aspirational and disadvantaged strata

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2003-06-11 07:23 -0400, Ken Campbell responded:

> Chris wrote:
>
> > Labour policies: Completely premature at this end
> > of the 21st century to try to abolish wage slavery
> > as part of an electable programme. They need to redo
> > their focus groups to find out how to achieve
> > consensus between aspirational and disadvantaged
> > workers. By no means impossible because even the
> > aspirational workers all know family members or
> > friends who have suddenly become disadvantaged.
>
> Right.
>
> E.g., the western IT labor sector is currently a disaster area. It went
> from "aspiration" to "desperation" in five years. It crammed life times
> of industrial labor reality lessons into a short period. These people
> are both energized and demoralized at once.
>
> Despite the grand pronouncements of the new economy, in the end, nothing
> was different. The same old rules applied. And, unless these same people
> want to go through that again, or want their children to go through it,
> they had better build a better safety net.

My post "Waiting for Lenin" was perhaps too long, and both too
controversial and too obscure to deal with in one go, so I appreciate Ken
coming back and adding some points.

On this aspect, it seems to me this is worth exploring a little more. We
can all see how the two party system in bourgeois democratic states,
perpetuates the system by setting the "working class" and the "middle
class" against each other.

Yet really these are not two classes, but at the most two strata, and
temporary strata at that. Everybody knows family members or friends who
have moved into the other stratum. Yet all have to sell their labour power.

There are plenty of bad reasons for political parties using focus groups,
but perhaps in this case the subjective factors do matter.

 Many people on this list may have had aspirational parents. The
acculturation process may be strong and almost brutal in moulding a child's
aspirations and expectations, and separating him/her from fellow human
beings who are just more modest or better all rounders.  Maybe a lot of
left wingers who have had a relatively privileged education are
subjectively be reacting against the arbitrary  and divisive nature of this
experience. Others who are entirely self taught (most sensible left wingers
are at least partly self taught) may still harbour understandable
bitterness against the arbitrary and ruthless nature of this sort of
elitist descrimination. It is after all close to racism: it is suggested to
children at an early age that there are genetic reasons why they do or do
not mix with others sorts of children.

Yet in scientific terms that does not mean we can institute immediately in
our minds a sort of premature communism, in which there are suddenly no
differences in the material capitalist world, in the type of labour one can
sell, and for what price.

Would it do much violence to the more valid parts of marxism, to talk of
strata rather than classes, apparently dividing working people, and that a
lot of this is to do with aspirations, relative advantage and disadvantage.
Rather than actual advantage and disadvantage. (Note how superficial
emprical data on class and politics consistently shows a proportion of
disadvantaged workers voting for the bourgeois party that is more
aspirational - and then stops its analysis at that point.)

If so an entirely reformist reform like tax credits, instead of state
handouts, may diffuse the resentment and rivalry between members of
different aspirational strata (within the same working class) and actually
bring some benefit for the more revolutionary politics of building workers
unity against the main enemy, capital. No?

Chris Burford
London