# Will the people ever rise again? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 19, 2008, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905 "2008-12-19T14:27:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/61 "2008-12-20T19:24:07Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Oh, both exist – as do several classes between them. My point is that I think the hereditary poor are far more hereditary than the upper class, and that I think Lind’s ideas about geography and religion are seeing boundaries that aren’t actually there. The big factor for joining the upper class, other than some degree of ability, is money. The children of those with money, whether self-made or inherited, must work pretty hard to _not_ succeed. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/62 "2008-12-20T19:25:41Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > I took a fairly careful look at the excerpt you quoted from Lind, **BG** , and I have to say he’s got no grasp of what constitutes class in this country. Class isn’t a set of lifestyle choices and job opportunities. Where does he think those old planters in Virginia who go hunting with the hounds got their family money in the first place? Here’s a hint: that source of income dried up rather quickly between 1863 and 1865. Simply put, class is indeed economic function - based on whether your income is drawn from your own ability to perform work or from others’. But not on that **alone.** There are many other factors in play. From [_Class: A Guide Through the American Status System,_](http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253) by Paul Fussell: > [@](#): > > 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. (I’m sure Fussell would agree, if asked, with Lind’s conclusion that the top three classes now are bound together by cultural, social and marital ties.) 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 2008? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/63 "2008-12-20T19:28:12Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > The idea that the best and the brightest are in charge is an illusion. The government is run by a group of people who set up ways to exclude the unwashed masses. Ivy League schools admit the carefully selected along with the legacies who get to run the government. They populate the upper echelons of our government . **Do you really believe other colleges are graduating lesser students?** Yes. When the best and brightest stop having a way to the upper echelons of power, or stop having the outlet to impact society meaningfully, the society crumbles due to ineptitude. I do believe our rulers at Rand are quite intelligent and capable people. I do believe Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanueal are intelligent and capable people. As is Dick Cheney, Hillary and Bill Clinton etc… > [@](#): > > If you were around back in the black power days ,you would have seen some very bright organizers who learned about life on the streets and in jail. There are some very bright people who live a life of limited opportunity ,who can rally the people if the circumstances demand it. Yes, I know that and if they won, they would be the ruling class and not the peons that they organized. Just like Lenin and Stalin became the aristocracy in the Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/64 "2008-12-20T19:56:01Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Yes. When the best and brightest stop having a way to the upper echelons of power, or stop having the outlet to impact society meaningfully, the society crumbles due to ineptitude. I do believe our rulers at Rand are quite intelligent and capable people. I do believe Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanueal are intelligent and capable people. As is Dick Cheney, Hillary and Bill Clinton etc… > > Yes, I know that and if they won, they would be the ruling class and not the peons that they organized. Just like Lenin and Stalin became the aristocracy in the Soviet Union. They were not overthrowing. They succeeded in changing America. That is a victory. If you define it as conquering the world there have been no winners yet. If you believe Bush was our best and brightest, I fear for you. I do not think the right wing think tanks are populated by idiots. I do believe they are wrong though. The Ivy League provides the ruling class with a lot of similar thinking people. They ,like you, actually believe they are the ones who should run the world. If the MBAs who brought the world economy to its knees with unfettered greed didn’t teach you something about them, what will? ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/65 "2008-12-20T19:58:06Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But not on that **alone.** There are many other factors in play. All those other factors, almost completely lifestyle-based, are secondary and have both source and level of income at their roots. The Rockefeller, Vanderbilts, Fords, etc. wouldn’t be “top out-of-sight” class and living as they do if they didn’t have the money that they inherited from earlier generations of the family, who originally got it as profit from the labor of others. I noted with interest, especially, that the less one’s income depends on one’s own labor power, the lower the level of psychic or actual insecurity. That, to me, signals an important, if not fundamental, division in society more important that divisions by race or gender. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/66 "2008-12-20T20:17:23Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > People don’t need to be overthrown in order for a revolution to occur. Systems can be overthrown and it’s still just as revolutionary. The American Revolution overthrew a system in which, for example, the head of state was hereditary and not democratically elected and in which there was a state-supported religion. The point that’s being made, though, is that that system was NOT overthrown. As a matter of fact, it still exists today, essentially unchanged from the way it worked in 1776. America chose to secede from that system, and in so doing created their own (which resembles the British system a little more than people seem to want to admit, but never mind that.) The British constitutional monarchy was not overthrown by American independence - it was broken away from. That is, I think, a rather critical distinction. America was already its own society by the time rebellion was in the air - as a matter of fact, that’s one of the reasons rebellion was in the air in the first place. The replacement of the monarch by a republic was part of the legalities but the monarch remained in power and his descendant remains in pwoer today - the USA just opted out. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/67 "2008-12-20T20:30:05Z")
So how would you distinguish that from the French revolution? Was bourgeois society already not in place by 1789? It seems to me that your argument could be used to claim that the French didn’t have a revolution either. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/68 "2008-12-20T20:32:09Z")
Revolutionary fervor usually starts in the middle classes. I could envision a rift - a culture war, if you like - between the conservative religious middle class, led by pissed-off middle managers and military/law enforcement officers, and the more liberal secular middle class, composed of academics and knowledge workers. The small-minded versus the fuzzy-headed. And the small-minded have guns and a knowledge of demagoguery, and are willing to use both to get the working class on their side. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/69 "2008-12-20T20:34:29Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > A total repudiation of written history and an average 30 point drop in I.Q. might do it. Can I.Q. be measured in minus figures? ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/70 "2008-12-20T20:43:52Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > The small-minded versus the fuzzy-headed. And the small-minded have guns and a knowledge of demagoguery, and are willing to use both to get the working class on their side. Which is why the working class needs to learn to act as a class by itself and for itself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/71 "2008-12-20T21:04:24Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Which is why the working class needs to learn to act as a class by itself and for itself. Which of the classes named in Fussell’s analysis would you include in the “working class”? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/72 "2008-12-20T22:09:45Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > So how would you distinguish that from the French revolution? Was bourgeois society already not in place by 1789? It seems to me that your argument could be used to claim that the French didn’t have a revolution either. The French apparatus of state was utterly overthrown and destroyed and replaced by a new one. The British government was not. It seems a pretty clear difference. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2008, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/73 "2008-12-20T23:26:17Z")
Ah, but the British apparatus of state was overthrown and replaced by a new one in the American colonies, was it not? Why should the existence of an intervening ocean define what is a revolution and what is not? **BG** - Upper-middle class on down. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/74 "2008-12-21T02:29:48Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Ah, but the British apparatus of state was overthrown and replaced by a new one in the American colonies, was it not? Why should the existence of an intervening ocean define what is a revolution and what is not? Well, from a Marxist perspective it only counts as a “bourgeois revolution,” not the real thing at all, if it only changes the form of government without changing the socioeconomic order. How did the American Revolution change the social order in America? Did Irving Kristol actually spot something real there that most historians have missed? > [@Olentzero](#): > > **BG** - Upper-middle class on down. Because the upper-middle are not independently wealthy and have to work for a living? That’s where economic function runs up against cultural outlook. You probably could sell the high proles on the idea that they have class interests in common with all those below, rather than above, them. If you tried really, **really** hard for a long time, you might could sell the middle class on the same idea. The upper-middle? NFW. They are in many cases **married** to those above them, and if they’re not they can reasonably expect some of their children will be. They’re all members of the same overclass with the same manners and culture and outlook, and, in their own mind, the same interests – and they, **including** the upper-middle, are what George Carlin was referring to when he said, “It’s a big club – and you ain’t in it.” But it’s worth mentioning a footnote from the same book: “In personifying the overclass and describing its strategy, I do not mean to imply the existence of a literal conspiracy. When members of a disproportionately powerful class pursue similar class-based interests, the result will be similar to that of a conscious program even if there has been no concerted action.” Any Marxist would agree, I’m sure. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/75 "2008-12-21T02:42:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But it’s worth mentioning a footnote from the same book . . . Lind’s book, I mean, not Fussell’s. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/76 "2008-12-21T05:00:46Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, from a Marxist perspective it only counts as a “bourgeois revolution,” not the real thing at all, if it only changes the form of government without changing the socioeconomic order. Your understanding of the Marxist perspective is wrong. The phrase “bourgeois revolution” contains no moral or ethical judgement on the nature of the revolution; the American, French, and English revolutions were the “real thing” in that they provided the political stamp for what was already socioeconomic reality: the bourgeoisie was the ascendant and more powerful class and their turn had come to rule society. Prior to the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie and these revolutions, the royalty enjoyed absolute power and had a direct hand in the economic life of the country. Bourgeois encroachments on that power were met, of course, with resistance, which generated the political friction and resentment that found its inevitable outlet in these revolutions. (As noted previously, the only thing inevitable about these revolutions was that the would occur, not when or where or how, or even their outcomes.) > [@](#): > > _How did the American Revolution change the social order in America?_ The removal of direct monarchical involvement in the business life of the country, for one thing - elimination of taxes that directly supported the monarch’s lifestyle with no reinvestment in the colonies, for example. The separation of Church and State, so that organized religion was now on its own to support itself instead of drawing off State revenue (another tax that precluded reinvestment). The removal of suppression of political freedoms implemented by the monarchy to protect itself. Overall - the unfettered rule of the bourgeoisie replacing the unfettered rule of a monarch; the removal of the last trappings of feudalism to make room for the development and growth of capitalism. > [@](#): > > _You probably could sell the high proles on the idea that they have class interests in common with all those below, rather than above, them. If you tried really, **really** hard for a long time, you might could sell the middle class on the same idea. The upper-middle? NFW._ I never said the upper-middle class was my target audience. I simply said that, based on the criteria of whether one had to work for a living or not, _regardless of the level of income_, I consider the upper-middle class to be working class. Furthermore, the bottom two income quintiles are numerically greater than the top three income quintiles combined (if I remember my research for another long-ago thread correctly), and their interests truly lie in the direction of a new social revolution. Additionally, I meant to note a striking similarity between a quote from your excerpt of Fussell: > [@](#): > > . . . 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. and a quote from [Chapter 1](http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm) of the Communist Manifesto (emphasis mine): > [@](#): > > **The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat** , partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population. Whether or not Fussell considered himself a Marxist, it’s rather interesting to see him confirm what Marx saw happening 130 years earlier at the dawn of the capitalist age! > [@](#): > > \*But it’s worth mentioning a footnote from the same book: > > > [@](#): > > > > “In personifying the overclass and describing its strategy, I do not mean to imply the existence of a literal conspiracy. When members of a disproportionately powerful class pursue similar class-based interests, the result will be similar to that of a conscious program even if there has been no concerted action.” > > - True enough, but I hope you don’t mean to argue that there has never been any concerted action on the part of the ruling class in their own interests. Nor do I mean to argue that the existence of concerted effort is proof positive of a conspiracy. > [@](#): > > _Any Marxist would agree, I’m sure._ Given your current batting average of .500, I think it might be safer to ask whether I agree instead of assuming I do. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/77 "2008-12-21T14:38:51Z")
**Burton** : any replies to our input? ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/78 "2008-12-21T16:27:53Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > **Burton** : any replies to our input? Did I miss something in this thread? Just went over the whole thing again; didn’t see you anywhere in it. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/79 "2008-12-21T16:53:33Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Did I miss something in this thread? Just went over the whole thing again; didn’t see you anywhere in it. \ [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10595335&postcount=31](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10595335&postcount=31) 😛 ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2008, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/80 "2008-12-21T17:51:53Z")
> [@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 2008? I have a few problems with Fussell’s analysis (at least what you posted, I haven’t read his book). On the surface, it seems like a relatively accurate assessment of the class structure of the US, based on socioeconomic status, attitudes and mannarisms. Reading this, I recognize many of the traits and attitudes he describes in people I encounter that I associate with a particular class. Kind of like how I recongnize certain “truths” in a fortune cookie. I believe his analysis presumes these strata to be fixed and unchangeable, probably from birth. It does not seem to address mobility between classes or the path one has taken to get to their particular class. It also doesn’t seem to talk about how one’s class can change significantly as one progresses in their career. For example, at my last company, you have a 45 year old partner who is a multimillionare living in a Westchester, NY mansion, a director making $250k a year living in Morristown, NJ and a first year analyst making $45,000 a year living in a walkup appartment with two roomates in the Upper East Side. They all have the exact same education. What class are they? Does the fact that they may have been born poor or went to college on scholarship factor in? I have similar problem with the whole concept of “white overclass”. “Single, culturally homogeneous white”? He basically describes pretty much anyone who is white, went to a halfway decent college and has a job in a big company in the city. Hardly a homogeneous group IMHO. And he convenient ignores exceptions to the rule. What percent of senior executives and top business people graduated from 2nd or 3rd tier schools or came from working class or poor families? I would submit that your “white overclass” does not exist, is a convenient stereotype or that there are so many exceptions to the rule that they are irrelevant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905.md?page=5)