In praise of class hatred

The best thing to have happened in the MSM for a long time is Max Gogarty’s blog, which was crushed by a tsunami of class hatred.
Good. There’s much to be said for class hatred.
Just consider some of the advantages a middle-class kid has over his poorer contemporaries. He’s more likely to grow up in a home that promotes learning. His parents give him self-confidence and ambition. He has role models to show that people like him can have successful careers - the importance of which mustn't be under-estimated. In living in an expensive house, he gets into a good state school. And he benefits from positive peer effects whilst kids from the ghetto suffer adverse ones.
All these advantages, though, were not sufficient for little Maxwell (or is it Maximillian, or Maximus Twattimus?) He had to use nepotism as well.
And even that wasn’t enough. His connections then tell us that  little Max is “talented and hard-working” and “impressive.” To which we can only quote Barry Switzer: “some people were born on third base and go through life thinking they’ve hit a triple."
When such privilege is rammed down our throats, it’s entirely right that it be vomited back. Better still, this hatred serves two useful functions.
One is that it gives the middle-class a tiny payback. It shows them that the costs of living in a  class-divided society don’t always fall upon the poor. Of course, little Max can’t help being middle class (though he can help being a pushy ponce with no self-awareness). But nor can the millions of people who’s lives are blighted by poverty and bad schooling help being poor. We should save our sympathy for them.
Also, such hatred sends a message. It says to the middle class: “your so-called achievements and talent mean nothing. Any idiot can have ability. What matters is opportunities. And your class has nabbed a disproportionate share of these. This, not "talent", is the reason for your wealth.”
Above all, though, there’s a third message - if you don’t like our class hatred, there’s a solution - abolish class divisions.

Comments

[reason]

Now the middle class are being excoriated? Hell, I come from a lower middle class family, and are now middle middle but I resent that. Go after the real plutocrats. We should all be middle class!

[Steve]

Abolish class divisions? And how the hell do you propose to do that?

[Jackart]

What class are you Chris, and how do you define it? Then how do you propose to abolish class differences? Confiscatory taxation? Reward people financially for dropping 'h's?

Max was a wally, but at least he went to a comp eh. Imagine what it would have been like if he'd been to a public school, but then his writing probably would have been better.

[Dipper]

House-buying not going well?

[Will Blake]

"Chris Dillow was educated at Oxford and Manchester Universities, and spent several years as an economist in the City, before becoming economics writer at the Investors Chronicle."

Chris is a confused middle class boy who conflates self- and class hatred and is considering replacing the word "not" with "and" in the subtitle of his blog.

[Devil's Kitchen]

Chris,

There are times when you really make yourself look like an utter arse, you know that? Not to mention a bitter and twisted poor little rich boy.

You say that you subscribe to no political creed, but you obviously still subscribe to a rather irritating class bigotry.

You often point out how you are a comprehensive boy made good – Max might have been the same. Or was your comprehensive so, so much worse than his? That would allow you to claim some kind of moral superiority, I suppose.

"Above all, though, there’s a third message - if you don’t like our class hatred, there’s a solution - abolish class divisions."

This might be one of the most glib and silly things that I have read in the last year: as the commenter above pointed out: how, precisely, do you intend to do that?

It's just pathetic: to excoriate those who do well in life and then expend considerable money and effort to ensure that their children have a better chance than they themselves had was never traditionally a purely middle-class aspiration.

That some choose not to harness their opportunities nor to attempt to better their childrens' chances is of detriment to this society – it isn't anything to be proud of.

DK

[john b]

"You often point out how you are a comprehensive boy made good – Max might have been the same."

I'm guessing Dillow Sr isn't a high-flying meeja consultant, although ICBW.

[Recusant]

This post is both wrong and facile. I was going to go to town on it, but laziness and the knowledge that others have done my work for me - being upper class has its uses - lead me not to bother.

[Gethin Price]

There's people'd call this envy, you know. It's not, it's hate.

[dearieme]

By God your chips are vinegary, Mr D.

[ad]

There is a fourth message: "I hate you and will attack you if I get the chance, so you had better stamp on me while you can still easily do so."

And a fifth: "Feel no sympathy for me, for no one sympathises with the hateful."

[Larry Teabag]

Oh dear - it looks like this post is being crushed by a tsunami of class hatred...

[pommygranate]

Chris

This post is as confused as your label of left-libertarian. Max is a 19 year-old lad. You demean yourself significantly by attacking a young boy merely grabbing at an opportunity presented by his father's connections. Please reserve your antiquated class hatred for his parents and The Guardian, if you must. But to blame a 19 year-old boy is vindictive, puerile and makes you out to be a bitter and twisted old man.

[Shuggy]

"Oh dear - it looks like this post is being crushed by a tsunami of class hatred..."

Ha ha...

"You often point out how you are a comprehensive boy made good"

I thought our Chris went to grammar - then Oxford? This is maybe were you incubated these feelings? It seems quite common amongst clever working class boys that go to Oxford or Cambridge and then go on to have successful careers. Is it mixing with all the Tarquins and Sophies and realising that if it wasn't for their background they wouldn't stand a cat's chance in hell of running a Burger King, never mind running the goddam country? I wouldn't know. The thing about living and being educated in Glasgow is that you never, ever, meet people called Tarquin - so you don't end up hating them.

[Scott Hughes]

I love this post. But I think "class hatred" can be counter-productive. The only way to abolish class divisions is by the masses uniting against them, which means the middle-class and the under-class need to unite, and class hatred will hinder that process.

[U. R. Nuts]

So, class divisions are caused by poorer children growing up in homes that don't promote learning, with parents who do not give them self-confidence and ambition, without role models to show that people like them can have successful careers, attending bad state schools, suffering from negative peer effects due to being from the ghetto?

To achieve the overriding goal of abolishing class divisions, we must comprehensively deal with the harmful factors you have helpfully enumerated at great length. Clearly, the state has a moral obligation to take these children out of this harmful environment and away from those parents and poor role models, by force if necessary. Such a program was carried out in Australia many decades ago, with rousing success and acclaim, as noted by that country's prime minister recently.

[QuestionThat]

I've written a piece partially in response to this post at my blog Question That ('Theories of the Class War')

[improbable]

"Above all, though, there’s a third message - if you don’t like our class hatred, there’s a solution - abolish class divisions."

Presumably terrorism sends a similar, helpful message, to the wicked rich west?

And it's not exactly like you can just fire all the government-appointed Class Certifiers, you know.

Why am I even reading all this nonsense?

[BGC]

Not only is this an embarrasing tantrum from CD, it is empirically wrong to state that middle class success comes from stuff like this:

"Just consider some of the advantages a middle-class kid has over his poorer contemporaries. He’s more likely to grow up in a home that promotes learning. His parents give him self-confidence and ambition. He has role models to show that people like him can have successful careers - the importance of which mustn't be under-estimated. In living in an expensive house, he gets into a good state school. And he benefits from positive peer effects whilst kids from the ghetto suffer adverse ones."

In fact, the evidence suggests that these social factors are of little importance; maybe they are somewhat significant, but properly controlled studies have a hard job showing an effect IF you control for genes.

The main advantage in the modern world is not social but genetic - inheritance of IQ and personality. There is *loads* of evidence to support this hypothesis, and none to contradict it.

Genetic advantages are unearned, but they cannot be 'abolished'. So, if we yield to 'hatred' then the only consequence wil be a hate-filled society.

[Chris Williams]

I think that Shuggy's right. This attitude can derive from arriving at Oxford University from a relatively humble background and finding out who's going to be in charge in 25 years time. And why.

Certainly that's why I agree with Chris D on this one. Just cos you lot have yet to notice, doesn't mean it ain't happening.

[Sean Morris]

Did you mention that he would be more likely to be brought up by both his birth parents, and have the advantage of having a active father? and all the advantages that brings?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080212095450.htm

But chris the problem with basing all our social policies on the wants and needs of the middle classes is we make a bigger pot of shit for which an underclass can grow out off.

I think its called Social stratification.

[ajay]

There is a fourth message: "I hate you and will attack you if I get the chance, so you had better stamp on me while you can still easily do so."

Absolutely. With any luck the unfortunate Max has learned this lesson good and hard, and will do his damnedest from now on to keep himself (and Mr Dillow) on top and the lower classes below, for fear of his fate if the situation is reversed.
The trouble with calls for class war is that, by definition, the uppermost class has all the power, and will therefore win.

[Chris Williams]

Ajay, your summing up applies most of the time, but it's not a general rule. See today's Venezuela, for example, or the France of 1791, the Russia of 1918, or the Catalonia of 1936.

However, the British upper middle class has gone soft. They used to send their kids to school in odd uniforms which broadcast the message "I am rich. Envy me." Of course the Eton Rifles won some of the resulting scraps, but the purpose was served of identifying the class enemy.

Some time in the late 1960s, though, the rich got all touchy-feely about this, and the prevailing ideology of 'classlessness is good' led to the demise of cap, gloves and blazer. The result is lads like Max, who've not yet (in Max's case, until last week) been taught about the power of cultural capital. They have yet to learn that those who have not got it often react in a hostile fashion when reminded of their lack.

Today, the existence of an unjust and hierarchical society, where the poor can be no more than suitable subjects for treatment, is constantly denied in the political sphere. Socially, we also subscribe to an ideology that denies the reality of class. But try as we might to deny it, it's all still there, and in the absence of clear signals, our awareness of this fact seems likely to emerge in outbursts of fear and/or resentment. Perhaps things were different when we had a labour movement.

There was an old (and now obsolete) Class War sticker, found on bus stops in the 1980s: "If we're living in a classless society, how come you're waiting for a bus, while some guy has just driven past in a car worth more than your house?"

[reason]

Chris Williams,
the answer to your last question now is "I might just be morally superior."

[Chris Williams]

For you perhaps, reason, but a lot of other people seem to react by bottling up any resentment until someone really rubs their noses in it. Then they snap. Hence the tsunami.

It's a shame that owing to the demise of socialism, the desire for things to be different isn't being channelled into more positive ends, but that's the triumph of late capitalism for you.