Goodbye to the Working Class?

Date: 11th Sept '02

Name: Fred

You get a lot of people on this forum talking about working-class & middle-class, but arent they aware the working-class is vanishing with the decline of the trad. manufacturing sector? Dont kid yourselves too that middle-class jobs are necessarily better-paid than working-class jobs: many skilled workers like plumbers, builders, get a lot more than (esp.) shop workers, bank clerks, or nurses. Most shop/clerical work is badly-paid. OK, many working-class jobs in cleaning & catering are also badly-paid - actually pay rates compare with shop jobs. I'm aware that 'proletarian class- consciousness' was/is usu. more aware in the working-class but middle-class people are usu. proletarians too as very few own capital. (Shopkeepers are middle-class but petit-bourgeois). The exaltation of working-class work is workerism! The definition of middle-class/working-class is done by the Registrar-General who is a Senior Civil Servant. When people like myself talk about student leader rubbish like Sue Slipman being "middle-class" we mean, really, that she has got rich parents. (BTW, are engineers working-class or middle-class? Some engineers can be well-off.)

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