind of recognizable and there wouldn’t be much change of mixing comfortably with the regulars in Grogans of a saturday night. So instead he sat in his hotel room and ordered up booze from room service. Or so I heard. It’s probably just another apocryphal tale.
Ha, I have seen Leaving Las Vegas, and I thought Nicholas Cage’s character was a BIG GIRL for not being able to hold down a bit of food.
I heard that Nicholas Cage story too. My favourite celebrity ‘alcoholic’ story was working class hero James Galway. Some years back on TV he made startling revelations about how his drinking nearly ruined his life. He recalled the mad times with the Berlin Phil, where he could end up drinking two, even three pints of beer a night. Crazy bastard.
Indeed, maybe he was being a big girl, but I wouldn’t have thought that the simple act of eating your dinner was an indication of machismo. Although I suppose generations of parents have traditionally insisted that their male children ‘eat up all their greens’ so that they can ‘grow up to be a big man’.
Yes, Galway’s Berlin years have nothing on Bowie and Eno. But on reflection, perhaps a beer or three before a performance might have put a bit of zest into his otherwise soporific flute-playing.
Oh just great. I start talking about class, and it ends up in the pub. All I did was use an image from Prosperity, and the entire discussion goes on the batter.
“Having watched the last episode tonight i still think it shouldn’t be dismissed on the basis of a materialist analysis alone.”
Donal, again, I’m not dismissing Prosperity because of some aesthetic reading of the drama, I’m highlighting it because it falls with an historical lineage of Irish portrayals of the poor / working class - a lineage that goes back over a hundred years. either way, Prosperity was peripheral to my post, as was that fucking breakfast.
In terms of power, a middle manager may feel sympathy for his line-workers, but is s/he going to back them in a pay rise, or is s/he more likely to do h/er job and support the company line.
Ok, I feel bad for talking too much about beer. In terms of power, once you get into the non-unionised service sector jobs, a middle manager is not likely to hold that much more power than any person whom he manages.
That is, he/she has little, if any power to side with his lesser-paid companions when threatened with the prospect of his job -and those of the rest of his workplace- heading south. That is, he’s as fearful as the rest of ‘em. Sure, he can do a Spartacus, but, he thinks, it won’t do any good, because real power interests -in many cases, real power is not concentrated in Ireland, a consideration your analysis appears to omit- will see to it that either a) he is replaced with someone more compliant, since most of these roles are easily replaceable; b) the generalised demands for better conditions get met eventually with a decision to accelerate the transfer of his production to China, India, Eastern Europe, or wherever.
That was a bit teacher-ish of me. Sorry.
Regarding the middle manager. His power is greater than his line staff, but only within his organisation. He has the power to chose who should be laid off for example in the event of a restructure. He has the power to award bonuses and salary rises. The power to bat for others on his team. And so on. But this hardly translates into power when he walks out the door at 5pm.
Did I say 5pm. I mean 10pm when he goes home to log on again with his laptop to reply to that fucker in San Fran that was asking about tomorrow’s delivery.
He will in general toe the line. For he or she knows that his/her own bonus and chances of getting to the next level depend on it. Even if she gets to the next level, say a head of business unit. Power in society is still not advanced all that much. The son of a TD who pulls his wire all day would still have far more power. Or the daughter of the Master of the local hospital.
I’m struggling here to delineate where the line lies between real power and merely, low level corporate power.
I suppose if our friend becomes VP or CEO of a reasonable size company and starts to play golf (or otherwise network) with slightly more powerful CEOs then that would constitute real power. Entering the clique so to speak. Arrivé!
Veering wildly off the discussion for a minute, but i urge anyone who can to have a look at the lead story in the Irish Mail on Sunday today (they don’t appear to have a separate web identity from their ‘mainland’ parent, so i can’t post it here) - under a headline something like ‘Middle-classes fear Invasion’, it discusses how councils ‘up and down the country’ are buying up properties in ‘nice areas’ to house ‘problem’ families - ‘why should they get it for free, when we have to pay for it?’ bemoans A. Resident.
Looked at a bit more closely the kernel of the story appears to centre around Limerick City Council buying up semi-ds in order to temporarily house residents of Moyross as their own homes are refurbished; the single most outrageous sentence categorises all these families as ‘problem families’ - recalling John Copper Clarke’s great line from Beasley St about ‘their only problem (being )they’re not someone else’…….. seriously, have a look. The classs war goes overground from the enemy side.
Thanks for that, sonofstan. I must try to track down a copy.
[…] of the most interesting analyses of class in contemporary society I have ever read is available at Dublin Opinion at the moment. Conor has been working through aspects of class definitions, […]