some thoughts on our class system

Hi All,

What drives me crazy is that so many of us have been brain washed by the constant hammering of the Ruling Classes propaganda that we go along buying into their attitudes about us. 

Certainly when the Ruling Class looks down their noses at the Working Class and tells us over and over to remember our place, and tells us that we are lazy, shiftless, ungrateful, undisciplined, unsophisticated and uneducated, naturally many of us, in order to put distance between ourselves and the rest of the working class,  pretend to be just a little better than the others. 

It bugged me when I looked at what went on within the agency I worked for.  We had a real Pecking Order.  The director let us know that he/she was the top dog and had privileges that went with the office.  The management team, made up from the program administrators, lorded it over the VRC's and Rehab Teachers, and those worthy folk looked down their professional noses at the clerical staff. 

I suggested whenever I could, that we were all employees of the Legislature.  They were our collective boss.  And our legislature in those days looked upon all state employees as if they were doodoo on the shoe of life. 

But no, we must play our little Class Games within the agency. 

We copy what we've been trained to do.  We are a class society and we behave as one regardless of how loudly some of our folks protest. 

 

Curious Carl

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Miriam Vieni

To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'

Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 6:05 PM

Subject: RE: America Isn't a Corporation By PAUL KRUGMAN

Well Carl,

I used to ride on a bus each morning from the apartment that we rented to
Queens College, a city college that charged $10 admission for New York City
high school graduates whose high school averages were above a particular
number.  My father was a skilled laborer.  I had an uncle who had become an
optometrist and he and his wife purchased a little house in the Long Island
suburbs.  I had another uncle who had gone to beauticians' school and who
eventually owned a beauty shop in Washington D.C.  I think one of my uncles
in Canada, owned a store, but I don't know much about the relatives in
Canada.  Anyway, that ride on the bus, shared by many young people, moved
all of us who attended and graduated Queens college into the middle class,
as far as our families were concerned.  Some of us became teachers.  Some of
us went on to graduate school.  The idea was that if you got an education
and worked hard, you'd better your position in society.  You'd earn more
than your parents had and you'd have more opportunities.  There was a clip
on Moyers' show of a teacher from Iowa, addressing a congressional
committee.  She was talking about the fact that she and her husband had both
attained graduate degrees.  They had a good deal of debt from their
education.  They'd worked hard, followed the rules, saved money, waited to
have children and to buy a home, and now they were barely making it
financially.  She was saying, we've worked hard to be a part of the middle
class and we're barely holding on.  That's what the book was talking about.
When the factory jobs leave and everyone is told that they need an education
to compete with the rest of the world, what message is our government giving
to people about the working class?  When farming is done by machines and
underpaid undocumented immigrants, and the respected labor, automobile and
steel manufacture, has disappeared, and that, by the way is what a lot of
people mean by "middle class", those good paying working class jobs, why
wouldn't everyone be confused?

Miriam   

________________________________

From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 6:20 PM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: America Isn't a Corporation By PAUL KRUGMAN


It seems to me that much of our nation's history was a two class society.
There were the few very wealthy land owners, later they were joined by the
wealthy industrialists, and there was labor. 
All those who labored in the fields or in the factories constituted Labor,
or the Working Class.  Whether you were a Black Smith, a ditch digger, a
railroad engineer, a carpenter, a painter, a clerk, a short order cook, a
construction foreman or a hooker, you were considered part of Labor, or the
Working Class. 
It was not the Ruling Class who thought up the term, Middle Class.  It was
the members of the working class who wanted to be seen as better than their
"blue collar" associates. 
In one of my sociology classes back in the 50's, I recall a graph showing us
the Lower Class...those folks living in poverty; the Working Class...Blue
Collar Workers; Middle Class...White Collar Workers; Upper Middle
Class...Doctors, lawyers, small business owners; Upper Class...or what we
call the Ruling Class, Heads of corporations, land barons, etc. 
The memory that stands out in my mind was not the fuzzy lines defining these
Classes, but the fact that it was the first time I'd seen anyone suggest
that America had Classes.  My grade and high school history classes all
taught me that only in America did we live in a classless society.  Why, any
boy could grow up to be president.  Any boy could grow up to be a
Rockefeller, or a Morgan.  Naturally we were only talking about white boys.

Anyway, it's all bogus, the pipe dream of some inflated professor needing to
publish or perish. 
 
Curious Carl