Elitism, clarse and all that...

[DeppityDawg]

:hattip  :thup:  :clp



Exactly this deppity. These cants claim to speak for the working class , and as brexit shows , not only do they completely misunderstand them , but when the working class step out of line and vote brexit/ tory , they despise them for it in the same breath.



I grew up playing in the middens of glasgow tenements , and later paisley council estates , and these feckers do not and never will speak for me or mine.



The biggest hater of the english people arent me or the snp , its the emily thornbberrys and the other self same middle class snobs and elitists on the brit left that hypocritically and constantly talk utter guff ,while claiming to speak in our best interests.



We have never ever had it so good in glasgow since we voted those labour barstewards out of power.

Absolutely right - its become almost the "badge" of honour among the Labour intelligentsia to claim they are the protectors of our "interests", when hardly any of them even come from a working class background anymore. They have no idea what our "interests" even are. "Oh, give them some more benefits, they'll be ok". Give us respect, not pity and condescension.



How many times have the same people (you know who they are) told you that "Independence is not in your best economic interests"? How many times has the same argument been used about "Brexit"? Here we are, on the verge of the biggest potential financial crises in living memory, and these very same people are the ones who claim "economic" considerations (which btw, won't affect them nearly as much) are not important now?

[papasmurf]

Deppity may be a running dog lackey of the capitalist boss class who has sold out his own class, but it has to be said that he makes some good points.

A bit like Dominic Cummings except he married into the aristocracy, with a Baronet for a Father-In-Law.

[Thomas]

It is too.



Deppity may be a running dog lackey of the capitalist boss class who has sold out his own class, but it has to be said that he makes some good points.

Well he certainly seems to have his finger on the political pulse unlike javert and his fellow brit lefty remoaners. :roll:  ::



Not content with only doing all the things in deppity dawgs post that he highlights , other  examples include telling us how we should feel about scottish indy or brexit , the whiny brit left are now onto telling us to be outraged about dominic cummings , when no one gives a feck.



Im choking for a pint down the pub while javert is choking on his own middle class elitist remoaner bile. ::

[Borchester]

:clp



Good post deppity.

It is too.



Deppity may be a running dog lackey of the capitalist boss class who has sold out his own class, but it has to be said that he makes some good points.

[Thomas]

Pity we dont have a like button.

[Thomas]

Says who? Who decides what is "our own economic interests"?. Don't ever fecking dare tell me what is or is not in my OWN interests, economic, social or any other. I know what is in my own interests - not you. Not the Guardian. Not the Emily Thornberrys and the Islington socialists. Me. I'll decide what is MY best interests, Javert. Not you.



Why do you think you can make these statements? What makes YOU think you are so great, that YOU can decide what is in someone elses "best interests"? It is precisely that arrogance, that self declared moral righteousness, that sickening assumption that you are cleverer than these poor, stupid, unfortunate people, that is what many of us despise.

 :hattip  :thup:  :clp



Exactly this deppity. These cants claim to speak for the working class , and as brexit shows , not only do they completely misunderstand them , but when the working class step out of line and vote brexit/ tory , they despise them for it in the same breath.



I grew up playing in the middens of glasgow tenements , and later paisley council estates , and these feckers do not and never will speak for me or mine.



The biggest hater of the english people arent me or the snp , its the emily thornbberrys and the other self same middle class snobs and elitists on the brit left that hypocritically and constantly talk utter guff ,while claiming to speak in our best interests.



We have never ever had it so good in glasgow since we voted those labour barstewards out of power.

[DeppityDawg]

What puzzles me is why so many working class people get so angry that "liberal elite lefty" people who "read the Guardian" are voting for parties that want to reduce inequality and trying to highlight the issues you describe, and yet they are hated by yourselves.  The Guardian probably does more work than any other UK news organisation to publicise some of the issues you describe above, which are still going on even today as you rightly imply, and bring attention to those things.

Your post is TLDR (to use your pals favourite expression). But this part just about sums you up. You claim not to understand why working class people dislike middle class elitists, then go on to write a classic elitist trope with your very next line...

It puzzles me that many working class people seem to want to keep the status quo, and therefore decide to vote against their own economic interests.

Says who? Who decides what is "our own economic interests"?. Don't ever fecking dare tell me what is or is not in my OWN interests, economic, social or any other. I know what is in my own interests - not you. Not the Guardian. Not the Emily Thornberrys and the Islington socialists. Me. I'll decide what is MY best interests, Javert. Not you.



Why do you think you can make these statements? What makes YOU think you are so great, that YOU can decide what is in someone elses "best interests"? It is precisely that arrogance, that self declared moral righteousness, that sickening assumption that you are cleverer than these poor, stupid, unfortunate people, that is what many of us despise. Because you do it without even knowing it. Because you think you are entitled to do it. Until you people lose that attitude, those "poor misfortunate creatures" you think you are helping will continue to despise you. Give us fecking RESPECT, not your pity.

[Thomas]

Boycey I understand what you are saying. But even if I'd known much about Marx when I was 15, I doubt it would have made much difference to how things turned out. Talking about class distinctions, and specifically for me anyway, the poverty and lack of opportunity I remember, my over riding desire was that I wanted out of it – it never even occurred to me that I could change it even if I'd wanted to.



I'm close to 60 now. I'm relatively well off. Not wealthy by any means, but I'm ok. I don't rent anything. My mortgage will be paid off in about 18 months. Its not a huge house, but its mine. I'll have (if I survive corona-fecking-virus  :roll: ) a reasonable retirement – but god know, I've worked for it. I've made sacrifices for it. Yet I'm lucky in the respect that I've got a good network of friends and contacts, that I've never really been out of work – that's not true for everyone I realise. But those are contacts and friends I've earned the respect of (and theirs for me) the hard way



I don't buy the communism stuff I'm afraid. You see, I wanted to earn money. To get married. To have kids. To own my own home. To be respectable I suppose. Because ultimately I guess I wanted to have what my family never really had when I was a kid. I didn't want my kids to grow up like that. Does that mean that a little "elitism" exists in us all? I think it probably does. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. We live in (or should live in I believe) a meritocracy, not just one where everyone is "equal" because it's a liberal article of faith. Human beings are hierarchal. Some lead. Some follow. Some are good at some things, some good at others. I think the concept of bland "equality" sounds awful. Equality of opportunity yes. Of outcome, no.



What gets my back up about liberal elitism is their sense of moral superiority. It's the way that a state owned broadcaster like the BBC pretends to be impartial when its anything but. It's the sniffy attitude to the English flag, the pretence that liberalism represents a set of universal values, and to disagree with one of them (like mass immigration for instance) results in accusations like "you don't like foreigners – eg, you're a racist". Its the shambles that democracy became over Brexit.



I think the current state of the working class was described best by Owen Jones "demonisation"  – ironically I detest the scabby little **** but its close to the truth. The "working class" stopped working and were recreated as chavs and scroungers by one side, and hapless uneducated "victims" on the other. We lost our self respect. The liberal middle class regard the working class (aka the Poor, the disadvantaged, the oppressed etc) as a life purpose project – "oh, I am concerned to help the poor", as if they were dumb animals that need to be "helped" by their intellectual superiors. In the end, constructive help is always good, but I'm a great believer in that there is no one who can help you more than yourself. It's having the opportunities to help yourself out of what holds you back that counts. Whilst its true there weren't and still aren't the same opportunities for you if you come from a disadvantaged background, there are still those who rise from it. And there are plenty of those who disadvantage themselves too.



That's why communism will never work in my opinion – because we aren't equal, and we never will be. And that's why "elitism" exists I guess.

 :clp



Good post deppity.

[Javert]

This thread was also supposed to be about class, before you lot of commies and malcontents turned it into a rag about the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It was, partly, in response to the remark that "class" doesn't exist, or that its just a mechanism to "other" people, whatever that means. Yeah sure. Like I said, I've met plenty of working clarse people who say "I'm better than that guy because I lived in a council house"  :roll:



As I remember it, there was at least a strong sense of community on those council estates at least – maybe even solidarity. I'm talking about the 60s and 70s now, and it certainly isn't the same now. I think its also fair to say that it was women who largely held family units together. They were the ones who provided the care and compassion, and if they worked as well, also had responsibility for looking after the home (such as it was). The men meanwhile mostly did jobs that were often just hard labour – my old man was a docker and he was as strong as an Ox – and in a lot of them accidents and industrial diseases were common. It was not uncommon for men to die in their mid to late 60s, and in some case (like my old man), earlier than that due to excessive drinking. Drink, the curse of the working class as they say. How can anyone who has grown up in a middle class environment where their parents were white collar or professionals ever understand that? Let alone turn around and haughtily declare "there is no such thing as class". Feck right off.



I know there are only a couple of posters who will understand what I mean, but there was a sense of community there once. You may have had little, but those around you were mostly the same. There wasn't this sense of having to have the latest i-phone or the trendiest trainers mentality (there weren't any anyway  :: ), because no one had them. Yeah, people still got picked on and it was still rough, but it wasn't the "benefits street" media trope you see today. There wasn't so much of a stigma attached to it, because so many were in the same boat. There is something much more compassionate about someone lending you a fiver when they only had ten quid left themselves. This was how it worked. My mums friend, Cath, would lend her money to get through, and my mum would do the same for her in return. I remember them both in our kitchen smoking Embassy No10s and calling out her old man, but you know what, either of them would have done anything for their kids with their last fiver. It was when no one even had a fiver that the problems came. Is that "communism"? Feck knows. Its human nature I think. When you share hardships together, it forms a bond that's much harder to break than merely living next door to one another. How many of today's private estate dwelling middle class even know their next door neighbours name, never mind share their troubles?



Has becoming a richer society in general reduced poverty? Sure. Has it made us better or happier? Who knows? Its sad that its often hardship and suffering that cause people to become closer. What doesn't kill you, as they say. That I think is (or used to be) the enduring quality of the "working class".

Of course I don't know how it feels to live in a childhood of extreme deprivation and have a parent who drinks too much because I didn't personally experience that.  But why does that mean that people who haven't had that personal experience, can't aspire to helping prevent that from happening to anybody in the future?



But actually, the way it comes across is that this is actually the real angering issue - what you are in a way saying is Working class people are different than other classes because we had a hard life - but at the same time, you are angry that others want to intervene to prevent children and people having to go through that same experience in future.  You acknowledge that this is a hard way to live, but at the same time remember it fondly.  That's not surprising because this is your childhood, your past, your history, and if it had been different, you would be a different person today.



Now I suspect you're going to reply "where did I say that we were different or better" - you didn't of course.



If not, then what is the actual point of the discussion - at the least, the discussion separates your upbringing from other people's, and then basically declares that there is no way we could ever understand each other because we didn't walk in the same shoes as children.  Have you thought about going into a song writing partnership with Jarvis Cocker - I gather he has some writer's block recently?



I have no idea how old you are, but possibly I wasn't even born when you were a child, so how can it be anything to do with me, or whether you think I'm whatever class, what happened to you and your family when you were a child?  And again I know you didn't say that, but you seem to hate anybody with my views with an anger that goes beyond just political disagreement.



In a wider sense, how is it the fault of middle class or other classes that they were born without the hardships you describe?  No baby chooses their parents.



How do you know that other people with more money didn't also have a strong sense of community in their streets?



Also - saying that working class people don't say "I'm better than that guy" is obviously not the case - I've also never heard a rich person say they are better than poor people, but their actions and the things they say confirm that's that what they really feel.  I've also never heard a person who makes a lot of racist comments say "I'm a racist".



Coming to the definition of class, the other part of it is that my Grandparents and prior descendants were working class people working on farms, in factories etc, and living in rented council accommodation.  It was my parents mainly who got more into middle class professions and put us into what is certainly a middle class income level.



So were they working class by their upbringing, or did they magically become "middle class people" when they got more money, or got a different job that they weren't supposed to get?  Are they class traitors for doing that and should have got a job in the factory or the shop like their dad?



Yet another point - you describe that you had a childhood which was very hard with alcohol and severe poverty involved, but there are many other communities who would describe themselves as working class, but who don't have nearly that same level of poverty as what you describe.



What puzzles me is why so many working class people get so angry that "liberal elite lefty" people who "read the Guardian" are voting for parties that want to reduce inequality and trying to highlight the issues you describe, and yet they are hated by yourselves.  The Guardian probably does more work than any other UK news organisation to publicise some of the issues you describe above, which are still going on even today as you rightly imply, and bring attention to those things.



It puzzles me that many working class people seem to want to keep the status quo, and therefore decide to vote against their own economic interests.



It seems like it's worse to be rich and try to help poor people or change the world in their favour, than it is to just be rich and openly cruel.  Wouldn't the world be even worse for the poor if every person who had enough money was completely cruel and openly uncaring, rather than just a bit hypocritical by not giving away most of their money?



And while we're about it, why do the aristocratic power brokers get off scott free?  How many times have we heard government ministers who were born rich into fancy families make speeches about how "we are all in in together", and then a year later nothing has changed.



Even if you don't agree with some of the Guardian's opinion conclusions like "voting in a socialist government would solve this", surely it's better that they are at least being documented and pointed out.  If the Guardian disappeared which is what many of you seem to want, nobody would even be pointing out that these things are happening.



Anyway - this is why I was commenting that class doesn't seem to me to be something that can be defined on a single basis like income or who your parents were, or what accent you speak with, or whether your parents were alcoholics or whatever it is (and by the way there are plenty of rich alcoholics as well as I'm sure you know).

[Thomas]

I give up with this sh*t. EVERY fecking thread gets destroyed  by the same idiot.

 :clp

[papasmurf]

I give up with this sh*t. EVERY fecking thread gets destroyed  by the same idiot.

Opposing your bollocks is not destroying.

[DeppityDawg]

I give up with this shit. EVERY fecking thread gets destroyed  by the same idiot.

[B0ycey]

This thread was also supposed to be about class, before you lot of commies and malcontents turned it into a rag about the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It was, partly, in response to the remark that "class" doesn't exist, or that its just a mechanism to "other" people, whatever that means. Yeah sure. Like I said, I've met plenty of working clarse people who say "I'm better than that guy because I lived in a council house"  :roll:

But proletariat and bourgeoisie is the class system. You might add in middle class if you like, but ultimately there are only two classes of society. Those who work and those who exploit the labour of someone else. For those who claim to be better than someone else due to wealth education or upbringing, that is called snobbery. And there are plenty who will raise their nose at someone else regardless whether they are wealthy or not.

I know there are only a couple of posters who will understand what I mean, but there was a sense of community there once. You may have had little, but those around you were mostly the same. There wasn't this sense of having to have the latest i-phone or the trendiest trainers mentality (there weren't any anyway  :: ), because no one had them. Yeah, people still got picked on and it was still rough, but it wasn't the "benefits street" media trope you see today. There wasn't so much of a stigma attached to it, because so many were in the same boat. There is something much more compassionate about someone lending you a fiver when they only had ten quid left themselves. This was how it worked. My mums friend, Cath, would lend her money to get through, and my mum would do the same for her in return. I remember them both in our kitchen smoking Embassy No10s and calling out her old man, but you know what, either of them would have done anything for their kids with their last fiver. It was when no one even had a fiver that the problems came. Is that "communism"? Feck knows. Its human nature I think. When you share hardships together, it forms a bond that's much harder to break than merely living next door to one another. How many of today's private estate dwelling middle class even know their next door neighbours name, never mind share their troubles?

Actually, what you describe in regards to you mom and your mom's friend Cath in helping each other out is called mutual aid. Communism is an economic model but would rely on the instinct of community helping each other out in order to function efficiently. I don't want you to dwell like other users about whether Kropotkin as an Ancho-Communist was more anarchist or Communist, but if you want to learn more about human nature away from evolution but behaviour than you might be interested in reading Mutual Aid. Humans are indeed social creatures and would instinctively work together if it is in their best interests to do so. The 'private estate middle class dweller' as you call them shares that quality also. But being that the class system means they are better off exploiting the working class than co-sharing with them, it is capitalism that drives the class system into something we all see and something you call snobbery.

Has becoming a richer society in general reduced poverty? Sure. Has it made us better or happier? Who knows? Its sad that its often hardship and suffering that cause people to become closer. What doesn't kill you, as they say. That I think is (or used to be) the enduring quality of the "working class".

Hardship is a quality that unites community. And wealth divides it. Before credit in the eighties, cooperation was required just to get by. And today credit means that spending is high whilst debt is masking what we can really afford resulting in you relying on your credit card rather than your neighbour for help and assitance. This line of thinking caused 2008 and there are more bubbles yet to burst such as interest only mortgages. The fix was QE and so now this issue has been covered up until the next crisis which might well be here with our Covid19 response. Unlimited borrowing cannot work forever. So capitalism is destined to fail. And when it does hardship will drive the base which then will drive the Superstructure and society will evole to something more cooperative. That is to say in laymen terms that when inflation and lack of production causes prices to rise, you will be looking to work with your neighbour to get by again and society will change for the better.

[papasmurf]

Inane blathering?

The problem is your inane blathering needs challenging.

[DeppityDawg]

I had other things to do before the edit. Sorting out my emergency mobile phone which is somewhat more important that bothering with your inane blathering.

There are more than one class systems, and that applies to Britain.

Inane blathering? Then DON'T fecking reply to my posts, especially with one liners that are just lazy disruptions. You are an attention seeker. Go and annoy someone else.