Hi Joe,
While Pete has a point ("English liberals also hate working class") that there is a very patronizing undercurrent of distaste for the working class among the UK left (though liberal means something else in the UK -- the social middle-ground with libertarian economics), it's a long stretch to say that Chav equals working class. It's a more specific term than "white trash". It would be a bit like saying that "soccer mom" is a synonym for "middle class" in the US (whereas lots of middle class are not soccer moms). Sure, Chavs are a subset of the British underclass -- ignorant, uneducated, violent, with a particular fashion "uniform". Chav is said by some to mean Council Housed And Violent, though I think that was invented after the fact.
Anyway, my point is that to hate Chavs is not to hate the working class. W"Which is not to disagree with his broad thesis that UK intellectual lefties don't actually hate the working class, but that's probably true everywhere. Lots of US lefties rail against ignorant, uneducated thinking in the working class (and all classes), yourself included, often with some justification. It's hard not to when the masses support the politics of big business like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
I straddle the pond. Formative years in Ireland and England, now in Massachusetts -- not especially happy about that politically speaking but it's barely better in the UK. My observation of the difference in the class system is that the British one is/was based on often arbitrary and self-referential ideas of education and behaviour, so that in the UK it is possible to be considered middle of even upper class while being poor, or working class and filthy rich. I think UK class system is shifting to the US system that's more money-based. As you rightly observe, the UK has moved further to the fiscal libertarian right, letting the masses fall out the bottom.
The UK education system brings up an interesting dilemma regarding the public good. UK higher education used to be better than free -- most students (myself included), got paid living expenses to go away to university, tuition was universally free. Education was much less vocational, much more simply for its own sake. Then in the '90s the system shifted with the stated aim of getting 50% (from, I think, around 10-15%) of people into tertiary education, and now it's expensive, more vocational, and less valued. It is most likely leading to the US state of affairs where professional jobs require post-graduate degrees (and massive debt).
The old system was biased against the poor because although the university entrance requirements were mostly academic, the poor got worse secondary education. However, if they somehow managed to get decent results, they had a chance. The current system, under the banner of greater inclusion, excludes the bottom half of the population because they can't afford it. I'm inclined to think that given that finances are finite and not everyone needs a degree, the elitist system of universities of the past makes more sense. Some of it survives, in that my sister, at 41, was able to decide to become a doctor. She pays US$2000 p.a. tuition at Oxford University. In the US I don't think you could consider it at that age due to the mountain of debt.
So, I may not be quite so down on formal educational institutions as you, though I agree the current system in the US, and ever more so in the UK, is crippled and distorted by the yoke of money and profit. Perhaps I'm just talking about the same thing from a different angle, but I'm more inclined to say they should be reformed than sidelined, so that the education is free to all who can qualify on the base of merit (determined in an enlightened way, of course :)), removing the need for a high earning job to justify and pay for it.
That seems to reflect my position on many things. Perhaps at heart I'm something of a closet conservative (with nothing to do with the hijacked US or UK political meanings). In a similar vein I hear anarchist left and libertarian right tell me that the government is broken so remove all government, and I think that's nuts. Both formal education and government are essential tools. It's just that they're broken, and in both cases, unfortunately, they're getting worse.
Regards,
James.
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Greetings James,
Thank you for clarifying the term Chav.
At least in England the word "class" is still being used. It is very difficult to discuss class issues in America because of our denial that a class system exists. That is old news to most enlightened people. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to become enlightened here because we have an educational system that works against real learning from the outset.
The problem comes with the way we are made slaves to accredited and state sanctioned forms of gaining knowledge. We are taught that the longer a person stays in the higher education system, the more valid his or her knowledge is. Because staying in the educational system longer brings increased acknowledgment and increase financial reward and prestige, the belief is reinforced among both the "educated" and the non-educated. In other words, state sanctioned knowledge is rewarded, but that of the autodidact is shunned or ostracized.
Objectively speaking, there is no craft or profession that cannot be learned through self-study and by working in it for an adequate amount of time. For instance, Americans once studied on their own, say, to be a lawyer or a doctor, then simply took the test as Lincoln did, to pass the bar. One could still become a good surgeon by working with and learning from a great surgeon. Assuming an inclination toward medicine of course.
I have been a big proponent of education as the class leveler in many of my essays. In my mind, the ability to learn throughout one's life, even if that learning is not applied to increased income (maybe especially if it is not applied to income) makes a free people. Once the basic reading skills are mastered, anything can be learned with self-application and the will to do so. In fact, all of the most important things we learn as humans we learn through interaction with and from other people (including the acceptance of classism.)
Unfortunately, our expensive higher educational system, which grants official permission to teach, practice medicine, law, governance, and all other important functions, is now very deeply embedded in our society, ruling out all original thought, philosophy and invention coming from the masses. (For example, it was a Scottish sheep farmer who invented the principle of the telegraph using copper wire and the jawbone of a sheep! But we do not hear much of him, do we?)
Anyway, in the end, education reinforces the class system in many ways. We cannot name them all here. For instance, the scarcity, privilege, authority and monetary rewards granted by the consumer state sanctioned accredited education creates a demand for it as a means of increased access in our society. As a commodity in demand, the price goes up, quickly limiting accessibility for the working classes. Of course universal higher education is impossible under this sort of system. The cost alone would run into the tens of trillions. So it is restricted to the class that can afford it. That class has become a solidified self-serving bloc in this country, though they will never admit it, even to themselves. Such denial by social-economic elites is why so many highly educated people were imprisoned and humiliated during the Maoist revolution in China. The view from the lower classes was quite insightful, even if they did misapply that insight (or did they?)
In the end, we Americans (and you Brits too, as near as I could tell from my visits to your country) are steadily letting the bottom fall out of our society through neglect of the people. Yes, I saw many socialized benefits not available in America. But it seemed that good Brirish yeoman liberty was on the decline and the commodification of all aspects of life was nearly as thorough as it is in America, though by way of a somewhat different cultural process. At any rate, it seemed that the British class system was once again hardening, but through less obvious means than in the past. I was particularly struck by the fact that basic education for the working masses was no better than it is here, which is abysmal.
I have strayed far from our original topic. Forgive me. But as I see it, both of our societies need to allow more free and more random of learning or our established systems. Somewhere in that rests the individual freedom we so loudly proclaim to the world, but deny any man or woman who would demand it without proper credentials from the state's educational machinery, operated by the elites for the benefit of state control of society.
It is amazing that the majority of working folks will bend over for such a screw job. It is even more amazing that the educational elites do not even believe they are screwing anyone, as they shuffle their papers and manage the information and technology that governs us all to their own and the state's advantage.
The natural result in a world of rapidly declining resources is an ever hardening class system with the few depriving the many through the unseen, unnamed, machinery of last stage capitalism.
What the hell, I gotta get showered and off to work.
In art and labor, (praises be to Ivan Illich)
Joe
