There are no working class socialists
In the world of theory it's easy to decry capitalism, to split social class into the haves and have-nots and create a dichotomy of the abused, repressed, exploited lower class and the cruel, manipulative and calloused upper classes. It's when you get outside the university, into real life, that all generalization blur at best, and at worst completely reverse.
Today's biggest criticism of the university is that it's a liberal generalization machine; it works with hypothetical social classes and hypothetical systems of cause and effect. And I think the the root of this problem is that (at the university anyway) we still view class and social structure through the lens of Marx's historical materialism--that all aspects of culture and society are outgrowths of economic activity.
So we see how if you become ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, sociopathic or unmotivated it's because you are poor--because these qualities are grossly over-represented in the lower classes. But I don't think it's that simple. I agree that all of these things--particularly bigotry and lack of motivation are heavily influenced by social class and upbringing. But education is an incredibly democratic institution that cures all of these things--public education is free and, although exponentially better in rich suburbs and neighborhoods, school is a miniscule fraction--even an unnecessary component--of real education. Libraries and the internet (ubiquitous today, even in the ghettos) contain the sum of all human knowledge instantly with free access to all.
I think the main reason Marx's working class revolution began as a dream and is ever drifting farther and farther from reality is that it is contingent on class consciousness--awareness and rejection of the inequality inherent in capitalism, which interestingly he only believed was possible in the proletariat class (most ironic because Marx himself was never a proletariat). And not that this inequality doesn't exist--it's obscenely obvious, especially in the third world but also in the US, where the richest people in society sit around dreaming up new and better ways of squeezing the most profit from the least paid, who contribute virtually all of the productive labor in society. The lower class IS growing--it has to for the upper class to keep increasing profits. But this discussion is only going on among the academic and cultural elites--the most bitter irony of all is that in the United States there are no working class socialists.
Today's biggest criticism of the university is that it's a liberal generalization machine; it works with hypothetical social classes and hypothetical systems of cause and effect. And I think the the root of this problem is that (at the university anyway) we still view class and social structure through the lens of Marx's historical materialism--that all aspects of culture and society are outgrowths of economic activity.
So we see how if you become ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, sociopathic or unmotivated it's because you are poor--because these qualities are grossly over-represented in the lower classes. But I don't think it's that simple. I agree that all of these things--particularly bigotry and lack of motivation are heavily influenced by social class and upbringing. But education is an incredibly democratic institution that cures all of these things--public education is free and, although exponentially better in rich suburbs and neighborhoods, school is a miniscule fraction--even an unnecessary component--of real education. Libraries and the internet (ubiquitous today, even in the ghettos) contain the sum of all human knowledge instantly with free access to all.
I think the main reason Marx's working class revolution began as a dream and is ever drifting farther and farther from reality is that it is contingent on class consciousness--awareness and rejection of the inequality inherent in capitalism, which interestingly he only believed was possible in the proletariat class (most ironic because Marx himself was never a proletariat). And not that this inequality doesn't exist--it's obscenely obvious, especially in the third world but also in the US, where the richest people in society sit around dreaming up new and better ways of squeezing the most profit from the least paid, who contribute virtually all of the productive labor in society. The lower class IS growing--it has to for the upper class to keep increasing profits. But this discussion is only going on among the academic and cultural elites--the most bitter irony of all is that in the United States there are no working class socialists.