Intriguingly, this seems to be something that’s very topical. We’ve seen two books specifically addressing how class disdain is expressed through cultural contempt published recently, Owen Jones’ Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class in the UK, and here in Australia, David Nichols’ The Bogan Delusion.

The topicality of Jones’ work is starkly evident from the way that the denizens of areas which experienced rioting recently have been characterised as if they’re some sort of savage and de-civilised beings, part of a Tory backlash which is also heavily racialised.

[Jones reflects on the riots here.]

In Australia, things have been slightly different, as we’ve seen white working class people employed as political weapons since the days of Pauline Hanson. One of the ways neo-conservatism has worked as a screen for neo-liberalism has been the celebration of the supposed nativist authenticity of outer suburban culture, a celebration orchestrated by latte sipping Liberal voting middle aged white people, the chattering fraction of the bourgeoisie.

This then produces its mirror, a self-identification by progressives which looks a lot like the ‘inner city’ stereotype. It proceeds in train with the decline of class politics, the de-unionisation and fragmentation of working class jobs, and the dis-organisation of politics in favour of cultural identities.

The paradox here is that the space of the political narrows to a debate between different groupings of inner urban highly educated progressives; and actual poverty, inequality and, well, class are screened out in the ultimate social exclusion.

But the repressed returns: in malicious humour. At Left Flank, Liz_beths takes a look at how this works, in what I think is compulsory reading, through twitter memes such as #boganmovies and #tightsarenotpants, and websites like Things Bogans Like.

In doing so, she has put her finger on something very important indeed about how politics now works in Australia, and how politics and class collapse into cultural distinction. Politics, and economic interest, are distorted and dissolved by a cultural imaginary.

In the wake of the privatisation imbroglio perpetrated by the Bligh government, expectations were that solidarity between Labor and labour wouldn’t be at the forefront of the Brisbane May Day March. Anna Bligh, and I believe Treasurer Andrew Fraser, disappeared to North America, first purporting to show an interest in bionics, and then holding a ‘virtual Cabinet’ with the provincial government of British Columbia.

What these ventures have to do with anything is anyone’s guess. Commenters on the Brisbane Times‘ story correctly pointed out that Peter Beattie is already paid 250k a year to represent Queensland’s trade interests in North America, and that a ‘virtual’ meeting could surely be virtual for the Canadians, and in Brisbane for the Premier.

To his credit, Deputy Premier Paul Lucas fronted the march, but was met with the jeers which the State Labor crew richly deserve. Kevin Rudd kept his distance, preferring to march with the LHMU, a union well back in the parade, and concentrating on the Resources Super Tax in his address, an initiative I warmly welcome.

In a nutshell, the impasse of Labor politics, and the scissions the Labour movement has fallen prone to, is encapsulated in the events of this day.

It’s a longer story, but I’ve previously argued that (late) modern Labor’s political Janus face results from at least two factors: the corporatised economism of state politics, where slogans about jobs mask a wholesale surrender to business interests; and the weakening of the links between workers, unions and the professional political class.

John Quiggin has provided us with some reflections on Labour Day:

Among his thoughts, he argues:

The old-style politics of class (with the working class represented by male manual workers, gathered in large, naturally solidaristic workplaces) is no longer relevant to the great majority of Australian workers. That doesn’t mean that class has ceased to matter, but it does mean that workers experience class and power relationships more in terms of individual experience than as collective interactions between classes. So, in particular, unions need to be seen more as mutual aid associations that protect their individual members against exploitation and unfair treatment than as vehicles for the mobilisation of the working class. The kinds of legal changes sought to reverse the generally anti-union trend of past decades needs to reflect this orientation.

I think this underplays the degree to which the union movement, particularly as represented by the ACTU, has long practiced a broader class politics transcending trade and occupational union particularism. While I also think that class politics has to move beyond a masculinised workerism, and to take account of the changed social and cultural conditions of twenty first century Australia, I’m not sure things are so simple as John suggests, though he’s surely right that the casualisation of work and a host of other social and economic changes have individualised work relationships.

But I don’t think unions need to return to being essentially mutual benefit societies. They do have a role in building solidarity where there is none, though this role may have to include creating the conditions for more solidaristic workplace relations, through rethinking how unions can intervene in shaping the labour market itself.

I think there’s a great need to develop an approach which does respond to the fracturing of class, the refashioning of the workplace, and the naturalisation of expectations around insecure work. It’s something I’d like to do more work on, and will be writing further about, but it’s also something I think is well worth a preliminary discussion on a very fractured Brisbane Labour Day.

NB: My previous May Day post is here.

Lapham, playing himself, leads his empty vessels through the streets of Manhattan, counterposing up-scale parties with wait staff slaving for tips. It’s a savvy piece of emotional manipulation designed to guilt the young rich into acknowledging the class structure that, above all else, got them to where they are. In one party scene, the hubris is intoxicating as a tipsy Ivy League cohort prepares, like their parents, to ascend to the heights of commerce, industry and influence.

Of course, this constructed ‘choice’ transcends the personal, reading as an obvious allegory for the nation as a whole. If the American working class has nothing to lose but their chains, Lapham clearly hopes a new generation will hand them the bolt cutters — a naive appeal to altruism perhaps, but one that continues to resonate as the economy tanks. Lapham’s choice is now more pressing, in that conditions have got much worse, and much easier in that elite opinion is again extolling the virtues of public service, always a potent (if submerged) strain of America’s DNA.

Two recent events have confused Lapham’s dichotomy — namely, the collapse of the Wall St investment banks that once promised grads an inside track to power and influence (in the doco, Jack must choose between the now-flailing Goldman Sachs and life as a writer) and the election of the Obama Administration. But perhaps the more important wildcard is the ‘West Wing effect’ where Jeb Bartlett’s passion for public policy collides with the burgeoning mythology around President Obama’s inner circle.

Consider the media frenzy over the past week surrounding the inauguration speech allegedly penned by 27-year old staffer John Favreau, the pain felt by Facebook-addicted staffers held hostage by outdated email-free PCs and the plight of press secretaries confronted by electronic doors — the touchy-feely anecdotes could fill a whole Blackberry. Which of Lapham’s formerly Goldman-bound Yalies could now resist taking the social policy reigns under a svelte 47-year old with a penchant for pickup games of two-on-two?

Add this to calls for a ‘new Keynesianism‘, big government and demands for massive tax hikes and a seachange seems unavoidable. Four years after Lapham’s intervention, the US is witnessing a wholesale rejection of the Patrick Bateman era, demanding personal commitments more in tune with the darkening reality of everyday life. For a nation on its knees, self sacrifice has again become sexy.

But perhaps a more difficult question is whether this new public-spiritedness is pointed in the right direction. The levers of government may be so corroded, and the policy making options of earlier eras so passé as to render the renewed enthusiasm null and void.

For a period in the late 90s and early 00s, progressive forces were searching for new modes of public engagement in the tacit recognition that national governments were no longer able to provide the kind of policy guidance beloved by post-WWII welfare states. In the best examples, domestic social movements crafted global networks that went beyond defensive postures towards what Alain Touraine calls “conflictive participation in the global economy”. Those networks have now become clogged as domestic ‘solutions’ again become fashionable.

What remains of welfarism after its trashing under Bush is still tilted away from the genuinely excluded (think The Wire) towards an illusory middle class receding irretrievably from view. US labor unions are mostly a defensive bulwark against the vagaries of global competition and not an assertive force for social change. Obama’s multi-billion dollar car industry bailout will benefit, first and foremost, Hillary’s white workers and not the forgotten of Detroit’s slums. The multitude of stimulus and bailout packages are an attempt to revive a failed settlement between capital and labour that passed its used-by-date decades ago.

The alternative for the legions of Obama fans is to take a good look at the fluidity that has re-made American society and fashion a conflictive social movement that engages directly with issues of cultural diversity and economic fragmentation. For their part, policy wonks should be looking less at off-the-shelf responses and instead at regulations that protect and extend cultural and economic autonomy — the contours of which will inevitably emerge, with or without the input of a new band of Ivy League do-gooders.

We compare attitudes in 33 European democracies, plus the U.S. and Canada, and we have two main findings. The first is that that class does matter to attitudes toward homosexuality. Class matters, in that working-class people not only have lower levels of tolerance than professionals and managing classes, but they have very similar attitudes to other working-class people in other countries, regardless of GDP. Or, another way to say that is that the postmaterialist state of rich countries does not necessarily trickle down to working-class people, and neither do the tolerant attitudes that national wealth supposedly ushers in.

The second finding is that national economic inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, is a significant predictor of overall levels of attitudes toward homosexuality. In fact, the effect washes out the significance of GDP as a predictor of attitudes in our models. In other words, rich countries that have high inequality are less tolerant than less wealthy countries with lower inequality.

How does inequality disrupt the development of tolerant attitudes toward homosexuality, something seemingly so unrelated to the economy? One idea is that greater equality breeds greater general trust in fellow human beings. Under conditions of high inequality, this general trust dissolves and is replaced by a more specific trust in people we know and people who are “like” us. Specific trust is more of an “us vs. them” mentality, allowing for the scapegoating of marginalized groups, such as lesbian and gay people.