Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America by Michael Parenti

Author:Michael Parenti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social classes, Social values, Political culture, Racism, Sex discrimination against women, Politik, Mythos
Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press
Published: 1994-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

CLASS DISTANCES

As noted in chapter 5, "class" denotes a relationship to the means of production and to the expropriation of surplus value. But there is also a subjective dimension to class, as experienced in everyday life. Even if many of us are not all that aware of it, class experience pervades most of our existence: our speech, dress, education, career opportunities, lifestyles, and choice of friends and spouses.

The well-to-do usually manage to insulate themselves from unpleasant class realities. In 1844, Engels noted how the bourgeoisie could live for years in Manchester without ever seeing poor neighborhoods. The city was planned for "the conveniences of the rich," allowing them to travel to their places of business in town by routes that ran directly through working-class districts, "without even realizing how close they are to the misery and filth which lie on both sides of the road." The main streets conveniently hid the misery with rows of "lower middle-class" shops.20

More important than geographic distance is social distance. Even when residing only a neighborhood apart, rich and poor live worlds apart. The hunger and desperation of New York's poor in the late nineteenth century was a subject that never "penetrated the social conversation within the charmed circles of Astor or Vanderbilt," who dwelled just on the other side of town.21 In the mid-twentieth century. North Carolina communist Junius Scales, who came from a prosperous family, was astonished to discover after joining the party that he had been unaware of the poverty existing among thousands of people right in his own hometown.22

A 1992 nationwide survey of Domino's Pizza delivery employees reported that the longer the driveway and more upscale the residence, the smaller the tip.23 Why are the rich so stingy with their tips? It may be a matter of social distance. They have little identification with low-level service people and so have less problem sending them off with a pittance. Generosity toward the lower classes historically has never been an important part of upper-class awareness. The patrician view is that the poor are not deserving and should not expect too much. For all the talk about noblesse oblige, the noblesse never measures up to the oblige.

A revealing vignette about social distance and class feelings is provided by A. Hamilton Gibbs, an Oxford graduate who joined the British Army during World War I as an enlisted man. Gibbs describes the warm, kindly manner of the working-class soldiers who were his comrades. But apparently he never could feel toward them what he experienced upon meeting another upper-class enlisted man:

I heard a voice with an "h" say, "How perfectly ruddy." I could have fallen on the man's neck with joy ... I made a bee-line for that man. In a few minutes we were swapping names and where we lived and ... laughing at our mutually draggled garments.

We both threw reserve to the wind and were most un-English, except perhaps that we may have looked upon each other as the only two white men in a tribe of savages.

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