# Does a socioeconomic elite class have value to people who aren't in it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 24, 2006, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434 "2006-01-24T20:11:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/1 "2006-01-24T20:11:48Z")
Bertrand Russell, in _Power,_ wrote something to the effect (can’t recall the quote verbatim or put my hands on the book) that, whatever one’s **politics** might be, there can be no defense for an aristocratic **ethic** – these few are to enjoy the good things and the others merely to minister to them. He added that aristocrats have always behaved in a way no other ethic could justify; and, as an English earl, Russell ought to know something about aristocrats. Taking that ethical position as a starting point – is it arguable that the existence of an elite class in society (whether hereditary or meritocratic or, as in the contemporary U.S., a mixture\*) is of some benefit to the other classes, or to society as a whole? Does it have a value that would be lost in a classless society (assuming _arguendo_ that such a thing were possible)? A conservative friend of mine sometimes talks of all the good things wealthy philanthropists give the world, in work for charity and patronage of the arts and education. This is undoubtedly true. (As a librarian, I am very sensible of the things Andrew Carnegie did to establish public libraries in the U.S.) But do they give more, or more efficiently, than government could? There is also the value of an elite class as a training-ground for public service. In Britain, the gentry have historically provided society with its top civil servants, military officers, clergy, local justices of the peace – in general, leaders. Now, any society, however egalitarian, will have some kind of “institutional elite.” That does not logically require said elite be drawn mainly from a social elite class. But, is it perhaps better if it is? Do people raised in wealth and privilege make more effective leaders? Many people ascribe an elite class a kind of esthetic value, which makes it a kind of end-in-itself. Certainly most things we remember about past ages were either done by elites or made possible by their patronage. Who would want to study the history of the Baroque Period if it were all about the peasants and artisans? We want to read about the refined aristocracy and the magnificent art and architecture they paid for! John Maynard Keynes, writing on the Soviet Union, once said, “How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of human advancement?” I’m playing Devil’s advocate in terms of my own mostly left-wing views here, but this is a topic I think merits discussion. ---
**Author:** ![XaMcQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/f9ae1b/32.png) [@XaMcQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XaMcQ)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/2 "2006-01-24T20:27:56Z")
If an elite class were based on a truly meritocratic system, I would be all for it. But for every altruistic aristocrat or patron of the arts, I’d guess there were about a dozen Paris Hiltons, just based on my encounters with wealthy people. As far as the class producing great artists or leaders, I tend to think that is due to them having more opportunity. Most of the peasant class who might have been artistically inclined probably were detered by the threat of starvation, and most of the leaders among the lower classes were no doubt labeled troublemakers and either discouraged or hanged. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/3 "2006-01-24T20:36:55Z")
OK, I’ll bite, and use the same answer Ayn Rand gave. If you take away from the most productive people the fruits of their productivity, how long do you think they’re going to keep working? There has to be some method of promoting productivity. If everyone is rewarded the same no matter what they do there’s no point in producing anything, and people soon start producing the bare minimum neccesary to avoid punishment. Pretty soon there’s nothing left worth stealing and the redistributionist house of cards comes tumbling down. Does this mean I support an aristocracy? Far from it, aristocrats fill the same function in society that Tony Soprano does, except Tony at least provides people with drugs and prostitutes, aristocrats don’t even do that. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/4 "2006-01-24T20:51:52Z")
Yes 1)for the people who aspire to it & hence serves as motivation. 2)for those who agree with the overall sensibilities of the elite & depend on their survival to maintain the status quo. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/5 "2006-01-24T21:01:25Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > OK, I’ll bite, and use the same answer Ayn Rand gave. If you take away from the most productive people the fruits of their productivity, how long do you think they’re going to keep working? That’s really a hijack. Even a classless society could have **income** differentials. See George Orwell’s prescription for a postwar socialist Britain in _The Lion and the Unicorn_ – [http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/lionunicorn.html:](http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/lionunicorn.html:) > [@](#): > > I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first three points deal with England’s internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the world: > > 1. Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries. > > 2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one. > > 3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines. > > 4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over. > > 5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented. > > 6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers. > > \ > > 1. Incomes. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage, which implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of consumption goods available. And this again implies a stricter rationing scheme than is now in operation. It is no use at this stage of the world’s history to suggest that all human beings should have exactly equal incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some kind of money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On the other hand the money reward need not be very large. In practice it is impossible that earnings should be limited quite as rigidly as I have suggested. There will always be anomalies and evasions. But there is no reason why ten to one should not be the maximum normal variation. And within those limits some sense of equality is possible. A man with £3 a week and a man with £1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures, which the Duke of Westminster and the sleepers on the Embankment benches cannot. Class is, in any case, much more complicated than income level. The best analysis I’ve read on this is from _The Next American Nation,_ by Michael Lind – (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 141-145: > [@](#): > > Understanding the white overclass requires revising the most common misconceptions about class. The discussion of social class has been confused for generations by Marxist thinkers, who made the mistake of completely identifying class with economic function. Like the Marxists, old-fashioned American liberal pluralists tend to misunderstand class. What they refer to as class is typically not a social class at all, but a mere occupational or income category, such as service-sector workers or millionaires. Meanwhile, the New Left which came to prominence in the sixties has tended to drop the idea of class altogether, in favor of race and gender. . . . In recent years, conservative ideologues have added further confusion by defining political factions and lifestyle subcultures as classes. . . . > > In order to think about class in twenty-first century America, we must first clear our minds of these Marxist, liberal, New Left, and conservative definitions of class, and return to the older notion of class found in classical and European political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu. > > A class is a group of families, united by intermarriage and a common subculture, whose members tend to predominate in certain professions and political offices, generation after generation. Note that the class – the group of similar families – has an existence independent of the offices which its members tend to hold. Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. Those who talk about “the political class” or, with C. Wright Mills, about “the power elite,” are confusing two very different things. Every modern society, even the most perfectly egalitarian, will have an institutional elite – top civilian politicians, military officers, judges, diplomats, financial and industrial executives, publishers, editors and leading intellectuals, clerical leaders, and so on. The subject of class is raised only when you examine the social origins of the particular individuals who hold office in the institutional elite or elites. Learning the organization of judicial offices in a country tells you nothing about class. However, if you find out that most of the judges tend to come from old-money families in a particular region of that country, and that most attended one of half a dozen schools, then you have learned something important about that country’s class system. > > The United States at the end of the twentieth century has both an institutional elite and a dominant social class. The institutional elite is composed of upper-level officials in the federal and state governments, plus executives and professionals in the concentrated private sector and foundation and university executives (low-level government officials and small business owners are not part of the institutional elite). Almost all of the members of the American institutional elite also happen to be members of a single social class: the white overclass. To put it another way, the labor pool from which most elite positions are filled is the white overclass. The overlap is not complete. Though most members of the institutional elite belong to the white overclass, most members of the white overclass are not part of the institutional elite (since the overclass greatly outnumbers the elite); and – though this is uncommon – a person can become a high-ranking politician, military officer, judge, CEO, foundation president, or university president in the United States without having been born into the white overclass. It is possible to imagine a United States in which most members of the institutional elite did not have similar class origins. But that is not the country in which we live. > > . . . The white overclass is the child of the former Northeastern Protestant establishment, produced by marriage (not only figurative but literal) with the upwardly mobile descendants of turn-of-the-century European immigrants and white Southerners and Westerners. Unlike the Northeastern establishment . . . this relatively new and still evolving political and social oligarchy is not identified with any particular region of the country (though it is concentrated in East and West Coast metropolitan regions). Nor does the white overclass dominate other sections through local, surrogate establishments, as the Northeastern establishment once did. Rather, overclass Americans are found in the higher suburbs of every major metropolitan area, North and South, coastal and inland. Unlike the sectional elites of the past, members of the white overclass are not even identified with the regions in which they happen (temporarily) to live. The white overclass, homogeneous and nomadic, is the first truly national upper class in American history. > > The white overclass is the product, not merely of the amalgamation of Anglo- and Euro-Americans, but of the fusion of the rentier and managerial-professional classes. This blurring of the upper and upper-middle strata is a relatively new development in the United States. In earlier generations, there were distinct landowning and rentier classes, with their own lifestyles and institutions – cotillions, seasons spent in the country, and the like. The elaborate rituals that governed upper-class life, such as dressing for dinner, were designed to conspicuously display wealth, including a wealth of leisure time. That was a long time ago. There is a class, or rather a category, of the clebrity rich, and there are still pockets of old-fashioned rentiers in the U.S. – in Virginia, there are still planters who do not work and who hunt foxes with hounds – but these subcultures are detached from the summits of power. Members of the upper class who want to make a mark in the world tend to adopt the style of life and dress and speech of the managerial-professional elite. Even though they do not have to, most members of the small hereditary upper class go to college and get executive or professional jobs, and work, or at least pretend to. Instead of serving as a model for well-to-do executives and lawyers and investment bankers, the hereditary segment of the American overclass conforms to the segment immediately below it, the credentialed upper middle class. > > . . . The composition of student bodies at Ivy League schools is a good surrogate for the composition of the white overclass. If you factor out black and Hispanic students admitted under affirmative action programs, you are left with a student body that is disproportionately of British or German-Scandinavian Protestant and European Jewish descent. There are relatively few evangelical Protestants and Catholics in the overclass, despite their significant numbers in the general population. If you are Episcopalian or Jewish, have a graduate or professional degree from an expensive university, work in a large downtown office building in an East or West Coast metropolis, watch MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS, and are saving for a vacation in London or Paris, you are a card-carrying member of the white overclass, even if your salary is not very impressive. If you are Methodist, Baptist or Catholic, have a B.A. from a state university, work in or for a small business or for a career government service, watch the Nashville Network on cable, and are saving for a vacation in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Branson, Missouri, or Orlando, Florida (Disneyworld), you are probably not a member of the white overclass – no matter how much money you make. > > Although there are residual religious and ethnic differences among members of the white overclass, these are minor compared to what they have in common. There is, for example, a common white overclass accent, which is more or less identical in corporate boardrooms from one end of the continent to another – the “NBC standard,” which is the equivalent of BBC English or Britain’s Received Pronunciation (RP). As formerly distinct local elites have fused into a single national ruling class equally at home in New York and Texas and California, this accent has become the badge of elite status. In order to advance in overclass circles in America, a white American has to suppress any regional or ethnic dialect, whether it be a Southern drawl or a Boston honk or Brooklynese, and learn to speak this flat, clipped, rather nasal version of English. . . . > > . . . The overclass eats pate and imported cheeses; the middle class eats peanut butter and Velveeta. The overclass sips wine; the middle class drinks beer. The overclass plays squash and tennis; the middle class plays pool and bowls (both golf, but the middle class does so at second-tier country clubs and public courses). The overclass jogs; the middle class does not. . . . These are cliches, but they are a better guide to the real class structure in the United States than income categories in the census or pseudoscientific sociological measures like the SES (socioeconomic survey). Note that this overclass is a hereditary/meritocratic mixture. It is possible to work (and/or marry) your way into it; but **most** of its members were born into it, and that does make a real practical difference in its culture and in the way it relates to other classes. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/6 "2006-01-24T21:04:36Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > Yes > > 1)for the people who aspire to it & hence serves as motivation. > > 2)for those who agree with the overall sensibilities of the elite & depend on their survival to maintain the status quo. 1. is easy to understand (although it would apply with as much force to raw income as to class status, which is not the same thing – see above); but would you care to expand on 2)? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/7 "2006-01-24T21:17:23Z")
See also _Class: A Guide to the American Status System,_ by Paul Fussell (New York: Summit Books, 1983), pp. 27-50: > [@](#): > > My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows: > > ## Top out-of-sight Upper Upper middle > > ## Middle High proletarian Mid-proletarian Low proletarian > > Destitute > Bottom out-of-sight > > One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these clases. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money. > > * * * > > Not that the three classes at the top don’t have money. The point is that money alone doesn’t define them, for the way they have their money is largely what matters. . . . The main thing distinguishing the top three classes from each other is the amount of money inherited in relation to the amount currently earned. The top-out-of-sight class (Rockefellers, Pres, DuPonts, Mellons, Fords, Vanderbilts) lives on inherited capital entirely. . . . > > “When I think of a really rich man,” says a Boston blue-collar, “I think of one of those estates where you can’t see the house from the road.” Hence the name of the top class, which could just as well be called “the class in hiding.” Their houses are never seen from the street or road. They like to hide away deep in the hills or way off on Greek or Caribbean islands (which they tend to own), safe, for the moment, from envy and its ultimate attendants, confiscatory taxation and finally expropriation. . . . > > * * * > > The next class down, the upper class, differs from the top-out-of-sight class in two main ways. First, although it inherits a lot of its money, it earns quite a bit too, usually from some attractive, if slight, work, without which it would feel bored and even ashamed. It’s likely to make its money by controlling banks and the more historic corporations, think tanks, and foundations, and to busy itself with things like the older universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Committee for Economic Development, and the like, together with the executive branch of the federal government, and often the Senate. . . . And secondly, unlike the top-out-of-sights, the upper class is visible, often ostentatiously so. . . . When you pass a house with a would-be impressive facade visible from the street or highway, you know it’s occupied by a member of the upper class. . . . > > * * * > > We now come to the upper-middle class. It may possess virtually as much as the two classes above it. The difference is that it has earned most of it, in law, medicine, oil, shipping, real estate, or even the more honorific kinds of trade, like buying and selling works of art. Although they may enjoy some inherited money and use inherited “things” (silver, Oriental rugs), the upper-middles suffer from a bourgeois sense of shame, a conviction that to live on the earnings of others, even forebears, is not nice. > > Caste marks of the upper-middles would include living in a house with more rooms than you need, except perhaps when a lot of “overnight guests” are present to help you imitate upper-class style. . . . This class is also the most “role-reversed” of all: men think nothing of cooking and doing housework, women of working out of the house in journalism, theater, or real estate. (If the wife stays home all the time, the family’s middle-class only.) Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you’ll have inferred already, that it’s in large part the class depicted by Lisa Birnbach and others’ _Official Preppy Handbook,_ that significantly popular artifact of 1980. > > * * * > > . . . The middle class is distinguishable more by its earnestness and psychic insecurity than by its middle income. I have known some very rich people who remain stubbornly middle-class, which is to say they remain terrified at what others think of them, and to avoid criticism are obsessed with doing everything right. . . . > > “Status panic”: that’s the affliction of the middle class, according to C. Wright Mills, author of _White Collar_ (1951) and _The Power Elite_ (1956). Hence the middles’ need to accumulate credit cards and take in _The New Yorker,_ which it imagines registers upper-middle taste. . . . > > If the audience for that sort of thing used to seem the most deeply rooted in time and place, today it seems the class that’s the most rootless. Members of the middle class are not only the sort of people who buy their own heirlooms, silver, etc. They’re also the people who do most of the moving long-distance (generally to very unstylish places), commanded every few years to pull up stakes by the corporations they’re in bondage to. They are the geologist employed by the oil company, the computer programmer, the aeronautical engineer, the salesman assigned to a new territory, and the “marketing” (formerly sales) manager deputed to keep an eye on him. . . . IBM and DuPont hire these people from second-rate colleges and teach them that they are nothing if not members of the team. Virtually no latitude is permitted to individuality or the milder forms of eccentricity, and these employees soon learn to avoid all ideological statements. . . . Terrified of losing their jobs, these people grow passive, their humanity diminished as they perceive themselves mere parts of an infinitely larger structure. Interchangeable parts, too. “The training makes our men interchangeable,” an IBM executive was once heard to say. > > * * * > > . . . Oddity, introversion, and love of privacy are the big enemies, a total reversal of the values of the secure upper orders. Among the middles there’s a convention that erecting a fence or even a tall hedge is an affront. And there’s also a convention that you may drop in on neighbors and friends without a telephone inquiry first. . . . > > * * * > > . . . Proceeding downward, we would normally expect to meet next the lower-middle class. But it doesn’t exist as such any longer, having been pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s and transformed into the high-proletarian class. What’s the difference? A further lack of freedom and self-respect. Our former lower-middle class, the new high proles, now head “the masses,” and even if they are positioned at the top of the proletarian classes, still they are identifiable as people things are done to. They are in bondage – to monetary policy, rip-off advertising, crazes and delusions, mass low culture, fast food, consumer schlock. Back in the 1940s there was still a real lower-middle class in this country, whose solid high-school education and addiction to “saving” and “planning” maintained it in a position – often precarious, to be sure – above the working class. . . . These former low-white-collar people are now simply working machines, and the wife usually works as well as the husband. > > The kind of work performed and the sort of anxiety that besets one as a result of work are ways to divide the working class into its three strata. The high proles are the skilled workers, crafstmen, like printers. The mid-proles are operators, like Ralph Kramden, the bus driver. The low proles are unskilled labor, like longshoremen. The special anxiety of high proles is fear about loss or reduction of status: you’re proud to be a master carpenter, and you want the world to understand clearly the difference between you and a laborer. The special anxiety of the mid-proles is fear of losing the job. And of the low proles, the gnawing perception that you’re probably never going to make enough or earn enough freedom to have and do the things you want. > > * * * > > But high proles are quite smart, or at least shrewd. Because often their work is not closely supervised, they have pride and a conviction of independence, and they feel some contempt for those who have not made it as far as they have. They are, as the sociologist E. E. LeMasters calls them and titles his book, _Blue-Collar Aristocrats_ (1975), and their disdain for the middle class is like the aristocrat’s from the other direction. . . . Like other aristocrats, says LeMasters, these “have gone to the top of their social world and need not expend time or energy on ‘social climbing.’” . . . > > Since they’re not consumed with worry about choosing the correct status emblems, these people can be remarkably relaxed and unself-conscious. They can do, say, wear, and look like pretty much anything they want without undue feelings of shame, which belong to their betters, the middle class, shame being largely a bourgeois feeling. . . . > > * * * > > High proles are nice. It’s down among the mid- and low proles that features some might find offensive begin to show themselves. These are people who feel bitter about their work, often because they are closely supervised and regulated and generally treated like wayward children. . . . Andrew Levinson, author of _The Working-Class Majority_ (1974), invites us to imagine what it would be like to be under the constant eye of a foreman, “a figure who has absolutely no counterpart in middle-class society. Salaried professionals often do have people above them, but it is impossible to imagine professors or executives being required to bring a doctor’s note if they are absent a day or having to justify the number of trips they take to the bathroom.” . . . > > The degree of supervision, indeed, is often a more eloquent class indicator than mere income, which suggests that the whole class system is more a recognition of the value of freedom than a proclamation of the value of sheer cash. . . . One is a mid- or low prole if one’s servitude is constantly emphasized. Occupational class depends largely on doing work for which the consquences of error or failure are distant or remote, or better, invisible, rather than immediately apparent to a superior and thus instantly humiliating to the performer. > > Constantly demeaned at work, the lower sorts of proles suffer from poor morale. As one woman worker says, “Most of us . . . have jobs that are too small for our spirits.” > > * * * > > At the bottom of the working class, the low prole is identifiable by the gross uncertainty of his employment. This class would include illegal aliens like Mexican fruit pickers as well as other migrant workers. Social isolation is the norm here, and what Hoggart says of the lower working class in Britain applies elsewhere as well: “Socially . . . each day and each week is almost unplanned. There is no diary, no book of engagements, and few letters are sent or received.” Remoteness and isolation, as in the valleys of Appalachia, are characteristics, and down here we find people who, trained for nothing, are likely out of sheer despair to join the Army. > > Still, they’re better off than the destitute, who never have even seasonal work and who live wholly on welfare. They differ from the bottom-out-of-sights less because they’re much better off than because they’re more visible, in the form of Bowery bums, bag ladies, people who stand in public places lecturing and delivering harangues about their grievances, people who drink out of paper bags, people whose need for some recognition impels them to “act” in front of audiences in the street. When delinquency and distress grow desperate, you sink into the bottom-out-of-sight class, staying all day in your welfare room or contriving to get taken into an institution, whether charitable or correctional doesn’t matter much. In the last chapter, Fussell identifies a tenth class, a “Class X” of declassed intellectuals and bohemians. Even this fine-grained analysis might be too simplistic. For one thing, it ignores divisions between ethnic groups. A working-class black and a working-class white might work in similar occupations for similar incomes; but they grow up in different social environments, speak different dialects, attend different churches, listen to different music, socialize with circles of friends almost entirely of their own color, and almost certainly will marry (or, at any rate, reproduce) within their own race. The divisions are much less sharp than they were 20 years ago. (I know white kids who listen to rap and hip-hop, and who call each other “nigger” and “dog” as terms of affection, and whose closest friends and romantic interests are as likely to be black as white.) But they’re still there. Are the white prole and the black prole in the same “class”? In 10 or 20 years, maybe; today, no, IMO. They both occupy the same horizontal layer of the social pyramid but there is a vertical line of separation between them. Perhaps a better question to ask is whether Fussell’s analysis is dated. In noting the death of the American lower middle class due to economic forces in the 1960s and '70s, Fussell acknowledged a society’s class structure can change significantly in a short period of time. And his book dates from 1983. How well does it describe the America of 2004? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/8 "2006-01-24T21:20:20Z")
Sorry, I meant, of course, “How well does it describe the America of 2006?” Preview. Preview. Preview. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/9 "2006-01-24T21:47:55Z")
Well, if you’re a butler, a maid, a jeweler, a luxury car dealer, a horse breeder, a caviar merchant, a fine art dealer, a bodyguard, or a gardener, then the more wealthy aristocrats there are the better your business is. And I’m not so much sold on the notion of the “overclass” presented by Lind. He’s not describing a new aristocracy, he’s describing the upper middle class. What class am I? My dad is a union electrician, his brother was a draftsman, my mom is a legal transcriptionist, one grandfather was a carpenter, one was a lumberjack. Blue collar, working class, whatever you want to call it. I have first cousins who have been on and off welfare, boyfriends in prison, blah blah blah. That’s my family. Except, am I working class? I don’t think so. What kind of a class is it when you don’t belong to it if you think you don’t belong to it? It seems to me that in a real class system I’d always be a member of my class, no matter how much money I made or what job I had or where I went to school…I’d always eat with the wrong fork, speak with the wrong accent, go to the wrong church, have the wrong shape of nose, like the wrong sports, read the wrong books. My every action would betray my class origins, and I’d have to go to enormous effort to conceal them. Except this doesn’t seem much like the way things work in America, when the President pretends to watch NASCAR and eat pork rinds and puts on a rural accent. What kind of class system is it when I can be a member of the white overclass, yet my first cousins are white trash welfare cases with boyfriends who are in and out of prison? Anyway, this is a bit of a hijack, but we can’t really talk about class without, well, talking about class. In my mind, there’s a big difference between a traditional hereditary aristocracy, who are just the descendents of sword-swinging mafiosi on horseback, and some guy who went to an Ivy League school and has a high-paying managerial job and listens to NPR and doesn’t have a regional accent. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/10 "2006-01-24T21:51:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Does a socioeconomic elite class have value to people who aren’t in it? I suppose it depends on what ‘elite class’ you are refering too. You mentioned the aristocrats (actually as and Earl he was Nobility but who’s counting ehe? :)) and that whole useless bunch of outdated dinosaurs. Do they give value to the people not in their class(s)? Well, initially I suppose they did…in the form of protection money. The peasant and trades classes ‘benifitted’, at least in theory, by the Noble/Aristocrat/Gentry classes in that they were protected (again, in theory) from attack by other bands of thugs with pointy thing. In addition they received some kind of government and stability (again in theory). It wasn’t a very GOOD benifit, but they did derive something from it early on. Later of course…well, there was always America to flee too I suppose. 😛 If by ‘socioeconomic elite class’ you mean modern industrialists…yeah, I think folks not of that class derive something from them. A hell of a lot more benifit than those peasants and trades folks derived from the noble classes. One has only to look at the current standard of living in countries that have industrialists of some stripe or other. Most markedly look at the contrast in Europe today vs Europe a 100 years ago (while still in the last grasp of their leeching nobles)…or earlier. Contrast that with the US at the time and its no wonder we were constantly flooded with imigrants fleeing the madness. If by ‘socioeconomic elite class’ you mean the idle rich…well, I don’t actually think there are all that many of them out there, certainly not enough to make a difference. Even there though other classes derive something, in the form of taxes on their wealth and in the form of various jobs to provide goods and services for those idle rich folks. Plus they derive seemingly endless fun in getting to sit at bars and on message boards and bitch about them…that ought to count for something. 😉 -XT ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/11 "2006-01-24T22:22:02Z")
After reading everything said and cited so far, and after much careful consideration of the OP’s question, I’d have to say the answer is a resounding “it depends.” What does it depend on? Social structure, primarily. Social classes – and all classes are social, for they are all divisions of a society into different groups – can exist for a myriad of reasons, depending on the overarching moral order of the society. Now, that’s the general case. Let’s get specific: America, now. Right now, the US of A is a highly individualist society. The pure individual is held as the ideal to which everyone is expected to aspire. To that end, the bootstrapping rags-to-riches story is the predominant narrative element of American culture. One consequence of that, as pointed out by **BrainGlutton** ’s cite of Michael Lind, is that those who already had shit-tons of money when America got rolling simply made sure they held onto their wealth, and relaxed. Once upon a time, however, social classes served far more use than offering a vision of upward mobility. During the middle ages in Europe, the law was such that legally a merchant was a different entity than a serf, a knight different from a merchant, a noble different from a knight, and so on. A knight could kill a peasant and pay only a small fine. Classes in this society served to perpetuate the institutions (such as land ownership, and marriage (which in turn was a purely political combination of two family’s land assets)) that allowed food production and resource management to stay organized. But then the Enlightenment came, and suddenly we were all equal under the law. America took that concept in its teeth and ran with it. New institutions replaced the old, and instead of a sense of community and serving in one’s place, we now have the every-man-for-himself idea of capitalism. So the answer to the OP’s question is, yes, elite classes can have enormous value to the entire society, by serving as the backbone to the social structure (this is just another way of saying they enforce the common practices that allows everyone to stay on the same page). ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/12 "2006-01-24T22:30:53Z")
BrainGlutton’s own posts and quotes have already pretty much shown this is an all but impossible discussion. The idea of an “elite class” is going to be vastly different from culture to culture, and in the United States especially it is extremely difficult to define such a class. Before this can even be debated I think we need a simple and workable definition of “socioeconomic elite class” and I’ll be surprised if someone can come up with one that would apply to the United States that can survive scrutiny. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/13 "2006-01-24T23:01:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Perhaps a better question to ask is whether Fussell’s analysis is dated. In noting the death of the American lower middle class due to economic forces in the 1960s and '70s, Fussell acknowledged a society’s class structure can change significantly in a short period of time. And his book dates from 1983. How well does it describe the America of 2004? Still pretty well. Fussell’s analysis is confused by the fact that he can’t get around his own middle class notion of class (and make no mistake, his class X is extremely middle class in their attitudes) and the fact that he’s bought into class stereotypes hook, line and sinker, but if you can ignore that, he makes some good points. There are dividing lines among those who want to have enough to get by, to be comfortable, to be successful (and known as successful), and those who aren’t particularly concerned with any of those things. Now, as to the value of the upper class, don’t forget that there are at least two flavors, the aristocrats and the patricians. For the aristocrats, think of the wealthy in the antebellum south, and for the patricians, the antebellum north. The practical difference between the two is that patricians carry a strong sense of nobless oblige, and as such they do have a positive impact on the rest of society. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/14 "2006-01-25T02:12:12Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > Now, as to the value of the upper class, don’t forget that there are at least two flavors, the aristocrats and the patricians. For the aristocrats, think of the wealthy in the antebellum south, and for the patricians, the antebellum north. The practical difference between the two is that patricians carry a strong sense of nobless oblige, and as such they do have a positive impact on the rest of society. Care to expand on that? Why do you think (landed) aristocrats do not have a sense of noblesse oblige? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/15 "2006-01-25T02:14:46Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Care to expand on that? Why do you think (landed) aristocrats do not have a sense of noblesse oblige? I don’t have any idea. Note that the aristocrats I refer to are a subset of what you’re calling the aristocracy. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/16 "2006-01-25T02:23:39Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > I don’t have any idea. Note that the aristocrats I refer to are a subset of what you’re calling the aristocracy. Well, turn it around: Why do you think patricians **do** have a sense of noblesse oblige? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/17 "2006-01-25T03:22:51Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, turn it around: Why do you think patricians **do** have a sense of noblesse oblige? I don’t know if there’s a general answer. As I understand it, the upper class of the antebellum North were influenced by Calvinist philosophy, and may have picked it up from there. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/18 "2006-01-25T05:12:20Z")
The group at the very top has very little value, because all they do is receive income. If every last upper class person in America died tomorrow, the nation’s fortunes would improve slightly at worst, greatly at best. The managerial/professional/entrepreneurial class is very important. They could be and often are easily replaced by upwardly mobile folk from the middle class, but collectively they represent a strong endowment of skills and ability. The poor are people who are done to, but they also do things: they do the bulk of the hard, boring labor in society that members of the middle and upper class would be driven nuts by. Individually they are supremely replaceable, as a group they’re necessary at present (if machine tech that can operate robotic hands and eyes gets off the ground, they won’t be necessary any more). ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/19 "2006-01-25T06:11:43Z")
A socioeconomic elite class is not the same as an aristocracy. An aristocracy inherits it’s position from birth. One cannot become a member of that class unless they are born into it. A socioeconomic elite, however, represents an ideal which people can aspire too. Whether you are an actor, businessman, athlete or educator, there should be some ideal you can aspire to, even if you can never achieve it. The alternative is a mundane, hopeless existence shared equally with everyone. I find a certain irony in the fact that our modern aristocracy are mostly here to entertain us, not the other way around. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434/20 "2006-01-25T09:06:45Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > OK, I’ll bite, and use the same answer Ayn Rand gave. If you take away from the most productive people the fruits of their productivity, how long do you think they’re going to keep working? > > There has to be some method of promoting productivity. If everyone is rewarded the same no matter what they do there’s no point in producing anything, and people soon start producing the bare minimum neccesary to avoid punishment. Pretty soon there’s nothing left worth stealing and the redistributionist house of cards comes tumbling down. Thing is, the “elite” aren’t more productive as a rule, they just have more power / ownership. Bill Gates doesn’t produce the various products of Microsoft, his employees do. Frankly, if your arguement was true, society would collapse because the people who do most of the work get the least rewards. My answer to the OP : No, on the whole. IMHO, the “social elite” are generally amoral predatory scum, parasitic fools, or both. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-a-socioeconomic-elite-class-have-value-to-people-who-arent-in-it/341434.md?page=2)