# 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:** 9\ **Page:** 5
**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, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/81 "2008-12-21T18:51:26Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > 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. Well, the book is humor, commentary and amateur sociology by a [professor of English literature.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell) Fussell does not even **pretend** to be using the statistical tools social scientists (presumably) use to form their hypotheses. But you can’t deny there is more of value in his insights than in “Help! I am being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory!” > [@msmith537](#): > > 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. Fussell is entirely cognizant of individual social mobility in America – **and of its limitations,** which tend to be obscured by the pervasive myths that (1) America, uniquely, has always been a classless society anyway, and all Americans are really middle-class in some sense, and (2) class is purely a matter of wealth. Please re-read the bolded first paragraph of the excerpt, with the quotation from George Orwell. Also from Fussell’s book: > [@](#): > > The special hazards attending the class situation in America, where movement appears so fluid and where the prizes seem available to anyone who’s lucky, are disappointment, and, following close on that, envy. Because the myth conveys the impression that you can readily earn your way upward, disillusionment and bitterness are particularly strong when you find yourself trapped in a class system you’ve been half persuaded isn’t important. When in early middle life some people discover that certain limits have been place on their capacity to ascend socially by such apparent irrelevancies as heredity, early environment, and the social class of their immediate forebears, they go into something like despair, which, if generally secret, is no less destructive. N.B.: Fussell is **not** calling for a social revolution or a classless society, only trying to glean insights of and direct more attention towards a very important subject that, in America, tends to be treated as irrelevant or best not mentioned. > [@](#): > > The former Socialist and editor of the _Partisan Review_ William Barrett, looking back thirty years, concludes that “the Classless Society looks more and more like a Utopian illusion. The Socialist countries develop a class structure of their own,” although there, he points out, the classes are very largely based on bureaucratic toadying. “Since we are bound . . . to have classes in any case, why not have them in the more organic, heterogenous and variegated fashion” indigenous to the West? And since we have them, why not know as much as we can about them? The subject may be touchy, but it need not be murky forever. > [@msmith537](#): > > 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. Errmm . . . No, he (Lind) doesn’t. Read the excerpt more carefully. ---
**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, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/82 "2008-12-21T20:06:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, the book is humor, commentary and amateur sociology by a [professor of English literature.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell) Fussell does not even **pretend** to be using the statistical tools social scientists (presumably) use to form their hypotheses. Good Lord. You’ve just admitted you’re quoting from a source that’s basically pulling his theses out of his ass. Therefore > [@](#): > > But you can’t deny there is more of value in his insights than in “Help! I am being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory!” can only be met with the response: I can and I will. Find some serious socioeconomic analyses! ---
**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, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/83 "2008-12-21T20:09:30Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Good Lord. You’ve just admitted you’re quoting from a source that’s basically pulling his theses out of his ass. Therefore can only be met with the response: I can and I will. Find some serious socioeconomic analyses! But, remember, he is talking about thinks like cultural characteristics and status perceptions, which, by their nature, cannot be quantified for statistical analysis. Marx was an economist – but we’re not talking about economics here. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/84 "2008-12-22T00:08:30Z")
Marx was a lot more than an economist, and perception by itself is bullshit. Just because something _appears_ to be a certain way does not mean it actually _is_ that way. And saying “Well, we can’t really analyze it in any serious manner so we might as well _assume_ it’s true/valid” smacks of the invisibly pink and monocerotic. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/85 "2008-12-22T01:24:24Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Marx was a lot more than an economist, and perception by itself is bullshit. Not in social relations, it isn’t! Perceptions **are** reality! ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/86 "2008-12-22T02:44:32Z")
**BG** , where I think Fussell missed the boat is that, while it’s true to an extent that an individual can have trouble moving up (although there are many, many exceptions to that), his or her children will be fully accepted. It only takes one generation to make Old Money here. For most, that’s enough to prevent the despair that he writes of (which in turn would be likely to lead to revolution, to bring this back to the OP), and that, honestly, I don’t see except among the hereditary poor. As I said earlier, wealth, even tacky wealth, buys access, and access plus wealth definitely lands your kids in the upper class if you want them to be there. I think as time goes by, this becomes increasingly true even in societies where there is a hereditary nobility. But it takes money. I think the reason for this is that the well-born tend not to be the wealthiest, and they want more; therefore they will accept contact with the rich and less well-born in order to better their own chance at acquiring more wealth. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/87 "2008-12-22T02:57:42Z")
> [@Oy](#): > > I think as time goes by, this becomes increasingly true even in societies where there is a hereditary nobility. But it takes money. I think the reason for this is that the well-born tend not to be the wealthiest, and they want more; therefore they will accept contact with the rich and less well-born in order to better their own chance at acquiring more wealth. That certainly was the case in 19th Century Britain, when the newly-rich industrialists were allowed – even warmly invited – to intermarry with the old landed gentry and send their sons to the same elite schools and merge the two classes into one. Which has a lot in common with Lind’s account of the formation of the modern American overclass (except that it produced a fused class modeling its values and manners on those of the lower predecessor class, not the upper). ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/88 "2008-12-22T04:37:36Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Not in social relations, it isn’t! Perceptions **are** reality! Perception is false _especially_ in social relations. Take, for example, this perception of economic, political, and social equality we live under here in the States. It comes up against the reality of economic inequality disproportionately affecting minorities, for example, and more often than not it’s dismissed as being an individual problem rather than a social problem because the perception of social equality is the ‘reality’. The perception is that capitalism is the best of all possible socioeconomic systems, masking the reality that it absolutely isn’t. Perception is not reality. Perception is bunk. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2008, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905/89 "2008-12-22T15:20:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Errmm . . . No, he (Lind) doesn’t. Read the excerpt more carefully. Ermm…yeah, he does: > [@](#): > > 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… …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… …you are probably not a member of the white overclass – no matter how much money you make. Basically he has created this ficticious “white overclass” based on some arbitrary criteria (that sounds like something he took from The Preppy Handbook) that exclude a good portion of people who are successful and influentual. His concept of a “white overclass” rings true if you live in the Northeast. I don’t know if that can be applied accross the country though. What would be a lot more compelling to me would be some statistics taken from the “institutional elite” to see what their backgrounds and origins really are from. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-people-ever-rise-again/477905.md?page=4)