Class delusions

43% of Britons think of themselves as middle-class. Which means millions are kidding themselves.
Official figures show that only 14.6% of employees work in "higher managerial and professional" occupations. Even if we consider all the 3.7m self-employed as middle-class, the proportion of the workforce that's middle-class is only 25.6%.
The report continues:

Middle-class people have average incomes of £25,500, some 24 per cent more than the average £20,500 working-class income. The middle classes are more likely to own their own home (84 per cent) than the working classes (75 per cent) and the average value of a middle-class home is £220,000.

An income of £25,500 makes you middle-class in my book only if you're working part-time preparing for retirement, or are retired.
So, what's going on here? One possibility is, that people are deluding themselves about their economic condition.
The other is that they're not thinking of class in economic terms; if you're dependent for your livelihood upon a single employer, you're working class in economic terms.
Instead, they're thinking in cultural terms, as Small Town Scribbles does here. I do this myself sometimes, when I use "middle class" as a synonym for "ponce."
But there is a serious question here - why is it so common to think of class in terms of culture rather than in terms of economics and power?

Comments

[dearieme]

Oh I do feel so unEnglish when you chaps start flaunting your class-consciousness. Proposition: the main (and hugely damaging) use of the idea of "class" in English life is as an excuse for the sons of toil not to try. Not to try to get an education, not to try to date pretty girls, not to try to go to Oxbridge, just not to fucking try. To make endless pathetic excuses. To whine. To baste themselves in sentimentality, self-pity, and self-justification. You're a highly intelligent and reflective chap: get a grip. Or buy a cat and kick it. But do something about it.

[Alex]

Well, if it's a reduction in aggregate whingeing you're after, can I just say - Physician, heal thyself?

[dearieme]

Doubtless I have my faults, Alex, but at least I've never said "It's not for the likes of me".

[Phil at work]

"An income of £25,500 makes you middle-class in my book only if you're working part-time preparing for retirement, or are retired."

Qua salaried employee (and union member) I'm working-class; qua product of book-lined home & fee-paying school and kind of person who uses the word 'qua', I'm middle-class and have been for some time (although, qua grandson of manual workers and domestic servants, I'm not particularly proud to be). Either way, I'm not sure what my income has to do with it.

[chris]

Dearieme - I went to Oxbridge. I'd never dream of kicking a cat. And as for not trying to date pretty girls, adaptive preferences took over long ago.

[Shuggy]

"why is it so common to think of class in terms of culture rather than in terms of economics and power?"

Hmmm, perhaps because the economic definition doesn't provide enough distinctions for the 85.6%?

Or maybe it has something to do with the huge increase in home and car ownership over the last couple of decades? When I was at school - which wasn't yesterday - living in a "bought hoose" made you middle class.

You're right about the priority given to the cultural definition; have you noticed the way even those ultra-leftists on the blogosphere who style themselves 'Marxists' often denounce their critics as 'middle class' or, even less plausibly, 'bourgeois'?

"kind of person who uses the word 'qua'"

Heh heh - there's a new category we can all adopt. I too come from the "qua"-using classes.

[Monjo]

The Middle Class is the defining force of good in English history. It has been the recent slide to define oneself as "working class" that has corresponded with a decline in our society.

[Marcin Tustin]

The reason is probably because relationship of economic position producing status is a fairly recent phenomenon. Prior to the industrial revolution, personal position in a class produced status, which may have functioned to allow the members of that class on aggregate to capture a certain proportion of society's wealth, by certain activities being reserved to them in various ways, but class itself was determined by various factors mainly relating to personal relationships, and marked by cultural factors.

[Andrew Bartlett]

I think the exagerrated self-identification with being middle-class comes from a couple of things.

The first is the American(ish) idea that class does not exist beyond the minds of the individual in question. This is a mindset that locates the differential economic and social achievement, the differential levels of health and life expectancy, entirely within the individuals who 'fail'. This is a contra-reasonable acausalist position at heart - man and woman as self-creating entities. See dearime and Peter Hitchins for this kind of nonsense. If class is entirely a product of self-labelling, then your aspirations to social mobility can be met just by wishing it so.

The second is that many people simply have no idea how little they earn, or how precarious their employment position is. Having spent a fair bit of time in minimum wage temporary jobs - but in offices - you would be surprised, of perhaps you would not be, by the number of people in such a position who seem to think that they are middle-class because, presumably, they wear smart(ish) clothes to work and don't do much manual labour. But they have no pensions, nothing more than statutory sick pay (and holidays) and have no job security. What is more, at those wages, were they to fall sick and/or lose their job (with no notice) there cannot possibly be very much in the bank to ride out the bad times, or any real property through which to accumulate capital. When the very bottom end of the labour market, objectively financially precarious, are describing themselves as middle-class then no wonder almost everyone on up will do so too.

It is a spectacularly good con trick, mind you - look how it works in the US where are unfathomably high percentage of the population believe that they are in the top few percent of the wealthy.

[mat]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4976920.stm

[Paul Davies]

I do love that stat - what is it - 39% of yanks believe they are either in the top 1% or will be in the near future?

Brilliant.

[Phil at work]

Yup - 39% (according to a poll conducted in 2000). I wrote about this - not that it needs much writing about - at
http://existingactually.blogspot.com/2005/07/all-those-pretty-lies.html

[Paul Scargill]

Middle class or muddle class...

It's all in the mind - of the individual and the observer...

[Andrew Duffin]

It really is nonsense to classify people purely according to their income.

How about the example (an actual case known to me) of someone who until last year was earning in the mid-£50K's, is public-school/Russell Group educated, owns a big house, two cars, yacht, all the rest of it. Middle class? Without a doubt.

He took a redundancy package and is now contracting for around £20K.

Does this mean he is suddenly a working-class person?

Does it muttley; the whole argument is absurd. My friend is still the same person he was a year ago - unredeemably and unashamedly middle class.

Culture and background are the only useful indicators.