Class Struggle

Jim Webb, the Virginia Senator-elect who narrowly defeated George Allen, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal this week on “Class Struggle.”

As one of the commentors when the story was posted at Buzz Flash wrote:

Think of it: a former Republican, and a Naval officer to boot, writing and speaking out for the working class!

It is clear from the piece that he doesn’t mean class struggle in the Marxist sense but a less violent and not particularly revolutionary need to deal with economic disparity in the U.S. He writes that class is becoming an issue like it hasn’t been since the 19th century. My knowledge of history tells me that class had not gone away during that period in U.S. society. What we can read here is a dawning realization of the simple fact of the existence of class in U.S. society. Class is obvious to many. I personally can’t see how it wouldn’t be, but some just don’t realize it is there even as they see its evidence all around them. Webb is saying, “HEY! Look at this or you’ll see the consequences.”

In general, I have found that people in the U.S. like to deny class. I found strong evidence for this in the years I spent teaching about class at university level. Based on polls conducted among them, most of my students called themselves “middle class” from families making $100,000+ / year. At the beginning of semesters, they told me class was not an issue in the U.S. A few students, sometimes those from the rare ~$20,000 / year families, rolled their eyes at this. Even fewer students openly dissented from the prevailing opinion. For the most part, they were the beneficiaries of the system. Denial worked well for them.

So, I did my best to introduce them to the world of diversity they hadn’t yet met. One of the resources I used often was the PBS site for the film “People Like Us,” a 2001 documentary shown on public television. The games and graphics gave me a way to approach the subject safely before jumping into the depths of poverty, corporate greed, income disparity, marketing of the middle class, and so on.

The book I read in college, the book that shocked me into awareness, was Paul Fussell’s Class, A Guide Through the American Status System, which is still in print in several formats.

It isn’t like class is out of the mainstream entirely. Last summer, the New York Times published an interesting series of articles on Class Matters. Minus the Flash graphics, the articles were then published as a book. It’s a place to start.

What Webb wrote is a short opinion piece. He points out that it is the elites who need to be educated about class and fairness or American workers will rise to demand fairness. I’m sure a few paragraphs can’t put a fine point on a topic so many have spent lifetimes and epics discussing. Still, I’m glad to see this new Senator implying that he intends to confront the issue.

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