Recent comments on this thread, saw occasional commenter Observa set up a dichotomy between his ‘smoko room’ mates (employees?), also known as ‘ordinary, working class people’; as opposed to the ‘middle class’ (presumably we, the leftie posters to LP).
After I read Observa’s comment, with its oddly Marxist overtones (endless struggle between the salt-of-the-earth proletariat and the interfering, superior bourgeousie and all that), I started thinking about class in Australia.
These days, what is the ‘working class’? Where do we draw the demarcations between the working class and the middle class? Is it about income, the type of work a person does, or is it a matter of a vague sub-cultural identification? Or do we just know class when we see it?
Or, has any discussion of class been utterly subsumed by all the talk of ‘aspirationals’ and ‘elites’? And what value is there in discussing class in 21st Century Australia, especially for the left side of politics?
And, will the effects of the IR reforms and a potentially weakening economy see a return of class-based discussion, especially in the mainstream media?
Observa’s post reminded me, also, that the idea of the ‘Ordinary Australian’ still has great traction, in an endless sets of binaries, supported by some parts of the media and certain commenters. Ordinary Australians vs. Muslims. Ordinary Australians vs. single mums. Ordinary Australians vs. University Academics, vs. gay and lesbians, etc etc. That’s because, as long as we have this idea of the Ordinary Australian, we must always have an ‘other’ against which to define ourselves.
My final question, then, is how much does class play a role in the construction of the Ordinary Australian? Is it still true, as Observa posits, that we see ‘Ordinary Australians’ as working class, even if most Australians aren’t working class at all?
Edited to add: in case it’s unclear, I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ‘Ordinary Australian’, obviously. But the idea itself still resonates in our culture on some levels.
There is of course no such thing as the “ordinary Australian” – any attempt to summarise the population so sparingly will result in a ridiculous result.
On the question of whether the “working-class” terminology makes sense – I believe it does, but I think it is often misused. People are no longer either an employer or a “worker”, so the traditionally-framed struggle between capital and workers is no longer a particularly accurate way to look at working life. With the emergence of the modern services economy, many people who would have in the past not been considered part of the “working-class” probably fall under the working-class umbrella.
For example, are call centre staff working-class? What about childcare centre staff? What makes you a member of the working-class? Low wages? Casualisation? Getting your hands dirty?
Well, while admitting I’ve never read Marx, I seem to remember that the classical class defintion was that the working class were wage-earners, the middle class controlled the means of production, and the upper class were the nobility, etc (who often owned the land on which the means of production was situated).
Using that terminology, about 70% of Australians are working class, because they can be scaked. There aren’t too many large scale middle calss folk around, and then you have to fir small business owners into that somewhere, although I suppose they would be middle class too. And no-one cares about the upper class, as Australia has virtually no-one in that catergory.
Terms like working and middle class now refer more to educational and income levels than any social or economic position or power relationship. However, there is still relevance to class in Australia, by either definition.
Because many people are not in control of the “means of production” (to use a good old Marxist line), they are still highly susceptible to fluctuations in the employment market. It is a mistake to think that the current employment situation is permanent; it is simply a product of record economic growth and high demand for skills. Even yer IT professionals, lawyers et al will find that just as market forces have impacted positively in their incomes and job prospects, they can impact them as heavily in a negative way should the economy turn sour.
The present situation is a reflection of just how sensitive the employmees are to market forces – it’s good now, but that sensitivity is a two-edged sword.
Hence class is still relevant, because when the bad times come again then people will want some protection from pure market economics in the workplace. Enter IR changes….
Or to define class as education- and income-based still leaves questions of equity of access to services/opportunity. So while the paradigm has shifted, there is still a place for the economic outlooko to be viewed in a class conscious way. It’s the defintion of clas that is important though.
Postcript a) “Elites” is just a meaningless insult that ignorant people throw around whenever someone dares to posit an idea that doesn’t appeal to the lowest common denominator-based populism of many of our public figures. Such people are the perpetuation of the Australian ugliness, that detests learning, questioning, diversity etc etc.
Postscript b) You can see echoes of the old 18th and 19th century views on employment and capitalism in Howards IR changes. Think of small business as the “Bourgeoise” and wage-earners as the working class….now, small business are going to be exempt from things like unfair dismissal. Hmmm….
Firstly, I’ll give myself a plug. I had an outtake from my Ph.D. thesis published as a refereed journal article which addresses aspects of this issue. The link is:
http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/media/D48072EE7QCKTNCCUX4G/Contributions/B/L/C/U/BLCU7XDM268QR27L.pdf
The difficulties with using concepts like “class”, and in particular “working class” are several:
1. Different schools of sociological thought define “class” in different ways. Marxism defines “class” as principally an economic relationship. Weberian sociology cautions that status, relationship to the state, etc., must also be factored in when defining classes. Then we have neo-Marxists, neo-Weberians, post-Marxists, various syntheses thereof, etc.
2. Class theories can also be categorised as “dimensional” and “generative”. The former are mainly concerned with ascertaining that classes exist, determining the parameters which define and distinguish different classes, etc. The latter maintain that class interests and class relationships per se give rise to “class outlooks” and are a major causal factor in politics, ideology, culture, etc., and that just about everything can be analysed in terms of being generated by or from a class. As I explain in my journal article, generative class theories are much less intellectually tenable than dimensional class theories.
3. A lot of popular discourse about “class” works with conceptions of e.g. the working class which implicitly define the class in cultural terms (e.g. blue overalls, beer drinking rather than chardonnay drinking, etc.) rather than in sociological or socioeconomic terms.
4. This in turn points to a problem for class theories of society. It was arguably the case, once upon a time, that people who were members of the “working class” in a Marxist sense (e.g. they shared a certain relationship with the means of production) also had much in common in terms of living standards, conditions of life, opportunities (or lack thereof) for upward mobility, culture, etc.
Now, if we define the contemporary Australian working class to include all those who make their living by earning a wage through labour by hand or brain, we find ourselves with a working class which includes everyone from gravediggers and forestry workers, to hairdressers and receptionists, to teachers and nurses, to academics and session musicians. Try defining a common interest or common outlook amongst that lot, let alone organising them politically according to a shared “class interest” or “class outlook”.
On the other hand, if we define the working class in terms of the broadly similar living standards and cultural experiences which are traditionally ascribed to the working class, we find ourselves talking about a small and shrinking section of the population. We also find ourselves defining a lot of people out of the working class who aren’t necessarily exploiters or elites, or even particularly well off.
The problem is aggravated further when we remember that we are now part of a global capitalist economy, and that much of the global working class (e.g. women working in Chinese factories making shoes for $1 a day which are sold in Australian for $200 a pair) would regard even the most poorly paid Australian worker as living the Life of Reilly by comparison – and that much of the affluence of Australian workers involves consumption of resources at a level which would be utterly unsustainable if practiced by the world’s population as a whole. In other words, the Australian working class is a “labour aristocracy” in global and inter-generational terms.
Finally, an anecdote which sums up much of the confusion in contemporary Australian discussion about “class”. Some years ago I was part of a group of Brisbane lefties who organised a series of political debates in an inner-city pub. One day, our organiser discovered that the pub had directed one of the female bar staff to work wearing. . . not very much at all, really. The organiser drew this to our attention, and after some debate we decided that we would move our program to another venue in protest.
The decision was opposed by one member who argued that the pub clientele was “working class”, that being served by all-but-undressed young women was “what the working class wants” and that our decision showed that we were “out of touch with the working class”. What stands out in this line of argument is: (a) a definition of the working class and its interests in cultural rather than sociological terms; (b) a projection of some fairly backward prejudices onto the class; and (c) an implicit exclusion of female bar attendants from the working class, and exclusion of their right to work in safety and dignity from “working class interests”.
There is so much more I could write about this, but I have a medical appointment so I must leave.
ok, so Paul just made me feel stupid
Me too Luke!
call centre staff = working-class
childcare centre staff = working-class
First is the epitome and the second is so grossly underpaid by our society that they must be working-class as hard to find a more exploited group.
Everybody, go to your nearest library and borrow Elaine Thompson’s Fair Enough: Egalitarianism in Australia (UNSW Press, Sydney 1994).
Read it. Read it now.
Luke and Kate – I was going to write a long comment on the sociology of class and status, but decided that I might be accused by a certain commenter of writing arid sociological theory. And inspiration failed me for an excursus on the poetics of class.
But Paul has said it for me.
However, I’d urge people not to close the discussion just because there’s been an academic comment. While the Marxian versions of class analysis are allegedly objective, there’s an awful lot to talk about in terms of subjective perceptions, and indeed, class culture/consciousness.
So I think we all have something to learn from each other here – that’s why blogs are more interesting on the whole than tutorial rooms!
Good post Kate, and esp. Paul – great stuff / currently cutting and pasting / putting in lecture / pretending its mine.
(just kiddin about last bit)
Stuff to do: but in brief, yes, culturalist definition of class being invoked by Howardian anti-elitist putsch, originally inspired by Hansonite rhetoric in ‘The Truth’ and others incl Paul Sheehan; economic versions of class being superceded by this phenomena (and confounded by other issues incl. labour aristocracies earning more than many middle class profs); emergence of various versions of anti-”new class” politics, some benign, others positiveley proto-fascist and malignant, stigmatising nearly all internationalist aspirations (except free trade) as unOstrayan; all leading to one-man ‘elitist’ pride movement currently led by me.
And read Sawer & Hindess “Us and Them: Anti-Elitism in Australia”
Actually, I’d like to argue that Jeff Kennett was the first to pick up that traditional working class solidarities were eroding – and position himself sometimes as a populist against the elites – ie sticking it up the chards with motor racing in Albert Park, talking about legalising dope, claiming that there were tons of entrepreneurial small business tradespeople who could be won away from ALP allegiances etc.
This all worked for a while, but the sustained effects of neo-liberal economics did him in.
luckily i am not a sociologist and can happily discuss ‘class’ in quasi-ethnographic cultural terms:
http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/2005/06/decline-of-blue-collar-working-class.html
Yes Mark, the immanent contradictions between retro populism and neo-liberalism may yet hurt Howard one day.
For their part, One Nation were actually saying at the time: why dont the press ever listen to what we’re saying about neo-liberalism? Hasnt anyone noticed we’re economic nationalists, as well as racists?
Howard’s a cultural Calwell, blanched of the economic protectionism. His success builds fundamentally on a old labor narrative of Oz society. Latho was trying to wrest that ground back to some extent, with his insiders/ outsiders spin…..
“Many New Class people are products of the post-war baby boom and have been over-educated to a new level of discontent. Many have risen to prominence of government, business and education over the last ten years. They have taken most of the jobs and . . . [t]heir language has come to dominate the media.”
**
“[The ALP hierarchy places its faith] in the shallow and cheap propaganda of a wealthy, inner-city elite, which has a barely concealed contempt for a bunch of workers from the bush or outer suburbs.”
**
The first of these quotes was written in 1981*; the second a few weeks ago#.
WhatÄôs changed in a quarter of a century? Well, a whole post-boomer generation — even more “over-educated to a new level of discontent”, by most accounts — has entered prime working age.
Curiously though, Trevor Smith seems all the more stuck in 1981 in this respect — to the extent GenX is acknowledged as even existing, they logically must be Newer-than-New Class; i.e. even more contemptuous of the workers. Which inferred attribute, coming with such logical looseness, perhaps explains the quasi-fascist tone of his language (“cheap propaganda”), as well as his confusion of geography (bush and outer suburbs) with class.
Needless to say, I disagree with SmithÄôs implicit elision of boomers with GenX.
However, I donÄôt know which is more depressing in the end. Is it the fact that Alex Buzo was spot on in 1981 (“prophetic” seems an overstatement), but was widely ignored (the book gets three Google hits!)? (Here, the authorÄôs lack of follow-up/conjecture (then and now) about what was to become of the *post*-New Class generation may partially justify the bookÄôs being so forgotten). Or is it Trevor SmithÄôs 2005 poisonous railing against the New Class — oblivious to his being 25 years too late, in more than one way?
* Alex Buzo “Meet the New Class” Angus & Robertson (1981) p.3.
# CFMEU forestry division national secretary Trevor Smith, in his foreword to the Brompton report (June 2005):
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,15960666%255E662,00.html
well speaking as a well-off tertiary-educated knowledge economy worker with a strong artistic bent, I would always defend my working-classness to my distinctly middle class friends in the following terms;
1. my dad was a roofer
2. my high school education ended at age 16
3. military service
4. my larger cultural interests remained relatively working class, e.g. rugby league
Using “ordinary Australian” always reminds of Oscar Wilde’s comment about Wordsworth always finding under rocks, the sermons he had placed there.
all i know is I ear glasses which in Tasmania makes you near unemployable, and hated as you should have a job because you wear glasses, even though they won’t give you a job because you wear glasses, you should have one because you were glasses, even though they won’t give you a job because you wear glasses, though you should have one because you wear glass
Shame Naomi, enjoy your posts!
Class in the UK, It was all so easy once as the Frost report explained it (sigh–nostalgia, sooo understandable then)—-it was all based on whether one brought any work home!
In the skit, standing in line tallest (Cleese) to shortest (Corbett):
John Cleese: As an upper class (twit), I never bring any work home, my estate manager does all that.
Ronny Barker: As a middle class manager I bring back home heaps of work which keeps me up all night.
Ronny Corbett: I sometimes bring home some of my work, and my rhubarb is coming on a treat !!!
“over-educated to a new level of discontent”
i was discontent before i got anywhere near over-educated.
Glen, to the class of “flouro” collar workers I think you want to add the following;
- road gangers and other construction workers in public spaces
- railway workers (first place I ever recall seeing flouro vests actually, as I rode past them on the train)
Only 3 hits for my book in its 25 years of shelf life – dear me! Those best-sellers have a monopoly of good sense, truth and beauty.
Meet the New Class sold very well in its day and may still be found in the more discerning libraries.
One of these days what an author is saying may well be taken into account.
As for the accusation of lacking follow-up, I wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald in 2001 detailing what had happened to the New Class in the 20 years since the book had been published.
Bad luck about those disappearing Volvoes!
All the best, Alex Buzo
Whatever your defintion of “Working Class” it, ended with the election of John Howard.Working class had a new metaphor “Howards Battlers”This is the paradox,he convinced the working class that their normal representitive the Labor Party were the enemy,and it was only him and his party that could lift their burden,and improve their lot.Of course what John Howard failed to tell them was, they had never known anything but a mass consumption boom and were by any standard,the most fortunate generation of modern history.The definition of working class hasn’t changed only the perception,Howard has managed to turn the working class into small quasi capitilists,we think we are captains of industry because we have our very own lawn mowing round.Now the small quasi capitilists,and the other workers are just starting to realise that their vulnerability to commercial and political exploitation is slowly being revealed by the misleading statements of government,I.R. Laws, and their attempt to re-write history.Nothing has changed if you look deep enough,the working class are ALL still there they just have to find themselves again.