I’m skimming through a few sections on class in Peter Worsley’s Introducing Sociology, and from there I’ll move on to a couple other basic texts. Shouldn’t take me more than three or four days; there are very few surprises here. Worsley makes the familiar observation that this thing called class has vectors of wealth, power, and status, which leads me to realize that I’ve talked about wealth and status but not much about power, and in fact concerns of power are much closer to my motivations for researching class and seeing how it affects students in the wired writing classroom: I’m less interested in students having more wealth and/or status than I am in them having political power. So Worsley helps me slightly refine my understanding of my own motivations, at least, in a sort of Mr. Obvious way.
Some other ruminations come out of this understanding: the plutocracy that is the United States Congress indicates that “work,” for the very wealthy, often becomes “leading.” The salary a Senator earns is rather small when compared to the average net worth of a Senator, and that net worth is often how the Senator got into office. Still, Americans often see salary as an important marker of class, and so they look at a Senator’s salary and say, “See? She’s a public servant; she’s not really making that much more money than we are.” (Actually, this is a case where my privileging of the feminine pronoun is misguided: the boys are the ones with the big bucks here.) The work of “leadership” actually does make members of America’s owning classes into members of America’s ruling class. And once they’re in office, we focus on what they do as leaders, not what they’re worth, and thereby hide from ourselves the armature of wealth’s political interests.
One last insight, that I think Worsley is sort of deriving from Marx: for our contemporary understanding, the upper class and the working class are functioning primarily as economic categories rather than as historical formations (317). At the same time, Worsley says, “social classes. . . exhibit common patterns of behavior” (317), and in such a way function as something more than just categories: they possess class consciousness.
Time for bed.
Very interesting. I think it would be productive to look at how the construction and relative positions of the classes has evolved over time. Earlier form likely would have had fewer distinctions than later ones of the historical period. Something like Ruler -> Warrior -> Farmer -> Trader. With everything now monetized to such a high degree, the merchant classes are now on top, but their motivations are the basest apetites of society.
I am suggesting the the current sway of the capitalist system represents the overturning of an older system. Wasn’t Roman history one of your interests? It seems to me that you might be able to recognize a similar cycle where profit motives first take hold and a ruling elite get entrenched based on monetized power, then a self-appointed elite and soon after ruin. The first step is a vast expansion of economic productivity.
I like to think that there are other paths forward and that this cycle is different than the last with a lot more awareness, more widely held respect for multi-cultural values, and less willingness to brand the other as sub-human.
Not sure how to answer re Rome — I mean, the history seems to me to be all about allegiances and armies, but then there are economic concerns behind the military concerns, with the land reform bills and worries about what to do with all the troops when they’re done fighting — but something else in your response interests me.
You suggest that the motivations of the merchant class are the “basest.” Indeed, the love of money and all that — but, if you had to set up a continuum of baseness (weren’t we just talking about Edmund and Lear over at the Tutor’s place?), what motivations would you affix to the various points on that continuum? When are our reasons for acting least and most base?
Yes, but my point about Rome, if I understand the history at all, is that it was a Republic early on (or maybe more the middle), and that period was one of economic expansion which fueled the military expansion. Armies run on their bellies, and the Roman system was to pacify a region and tax the surplus from well functioning economies in all regions of the empire. I’m suggesting that later, power becomes entrenched and ossified, and the Roman Senate can no longer maintain its independence. The next step is dictatorship and a slide toward ruin. I can see a lot of parallels to modern events. But perhaps I’m just distorting the history to fit.
I’m a little unclear on your land-reform comment, but in the historical class system, military leadership and demonstrated prowess on the battlefield are entry points to the lower ranks of nobility, or a way to increase status and holding for the future. This is not economics, this is largess. Economics happens at the bottom and fringes of ancient societies.
Sorry, I can’t add much from Edmund and Lear as I’m a bit of a humanities moron. In my view, monetary measures are a efficient, if crude way of allocating resources between competing uses, but as a measure of wealth and stature in the best sense of the word class it fails utterly. “Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s”, but keep to ourselves priceless culture and honor.