Living with Class

Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture

R. Scapp, B. Seitz, R. Scapp, B. Seitz

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137326782
• eBook ISBN: 9781137326799
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Econometrics

A philosophical-cultural exploration, this book expands the discussion of "class" from a novel perspective. Following the current debates about wealth and class, the contributors address the social and cultural phenomena of class from a uniquely innovative philosophical approach and reconsider philosophical "givens" within the context of culture.

CHAPTER 1

Class Dismissed: The Issue Is Accountability

bell hooks

As a society we continue to be silent when it comes to issues of class. This silence helps perpetuate the myth of abundance—the assumption that one of the most outstanding features of a democratic society is that class does not matter since everyone can move up the class ladder.

More than ten years ago, in the preface to Where We Stand, I wrote:

Many citizens of this nation, myself included, have been and are afraid to think about class. Affluent liberals concerned with the plight of the poor and dispossessed are daily mocked and ridiculed. They are blamed for all the problems of the welfare state. Caring and sharing have come to be seen as traits of the idealistic weak. Our nation is fast becoming a class-segregated society where the plight of the poor is forgotten and the greed of the rich is morally tolerated and condoned.

Unfortunately, these words remain an accurate description of class dynamics today. While there was once a United States that allowed poor and working folks to gain class mobility, to change and shift class positionality, this is no longer possible. In these hard times of economic crisis shifting one’s class location is no simple matter. Currently, many more of our nation’s citizens find themselves descending rather than ascending the ladder of upward class mobility.

Indeed, one positive impact of the recent economic crisis is that it has compelled masses of citizens to acknowledge class and class differences, and more importantly to face that exploitive and oppressive class hierarchies uphold dominator culture. Becoming aware of class difference that perpetuates domination—a predatory oligarchy where those with the greatest class power control and exploit everyone—has changed the way all of us experience class.

Ironically, this awareness has not made it easier to have open discussions of class. In this imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, it is easier for everyone to talk about race, gender, and even sexuality than to talk about class. Despite censorship and silencing, awareness is growing—a developing class consciousness is emerging. The movement for social justice “Occupy Wall Street” is a fine example of this new trend.

Despite the power of the Occupy movement, it is unfortunate that many radical young folks find it more compelling to critique and condemn the rich and the super-rich than to challenge each other and everyone else to examine our class values, our class allegiances. It is so much easier to condemn the rich and the super-rich than to engage in vigilant critical evaluation of all our relationship to capitalism. In his insightful book How Much Is Enough, Arthur Simon explains:

Capitalism stimulates and thrives on our human desires to possess more, a desire that instinctively gravitates towards greed, which tends to create disparities that make some rich while leaving many impoverished. It is good at generating wealth, not so good at spreading it around … it is simply driven by the profit motive.

The free enterprise capitalist system with its insistence on unlimited growth nourishes greed. As stated in Where We Stand, “greed has become the common bond shared by many of the poor and the privileged.”

All of us who live within the capitalist system, who benefit from its largesse, are vulnerable; we all have within us the capacity to nurture a relentless and brutal greed that simply does not invite emphatic concern and compassion for those who are less fortunate, especially the poor. Journalist Hervé Kempf, in How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth, challenges all of us to acknowledge the connection between the greed of the rich and our own greed. With keen insight he highlights the reality that “material growth intensifies environmental degradation,” which wreaks its most devastating havoc on the poor and indigent. Explaining further, Kempf contends:

The oligarchy also exercises a powerful indirect influence as a result of the culture attraction it consumption habits exercise on society as a whole … People aspire to lift themselves up the social ladder, which happens through imitation of the superior classes’ consumption habits. Thus, the oligarchy defuses its ideology of waste throughout the whole society.

Hence masses of people from all class locations are driven by shared greed. Again, while radical folk from all class may have sharp critiques of the rich and super-rich, there is little discussion of the way in which greed articulates itself in all our daily lives.

Continued silence around the issue of class on the part of aware privileged class folks (including many progressives) stems from the individual and collective fear that the spotlight of interrogation will shine on us. And, the fear is that this light will show that in the final analysis our collective greed, our commitment to materialism, overconsumption, and waste, is a bond shared with the predatory oligarchy. A perfect representation of how this fear of interrogation silences is the conservative media’s response to Tavis Smiley and Cornel West’s efforts to highlight the issue of poverty in this nation. They began with a poverty tour that culminated with the publication of their book The Rich and the Rest of Us. Readers of the book, progressives and conservatives alike, interrogated where the authors stand, where earning millions places them. Again and again they were harshly critiqued about their stance. Much of this critique was aimed at defusing and obscuring the central focus on the issue of poverty and the plight of the poor. This mean-spirited critique functions as a means of oppressive censorship, letting folks know (especially radicals and/or leftists) that any call for an emphasis on poverty will be regarded as hypocritical and therefore not genuine.

The Rich and the Rest of Us offers astute insights about the way in which the rich and superrich constitute a predatory oligarchy that restricts public freedom and aims to destroy the spirit of democracy. However, Smiley and West do not hold the poor and the rest of us accountable for our continued support of the culture of greed. In conversation with Cornel West, I have shared my concern that the representation of the poor as always and only victims is a portrait that differs from conservative images primarily in intent and perspective. Smiley and West speak and write with genuine compassion about the poor, expressing their concerns in fairly clear plain language, and yet what they offer as a means to end poverty is not ways to dismantle predatory economic systems, which would include an understanding of the way all of us embrace hedonist materialism, overconsumption, and waste. Hence the vision of an end to poverty they offer promotes changes that would enable the poor to join the rest of us in choosing a lifestyle that is not sustainable given the current global crisis, economic and environmental.

Affirming that the rich and the rest of us continue to dream of moving on up (rising up the class ladder), Time Magazine’s feature story “Can You Still Move Up in America?” begins with the following declaration:

America’s story, our national mythology, is built on the idea of being an opportunity society. Americans care much more about being able to move up the socio-economic ladder than where we stand on it. We may be poor today, but as long as there is a chance that we can be rich tomorrow things are OK.

Until all our nation’s citizens can accept that beginning with the super-rich and rich, we must all learn to live more simply to create sustainable life for all living creatures.

Let us remember, as stated in Where We Stand: Class Matters:

The poor may be with us always. Yet this does not mean that the poor cannot live well, cannot find contentment and fulfillment . … Solidarity with the poor is not the same as empathy. Many people feel sorry for the poor or identify with their suffering yet do nothing to alleviate it. All too often people of privilege engage in forms of spiritual materialism where they seek recognition of their goodness by helping the poor. And they proceed in the efforts without changing their contempt and hatred of poverty. Genuine solidarity with the poor is rooted in the recognition that interdependency sustains the life of the planet. That includes the recognition that the fate of the poor both locally and globally will to a grave extent determine the quality of life for those who are lucky enough to have class privilege. Repudiating exploitation by word and deed is a gesture of solidarity with the poor.

More importantly, when we all understand the fundamental link between hedonistic materialism and the environmental destruction of the planet, we can all work together “to live simply, so that others may simply live.” Without shifting class location we can refuse to participate in class domination. We can dismiss and devalue class by refusing attachment to privilege class value and status. Without this dismissal, solidarity with others is impossible.

The movement to change our thinking about poverty must begin with reframing how all of us see and relate to the experience of living poor. This means that while those with privilege can acknowledge the pain and injustice of poverty caused by greed and exploitation, we can refuse to dehumanize poor folk by recognizing them as participants and choice-makers when the issue is of overconsumption and waste. Each of us, no matter our class, has to decide what to do with what we have. To live in brutal poverty that is imposed by imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy does not preclude anyone from choosing to reject mindless consumerism, and overconsumption. Yes, even the poor can choose to live simply. When poor and working class folks choose to live with integrity, respecting stewardship of the planet and its resources, no one pays attention.

While pundits tell us the rich set the standards that masses of poor and working class embrace and mimic, they do not talk about critically conscious poor people who make progressive choices about how to live in the world. Significantly, they do not call attention to the fact that the progressive radical poor have much to teach the affluent about ways to live that honor sustainable life practices.

Devoted religious circles are perhaps the only place in our nation where living in poverty is seen as an experience that can deepen spiritual practice and faith. In such circles, efforts to change negative perceptions of poverty are linked to radical calls for global justice. Our passion for justice must be the force undergirding efforts to envision new economic systems that are sustainable, that make sharing resources commonplace.

When we choose to live with less, embracing simple ways of being and living in the world, we are doing the work of justice-making. There can be no love without justice.

CHAPTER 2

Letter from a Lovelorn Pre-Radical: Looking Forward and Backward at Martin Luther King Jr.

Kevin Bruyneel

In July 1952, 23-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. made the following statement: “So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”¹ He did not say these words from the pulpit nor during one of the many political speeches he gave during his lifetime. He did not write them for a newspaper editorial nor any document produced for public consumption, such as his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” But he did write them in a letter. It was a private letter to Coretta Scott, whom he had started dating earlier that year. The King, who wrote this letter, had just finished his first year of graduate school at Boston University and he was serving as the associate pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He was not yet Dr. King. He was not yet the public, political figure whose status and popularity in the dominant American collective memory is equal to, if not greater than, the nation’s most exalted presidents. Tracing King’s popularity from its lows to its present highs reveals that the transformation of King’s status in US history and in the nation’s collective memory is startling.

In August 1966, Dr. King was viewed favorably by 33% and unfavorably by 63% of the Americans polled.² While his leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement never made him very popular nation-wide, his approval ratings suffered further during the mid- to late 1960s when his politics and public claims turned increasingly towards efforts to achieve economic justice. He worked on the Poor People’s Campaign that planned to demand from the US federal government “a $30 billion annual investment in antipoverty measures, a government commitment to full employment, enactment of a guaranteed income and funding for the construction of 500,000 affordable housing units per year.”³ King’s vocal opposition to the US war in Vietnam also diminished his popularity with the US population. In our time, however, Dr. King has an almost unanimous approval rating. In August 2011, Gallup’s survey found that 94% of respondents viewed King favorably and only 4% unfavorably.⁴ Given his actual views, we can see that King’s almost sainted status today is built upon a mythical construction of the man’s politics and political identity. A central component of this myth is the productive absence of King’s views and actions concerning class politics and economic inequality in the United States. This productive absence helps reinforce the prevalent notion that the American nation lives without class as a vibrant political concern—that it is a “classless” society. This chapter is an effort to refuse this absence as part of a politics of reclaiming a more radical King whose memory can be mobilized to support, among other things, a class-based, anti-capitalist politics in the United States.

While one can trace and reveal King’s views on class in a number of ways and more easily, such as with his work on the Poor People’s Campaign, I center my effort by attending to the content, tone, form, and context of the young King’s brief letter to his future wife. It is a letter written in and for the private realm, and while it sets out King’s more radical views on politics and economics as carried out in the public realm, it also offers insight into his gendered view of domestic relations. As such, this personal letter provides us a way to paint a wider picture of what we mean by living with class in the United States, as it points us to the mutually constitutive relationship of race and class and also to the notion of living with as a reference to domestic relations, and as such the gendered construction of the private realm that is fundamental to the structure of liberal capitalist societies. As well, in the private realm we reveal ourselves more than we do in the public realm, often in both positive and negative ways. In this regard, King’s letter to Coretta Scott is an example of political scientist James Scott’s notion of the private or “hidden transcripts,” which is the “discourse that takes place ‘offstage’, beyond direct observation by powerholders,” in contrast to the “public transcript” discourse that occurs onstage, in full view of powerholders and the public.⁵ I will draw a connection between the private and public transcripts of Dr. King’s political views later in this chapter. I now turn to consider the young King’s less guarded hidden transcript, written before he took up his role under the glaring lights of the American political stage.

“Love is such a dynamic force, isn’t it?” King’s question to Coretta Scott reflects the tone and substance of the letter’s first few paragraphs, indicative of a youthful, romantic note rather than a political tract. King begins by admitting to being in a “better mood” upon receiving Scott’s most recent letter. Prior to her latest missive, Scott had angered King by not agreeing to meet with his parents and stay with his family on her next trip to Atlanta. He confesses that his “heart … had well-nigh grown cold toward you,” but that the “stormy winds of anger” toward her could not upset the “solid foundation” of love that King feels toward Scott. Unsettled by her refusal to abide his wishes, King’s words take on a saccharine flourish, such as “my life without you is like a year without a spring time.” And it forces him to reveal his vulnerability to her: “Darling, I miss you so much. In fact, much to [sic] much for my own good. I never realized that you were such an intimate part of my life.” Her refusal of his request to stay with his family has exposed his dependence upon her and his lack of authority in the relationship. It also led him to deploy evocative imagery to describe his vision for their relationship: “Can you imagine the frustration that a King without a throne would face? Such would be my frustration if I in my litt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction: Working Class
• 1. Class Dismissed: The Issue Is Accountability
• 2. Letter from a Lovelorn Pre-Radical: Looking Forward and Backward at Martin Luther King Jr.
• 3. In Search of a New Left, Then and Now
• 4. The Status of Class
• 5. “Fix the Tired”: Cultural Politics and the Struggle for Shorter Hours
• 6. Literary and Real-Life Salesmen and the Performance of Class
• 7. Money Changes Everything? African American Class-Based Attitudes toward LGBT Issues
• 8. Democracy without Class: Investigating the Political Unconscious of the United States
• 9. Re-Forming Class: Identity, Wealth, and Cultural Transformation in South Africa
• 10. Whiteness as Currency: Rethinking the Exchange Rate
• 11. Dying with Class: Race, Religion, and the Commodification of a Good Death
• 12. New Materialisms and Digital Culture: Productive Labor and the Software Wars
• 13. Feminist Theory and the Critique of Class
• 14. Criminal Class
• 15. Consuming Class: Identity and Power through the Commodification of Bourgeois Culture, Celebrity, and Glamour
• 16. When Prosperity Is Built on Poverty, There Can Be No Foundation for Peace, as Poverty and Peace Don’t Stand Hand in Hand
• 17. Solon the Athenian and the Origins of Class Struggle
• 18. Memories of Class and Youth in the Age of Disposability
• Notes on Contributors
• Index