Aronowitz How Class Works

Summary:
Aronowitz says that the reasons for, what he believes are presently confused beliefs about social class, underwent a great deal of change in the 20th century because of new economic powers and even the terms that certain sociologists use. So while sociologists, politicians and even films are responsible for false beliefs, he seems to believe that the solution for the increased awareness that would allow for social action lies within these domains. Aronowitz tends to focus on politics and sociology, providing useful terms and statements from the people he agrees with, Marx, Bordieu, Benjamin and the terms and statements from socioligists he disagrees with, namely Talcott Parsons. He is looking for possible etiological paths of how Americans have become so puzzled about a concept that shapes so many aspects of their lives, for better or worse.

Language - includes acronyms, loaded language, and key terms

• ILO International Labor Organization (30)

• Lifestyle for Parsons "lifestyle" replaces social class along with earning power (48)

• Subaltern a term that designates not only economically abject and exploited social groups but all people who share
social powerlessness (57)

• AMA American Medical Association - this group has been opposed to gov. run health programs because it blocks fee for service and is said to interfere with the patient-client relationship. This group blocked proposed New Deal legislation that called for a national health care program in 1935 (98)

• SDS Students for a Democratic Society - their Port Huron statement charged that the system o representation democracy excluded major parts of the US population. Port Huron called for a new participatory democracy (150)

• Structural Adjustment a euphemism that is used by transnational economic powers to implement austerity programs, i.e., cutting back on social services for populations withing a country (209)

•Flexibility this is a key concept for neoliberal economic plans. (216). MT: people with flexible jobs may need to relocate or simply not know exactly what type of work they'll be doing at the job in a year. Also the term tends to allow for inconsistent scheduling of work hours.

What is Class - Thoughts, definitions and questions

In America there is a myth of classlessness (3). Pluralism is a confusing term because it supposedly denotes some type of an American classlessness (96). Globalization is another confusing term because while it sounds good, it is really involves a cluster of programs that have waged a counterattack on labor victories, not only in the US, but throughout the world Part of the myth is that Americans believe that schools serve a democratizing function (16). Many think they will move up in society, but in reality, only 1/3 of Americans will move beyond their social origins (15). Talcott Parsons uses the term "stratification" to replace class. (3).
Class is the relationship of social groups to ownership and the means of material production (4). When Marx used the word history, by this word, he basically meant "class struggle." (7). Americans are influenced primarily by Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions (12). At the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the surrender of human agency to a deity (13). When the 10 commandments were handed down from on-high to Moses, a key commandment was "Thou shall not steal" (13). MT: People have internalized property relations and for good reason. When the sin was against the creator, the punishment was distant. The sin now has some undesirable consequences that take the form of fines, fees, social branding and possibly incarceration. The tribal commandment that eventually found its way into Western legal and economic systems might as well have been, "Thou shall not share!" This tradition is maybe in the middle of changing with bands like GirlTalk, internet developments like the old Napster and Torrent files. Interestingly, when Napster was at it's peak in the late 1990's, crime world wide dropped to its lowest levels since recording the numbers began. It is thought that young people were using their time to engage in the legally stymied transgressive behavior. But the term property has been ever expanding, first there were patents, of an increasingly bizarre variety, followed by stocks and now web space (16). Web "squatters" have been able to make money by simply having the foresight to occupy desirable URL real-estate.

Marx's writings pointed out that economics, politics and social relations are all intertwined (39). MT: To the extent that many of these designations are, in my opinion, directly interchangeable. What goes for the law is mostly just economics under a different name and the bulk of legal work abstractly protects the economic order. I believe it's true that there are more lawyers per person in America than anywhere in the world. Similarly, there are not a lot of recognized economists from say Brazil or India, other than that one guy, Sen. It is predictable that as countries continue to modernize, they will have more lawyers and economists and develop their own law and economics schools instead of shipping them to the USA for education.

Unions, the rise of homo economicus and forgetting labor history are key parts of class in the 20th century. The 1920's saw an increase in the consumer society as production began to wane, at a greater level after the 1960's and credit systems became more innovative. Slogans like "Buy now pay later" entered the scene. The economic wheels were greased with the expanding economic system (69). Conservatives have always been opposed to workers uniting to help their own cause. Woodrow Wilson's attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer launched a series of raids, deporting 2,500 agitators in response to textile strikes in western PA and MA (66). Since WWII, America has seen new forms of capital power emerge that eventually becomes transnational with the I.M.F. and W.T.O. (61). These organiztions are more powerful than nation-states in terms of influencing economic behavior in selected countries. There is nothing built into the stars that says people should have the weekends off or that the 8-hour workday is normal. That all came from labor unions agitating. Walter Benjamin said that each generation must redeem the unfinished tasks of the past and said that every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as its own concern threates to disappear (58). In many places where neoliberal policies have been affected, economic growth has come at the expense of decreased living standards for many people (203). Aronowitz calls terrorism a sort of strategy of last resort of subaltern groups (207). The type and lack of sythesis of history is also what keeps groups from recognizing similarity and cohesiveness. For example, history from the top-down as given in many books, forgets about social aspects of history. Also there is a focus on biography. Even something called the biography channel on t.v. Biography becomes the preferred mode of social discourse which prevents useful actions (200). By focusing on the importance of certain personalities, the reality of the potential force and influence of the working classes is denied (200). A popular high school history text from the 1990's called America Past and Present devoted exactly 12 of its 1081 pages to talking about labor history (47). Also even a subtle thing like recasting the American Revolution as "The war for Independence" works to remove the subversive aspects (46).

Appeal to men to do the dishes
Class differences have had a huge impact on women. As women have gained more freedom to work, more were forced to work out of economic necessity rather than out of leisure as real wages have stagnated. A new term was coined by Arlie Hochschild called "The second shift." In addition to work outside the home, females still do the bulk of housework, baby care etc. The second shift and the increased work and stress has had a dramatic impact on families in terms of divorce rates and generalized discord. While working class women cannot escape the second shift, middle class women often have the option to hire nannies, house-keeping services, yard work services to lighten the load.

Some important dates
1871 - Paris Commune
1925 - Dewey writes The Public and its Problem
1938- Congress enacts wages and hours law, providing time and a half pay for over 40 hours
1946 - Marshall Plan - loans made to Germany, Japan by coporations and I.B.'s (Investment Banks) (122)
1959- Cuban government of Fulgencio Batista falls (124)
1960 - Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology
1964 - Marcuse writes One Dimensional Man (74)
1968 - In May students in France protest, eventually DeGaulle flees abroad (43)
1970's - massive deindustrialization (10)
1978- China embraces capitalism (203)
1980's - New Deal era farm bills slashed (93)
1983- At stroke of pen, Regan makes 1.5 trillion in tax cuts
1990's - 150 years of Monroe Doctrine effectively end, replaced by IMF and WTO in new power
1995- J. Sweeney leads the AFL-CIO (91)
1996- Welfare Reform Act of 1996 - tag of personal responsibility changed TANF to AFDC (210)
1997 - Nationwide Teamsters strike at UPS (91)

Additional
Karl Polanyi writes Myth of the Free Market - showing that at no time in history has the market ever really been "free". It has always heavily relied on major government subsidies for good functioning.

List of good leftist American journalists
Ida Tarbell
Ferdinand Lundberg
Gustavus Myers
Henry Lloyd

Bourdieu

Bourdieu criticized the functionalist take of class b/c it reduced it to simple ranked but non-antagonistic strata (49).

For Bourdieu class struggles are just as much about signs and symbols using art, food, fashion etc. as they are about earning power, education etc. (49). MT: So while education might get a person a good job, it is just as likely to brand the person with all of the fashionable cultural capital elements that make the person instantly recognizable to groups who hold some power. So the education process might, for example, in the realm of food, make a person interested in eating sushi, vegetarian or vegan, organics, drinking fine wines etc. All of these habits, while they may be healthy and admirable as activities themselves, also have the added benefit of instantly peacocking one's affinities and "tastes" to like-minded people. Not to mention, a lot of these activities are de facto class segregation practices, it's not exactly as if everybody simply "chooses" to go to the organic food store or develop a taste in good wines. It is still essentially only a choice for those who have economic stores.

Bourdieu adopted Althusser's delcaration that schools are the primary ideological institutions that reproduce class relations (50). He thought that education was mostly responsible for creating class distinction and a big part of what he called "cultural capital or social capital" (50). B. thought that the "game" of education has carefully fixed rules to ensure that the overall balance isn't capable of shifting too much at one time. For the most part, formal education helps to preserve the class structure. MT: The examples people provide of how somebody who came from nowhere, think of T.C. Boyle, while this does happen, it is still fallacious thinking, namely commiting the fallacy of the exception. It's the same thing when somebody says, "Smoking isn't that bad, my dad smoked for 70 years and lived to be 87." Sure it happens, but probably little details here and there are left out of the story, like for example, the smoking dad, probably took a 25 year hiatus in the middle, but if I exclude this detail, would there still even be a story? Oh...petty details!