Whatever happened to the middle class? (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most comical programme on the radio today, is, without a doubt, that uproarious piece of fatuous nonsense known as “Any Questions”.

Week after week a panel of so-called experts, or notorious personages, attempt to answer questions put by members of the audience.

Conversely the most profoundly philosophical item on the “box” is frequently the one professing to be ludicrous.

More often than not, the jokes of “the comedians” on TV are priceless little cameos highlighting the catastrophes and calamities of modern latter-day working-class life.

But on “Any Questions” we have the best humour of all, unconscious, unintended, spontaneous. A question was asked: “What is happening to the Middle Class and what should they (the Middle Class) do about it” The result was side-splitting, a smasher, especially since the “panel” consisted of those well- known knockabouts, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Hailsham and Lord George Brown, plus Lady Barnett. Muggeridge jumped in with a broadside: the middle class he said are licked, powerless, helpless, they are being wiped out, done down, and there is nothing they can do but put up with it.

Then there was comedian George Brown’s go. In that absurdly pompous manner which he fondly imagines is impressive, he proceeded to babble more self-contradictory nonsense in a few minutes than anyone would think possible. The audience quickly told him as much. The place of the Middle Class today, he squeaked, has been taken by the working class. The miners, dockers, and car workers get over one hundred pounds a week; redundancy pay, social security, free health benefits and other advantages. The middle class is now the inferior class and the working class better off (than the “middle” lot.) These statements were apparently based on what has happened to “his kids”. My kids, he wailed, are (or were) members of the middle class with (and here he was expressing a common-place fallacy) “professional training’' but now much worse off than the dockers or miners.

One is tempted to ask why, if dockers are doing so well, his kids didn’t go in for it; but this never came up.

People in the audience tried to tell George that if all that had happened was a change of the names and addresses (middle for working) then no social change had taken place, but he only lost his temper.

Then it was Hailsham’s turn. We are not licked, he raved and ranted, we shall fight: wherever these great juggernauts, the TUC and the unions, challenge us we shall join together, and we shall win. Fine fighting words, “Hoggy”!

Rather unkindly (impudent workers) the next question was: “What do the members of the panel think are the qualifications for being on it?” Predictably enough this produced dead silence from the usually loquacious professional windbags. So much so, that Jacobs the question-master had to prod them. After all, they do get about £85 for the half-hour job.

Mugg said he hadn’t got any. Brown said none whatever, Hogg that he’d answered before and always tried to do his best. Likewise Lady B.

In the ensuing “Any Answer” slot supplied by listeners, a bloke wrote what Jacobs said was the shortest letter they’d ever received in twenty years. It was one word: “Ego”. And it is right. All of them, Brown, Hogg, Mugg. have no more knowledge of the economics of capitalist society than a bright fifth form schoolboy.

The one attribute they all have is boundless, mindless self-conceit; and the presumptuous conviction that most ordinary quiet people must be congenial idiots. They were all mistakenly talking about something that does not exist any more; and practically saying so without even knowing it! Especially the rubbish about “professional training.” Many kinds of workers today handle complicated equipment and require to be highly trained. Soldiers, airmen, printers, steelworkers, even a London taxi-driver whose intimate detailed knowledge of the most complicated maze in the world takes a minimum of two years to acquire.

The so-called white collar workers have joined the TUC in hundreds and thousands because, like blue- collar workers and no-collar workers, they belong to the same class. What defines a class is its relationship to the productive apparatus. In general those that are NOT capitalists are workers; whether driving a .Jumbo jet at £400.00 a week or a bus at £50.00.

What bogs many workers down on this is a failure to understand the difference between a whole class, and individuals. True, we all know cases whom we cannot slot neatly in. They are borderline cases. Every branch of knowledge has these, science could not function without them.

In biology we have the platypus: half bird — half mammal. In chemistry we have isotopes — compounds of unstable elements. “Heavy Water”: H30 not H20. No chemist has yet declared that ordinary water does not exist. In atomic physics unstable radio-active particles and anti-matter.

All these are exceptions. No biologist claims that the platypus invalidates species. So with society; individual exceptions merely confirm the general rule. Capitalism drives all workers ultimately into recognizing their class position. Once the process starts, the spread of Socialist ideas is inevitable.

There were 4,000 small bankruptcies last year; not Rolls-Royce, Leyland, Court Line or British Rail, but members of the hypothetical “Middle class” driven back to the ranks.

Members of the panel were NOT among them. They are bankrupt only in knowledge.

Horatio.