class system
Sep. 20th, 2010 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThe massive biography of Churchill by Roy Jenkins has been my bathroom reading for a while now, and on page 591 I find a passing comment that Churchill "was the most clearly upper-class Prime Minister since the end of Balfour's premiership thirty-five years before."
This citation of the fabled British class system seems a good point to kick off a consideration of whether the U.S. has a class system. This question usually receives one of two automatic answers, either "Of course it doesn't" or "Of course it does." Clearly there is some fundamental disagreement here.
ETA: Discussion in the comments leads me to clarify that by a "class system" is not meant the distinct but permeable socio-economic strata that exist everywhere and which in Marxist theory are called classes. When the question is asked, "Does the U.S. have a class system?", what spawns it is a look at a British or European class system. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whswhs helpfully points out, these kind of classes are what in France are called the "estates", they are not easily permeable, and as for whether they exist in the U.S., read on.
Actually, the former is correct - we don't have one - and the reason the other answer is often given is that the U.S. is so totally and utterly lacking in a class system that most Americans have no idea what one looks like, and mistake other things for a class system, the same way that they mistakenly take Jefferson's "all men are created equal" to mean some kind of imposed identical regimen out of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.
Here are some things the U.S. has that are sort of like a class system, but aren't the same thing:
1. An ethnic/racial caste system. This is, if anything, even more toxic than a class system. It's present in Britain as well (check the history of the insult term wog). The difference is that the victims of such a caste system are perceived as outsiders, unwelcome invaders, while within a class system, the lower classes are looked down upon but are also vital and welcomed parts of the system. For an example without racial differences, compare how the 18th-century British intelligentsia, like Dr Johnson, considered the English poor with how they considered the Scots and Irish.
2. Aristocracies of wealth and fame. The difference between celebrity and a class system is that it has no permanence or even stability. Celebrities rise out of nowhere, and if they lose that wealth or fame, disappear almost as quickly. Celebrity has the smells of bewilderment - how'd I get here? I'm the same person I was when I was obscure - and of fear - if my next film tanks, will the glamor vanish? - about it. Upper class is secure: you're born that way, and even if you lose your money you stay that way, and it has nothing to do with being famous.
3. An old-boy network. This is the closest to a class system, because its advantages are often inherited (legacy college admissions) and it confers the stable insider status of an upper class, and where there is a class system it's often congruent with upper and upper-middle classes, but it's still different because it is more personal and not status-oriented. It requires not just unearned advantages but the ability to make friends and influence people.
So what made Winston Churchill upper-class? It wasn't his fame; film stars were famous but lowly tradesmen on the class system. It wasn't his wealth; Churchill was not well-off by upper-class standards, and had to work to earn his living: the proper upper-class income came as unearned rent from tenant farmers. But whatever happened to him economically, it didn't change his class status. This phenomenon was brought to my attention by an early biography of Tolkien. Tolkien's childhood was very short of money, but, it was explained, his family wasn't poor or working class but impoverished middle-class, a very different status.
For one thing, his mother scraped together enough money to send him to a good school, which the lower classes rarely did in those days. So we can ask of Churchill, did his upper-class status come from connections, an old-boy network? Not really. Churchill did attend a top private school, but he didn't do well there, made few lasting friends, and unlike most of his fellows destined for great things did not go on to university, but to a military academy. His arrival on the Parliamentary ladder was definitely assisted by his father having been a famous parliamentarian before him, but that only puts you on the ladder; it doesn't send you up further. Compare Churchill's steady rise and success in the 1905-15 Liberal government with the failure of his colleague Herbert Gladstone, despite the fact that Gladstone's filial resonance with the Liberals would be far greater than that of Churchill, whose father was their chief scourge. Churchill rose because he was a better politician than Herbert Gladstone, not because of who his father was. And Churchill's Prime Ministerial predecessors, Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, were equally second-generation politicians who'd gotten started as their fathers' sons, but they weren't upper-class at all (nor were the Gladstones, for that matter).
What made Churchill upper-class was simply that he was the grandson of a Duke. His family was one of the most socially distinguished in Britain, and his grandfather the Duke owned the biggest private home in the country, Blenheim Palace. They weren't as wealthy as they used to be, but they had the smell of old money, and of old privilege.
We really don't have that kind of distinction in the U.S., and not just because the upper tier is cut off, as there is virtually nothing of British or other nobility here. The British upper class is more than the nobility, but having an old noble title in your family guarantees membership. (If nobility carried class status in the U.S., then a distinctive high place would be held by people like former senator Malcolm Wallop, who is the grandson of the Earl of Portsmouth, or A.J. Langer, the actress who played Rayanne on My So-Called Life, who married into the British nobility and is now in line to inherit the title of Countess of Devon. But these facts are just curiosities.) We do have old money in the U.S., and there is something of a social as well as economic cachet if your name is, say, Vanderbilt or Rockefeller, but there is no comparison with the extent or intensity of such cases in England in the past.
The real characteristic of a class system is that it has an almost racial lasting taint. I first realized this years ago in reading a book on 15th century English history. The Earls of Suffolk were descended from successful wool merchants who had been raised to the nobility, but because of that origin, the other nobility, who were landed gentry mostly dating back to the Conquest, looked down on them as jumped-up tradesmen for generations. This treatment and the Suffolks' resentment of it explains a lot about English history of the period.
I'll put it this way: During the 2000 Presidential campaign between Bush and Gore, there was a lot of discussion of how both candidates were the sons of successful politicians, and the question of how much they'd earned their successes and how much had been handed to them on a platter. Those are old-boy network questions. But I never saw anybody raise this point or consider any significance to it: that Bush's grandfathers were a Wall Street merchant banker and a major magazine publisher, while Gore's grandfathers were both Appalachian dirt farmers. If the U.S. had a class system, this would have been considered one of the major differences between them and worthy of significant discussion. It wasn't, so we don't.
This citation of the fabled British class system seems a good point to kick off a consideration of whether the U.S. has a class system. This question usually receives one of two automatic answers, either "Of course it doesn't" or "Of course it does." Clearly there is some fundamental disagreement here.
ETA: Discussion in the comments leads me to clarify that by a "class system" is not meant the distinct but permeable socio-economic strata that exist everywhere and which in Marxist theory are called classes. When the question is asked, "Does the U.S. have a class system?", what spawns it is a look at a British or European class system. As
whswhs helpfully points out, these kind of classes are what in France are called the "estates", they are not easily permeable, and as for whether they exist in the U.S., read on.Actually, the former is correct - we don't have one - and the reason the other answer is often given is that the U.S. is so totally and utterly lacking in a class system that most Americans have no idea what one looks like, and mistake other things for a class system, the same way that they mistakenly take Jefferson's "all men are created equal" to mean some kind of imposed identical regimen out of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.
Here are some things the U.S. has that are sort of like a class system, but aren't the same thing:
1. An ethnic/racial caste system. This is, if anything, even more toxic than a class system. It's present in Britain as well (check the history of the insult term wog). The difference is that the victims of such a caste system are perceived as outsiders, unwelcome invaders, while within a class system, the lower classes are looked down upon but are also vital and welcomed parts of the system. For an example without racial differences, compare how the 18th-century British intelligentsia, like Dr Johnson, considered the English poor with how they considered the Scots and Irish.
2. Aristocracies of wealth and fame. The difference between celebrity and a class system is that it has no permanence or even stability. Celebrities rise out of nowhere, and if they lose that wealth or fame, disappear almost as quickly. Celebrity has the smells of bewilderment - how'd I get here? I'm the same person I was when I was obscure - and of fear - if my next film tanks, will the glamor vanish? - about it. Upper class is secure: you're born that way, and even if you lose your money you stay that way, and it has nothing to do with being famous.
3. An old-boy network. This is the closest to a class system, because its advantages are often inherited (legacy college admissions) and it confers the stable insider status of an upper class, and where there is a class system it's often congruent with upper and upper-middle classes, but it's still different because it is more personal and not status-oriented. It requires not just unearned advantages but the ability to make friends and influence people.
So what made Winston Churchill upper-class? It wasn't his fame; film stars were famous but lowly tradesmen on the class system. It wasn't his wealth; Churchill was not well-off by upper-class standards, and had to work to earn his living: the proper upper-class income came as unearned rent from tenant farmers. But whatever happened to him economically, it didn't change his class status. This phenomenon was brought to my attention by an early biography of Tolkien. Tolkien's childhood was very short of money, but, it was explained, his family wasn't poor or working class but impoverished middle-class, a very different status.
For one thing, his mother scraped together enough money to send him to a good school, which the lower classes rarely did in those days. So we can ask of Churchill, did his upper-class status come from connections, an old-boy network? Not really. Churchill did attend a top private school, but he didn't do well there, made few lasting friends, and unlike most of his fellows destined for great things did not go on to university, but to a military academy. His arrival on the Parliamentary ladder was definitely assisted by his father having been a famous parliamentarian before him, but that only puts you on the ladder; it doesn't send you up further. Compare Churchill's steady rise and success in the 1905-15 Liberal government with the failure of his colleague Herbert Gladstone, despite the fact that Gladstone's filial resonance with the Liberals would be far greater than that of Churchill, whose father was their chief scourge. Churchill rose because he was a better politician than Herbert Gladstone, not because of who his father was. And Churchill's Prime Ministerial predecessors, Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, were equally second-generation politicians who'd gotten started as their fathers' sons, but they weren't upper-class at all (nor were the Gladstones, for that matter).
What made Churchill upper-class was simply that he was the grandson of a Duke. His family was one of the most socially distinguished in Britain, and his grandfather the Duke owned the biggest private home in the country, Blenheim Palace. They weren't as wealthy as they used to be, but they had the smell of old money, and of old privilege.
We really don't have that kind of distinction in the U.S., and not just because the upper tier is cut off, as there is virtually nothing of British or other nobility here. The British upper class is more than the nobility, but having an old noble title in your family guarantees membership. (If nobility carried class status in the U.S., then a distinctive high place would be held by people like former senator Malcolm Wallop, who is the grandson of the Earl of Portsmouth, or A.J. Langer, the actress who played Rayanne on My So-Called Life, who married into the British nobility and is now in line to inherit the title of Countess of Devon. But these facts are just curiosities.) We do have old money in the U.S., and there is something of a social as well as economic cachet if your name is, say, Vanderbilt or Rockefeller, but there is no comparison with the extent or intensity of such cases in England in the past.
The real characteristic of a class system is that it has an almost racial lasting taint. I first realized this years ago in reading a book on 15th century English history. The Earls of Suffolk were descended from successful wool merchants who had been raised to the nobility, but because of that origin, the other nobility, who were landed gentry mostly dating back to the Conquest, looked down on them as jumped-up tradesmen for generations. This treatment and the Suffolks' resentment of it explains a lot about English history of the period.
I'll put it this way: During the 2000 Presidential campaign between Bush and Gore, there was a lot of discussion of how both candidates were the sons of successful politicians, and the question of how much they'd earned their successes and how much had been handed to them on a platter. Those are old-boy network questions. But I never saw anybody raise this point or consider any significance to it: that Bush's grandfathers were a Wall Street merchant banker and a major magazine publisher, while Gore's grandfathers were both Appalachian dirt farmers. If the U.S. had a class system, this would have been considered one of the major differences between them and worthy of significant discussion. It wasn't, so we don't.
