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To be fair, perhaps my comment about social conscience being a luxury did come off a little patronizing. I certainly wouldn't deny that a member of the working class
(and before we start splitting hairs about how arbitrary these labels are, perhaps it would be useful, just this once, to let people paint in broad strokes - people's perceptions of what these labels mean are possibly more interesting and enlightening than arguments about what they "really" mean. Which arguments usually boil down to the never-ending deferment of meaning, anomalous characters who fall in throw the cracks or straddle boundaries, etc., which is interesting but seem to be the only way Head Shop discussions evolve)
could learn about and be horrified by sweatshop conditions, unfair trade, etc. What I wanted to suggest that, in terms of proactively doing something to change these unequal situations, the working class has more basic, survival needs at stake that eat up resources like time, money, and influence, as Saveloy says. I'm largely basing my picture of the working class on Barbara Ehrenreich's recent book Nickel and Dimed, in which the author, who leads a solidly upper middle class existance, for a year takes on various service sector jobs (waitress, Wal-Mart, maid service, etc.) in order to find out what people who actually do these things for a living can and can't afford to do.* To barely pay for rent, a person making close to minimum wage is de facto forced to work more than one job, leading to 10-12 hour days 6 or more days a week. A person employed at Wal-Mart can't take time off to attend a ralph nader rally; they'd lose their job and then in rapid succession home and possessions. They certainly haven't the cash to spend on fair trade goods or to donate to charity. W/R/T Trade Unions, I'm going to disregard my above plea and plump for the idea that trade unions, these days in industrialized societies, are the provence of skilled workers, those making well above the minimum wage and thus - Middle Class - if we're going by purely economc indictators. (This is where the different ways Americans and British people interpret the word "class' muddies everything up)
Of course, as you point out, they could have a social conscience and merely not act on it. But would we say a middle class person, who has a social conscience, in this sense, and then continues to patronize Starbucks or Shell or who-have-you, has a social consciousness at all? Of course not, as they presumably have the time, money, and influence to make a difference. Change will come from the pressures applied by the Middle Class, if at all, however unpure and distasteful and hypocritical that may sound to some. At the risk of being battered by the classicists, I'll bring up Aristotle's concept of the political man, and how its only possible to be involved in politics when one's household is in order (disregarding the sexism, racism, and xenophobia inherent in the idea of an Athenian household).
*(sounds a little patronising, doesn't it? She is patronising in tone, but that's because of her not-uncommon Middle Class view of the poor being somehow more virtuous than the rest of society. For this reason, I don't quite recommend the book; a review of the last chapter and a few viewings of early period "roseanne" would do the job much better) |
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