In Defense of Class

...Even so, beneath these material trends towards a classless style of life, there can still be found, as clear-cut as ever, fundamentally different sets of social values, with many manual workers, particularly in the north of England—where most of the heavy industry is located—steadfastly refusing to adopt the bourgeois ethic...

...To many in the working class, this capitalist ethic still seems morally repellent, since it fails to measure up to what is so deeply rooted in their past: the sense of community, of neighborliness, and of mutual assistance, all the bottom dog virtues, that is, which enabled their forefathers to survive and triumph over the poverty of life in back-to-back slums in one of Britain's 19th-century industrial towns...

...Yet his poetry itself is evidence that such a judgment is sorely mistaken...

...No other working class has had so long a history of coping with these tribulations, since it was Britain's fate and/or fortune to experience them in the late eighteenth century, while they were still at their most primitive and vicious...

...They are proud, in essence, of having inherited a traditional way of life that enabled their forefathers to survive the appalling dislocations of the industrial revolution, which affected Britain half a century before the rest of Europe...

...Failure so to conform becomes the mark of Cain...

...For eighteen years he taught at a small, isolated women's college in Greensboro, North Carolina, and like any good teacher, he was always a student...

...In other words, it is probably true that the quantity of willpower needed in Britain to climb the social ladder is greater than it is elsewhere, since a working-class boy will have to change more fundamentally than his counterpart would in less class-conscious societies...

...To have a society in which those on top all deserved to be there and those at the bottom all deserved to be there too, would be far from socially healthy for either group, since the one would be excessively strong and the other excessively weak...

...But not nearly to the same extent, since in Britain it is not only bourgeois ways of thinking and behaving that have to be imbibed, but feudal and aristocratic ones as well...

...It goes much deeper than that...

...The result of this merger is a British middle class with a far richer culture—richer because to the normal grit of capitalist individualism is added the extra sweetness of aristocratic noblesse oblige—than that of other western bourgeoisies, which also has the effect of making it more resistantto new blood...

...This is more a moral than a political attitude, engendering among working people a formidable confidence, even a spiritual strength, rather of the same kind as that which affects war veterans who know that they can face death without flinching...

...But the question which needs to be asked—and seldom is—is whether such a system does not do quite as much good as harm...

...But it also leads to class cohesion and solidarity which means that working men in Britain, more than their counterparts in any other western society, enjoy being working class...

...A classless society is forever pressuring workers to conform to the one culture, the culture, that is, which the university intellectuals and the media approve of...

...His best poems ring loud with truth—not with the fashionable or chic, but with the universal...

...He may well have been deterred from making the effort to do justice to his talents by the knowledge that "making it" here involves learning a new accent and language, a new code of manners, and a new style of life to a greater degree than is the case in any other part of the western world...

...He was 51 years old...

...They prefer to stay among their own people, because this is where they feel at home...

...To talk of contemporary Britain as a class-ridden society, as one still determined by rigid hereditary privilege, as so many American observers still insist on doing, is to talk total nonsense...

...When American workers are asked what class they place themselves in they answer "middle class," since that is how they want to think of themselves...

...These enthusiasms were not the result of his wanting to be an artist...

...But they help to avoid another danger which seems to me much more fundamentally threatening: contemporary society's failure to allow working people to be themselves...

...That is very much the American experience today...

...His final, and best, volume of poetry, The Lost World, had just gone to press...

...Jarrell was perhaps our most old-fashioned, modern poet, and in an age which virtually cries out because of its lack of truly first-rate poetry, it is tragic that we continue to ignore him...

...Over and above that difficult but straightforward challenge are ranged the endlessly baffling nuances of gentlemanly dress and deportment...

...And on the evening of October 14, 1965, he was struck and killed by an automobile in Chapel Hill...

...His wife, Mary, has written of watching "many a sensible person who met him during one of his Enthusiasms get enthralled and leave for home sure in the knowledge that Randall's main side interest was Groddeck...

...In the old days, again, this lack of what would now be called social justice or fairness in the British class system was excessive...

...So not only is upward mobility in Britain slowed down by an exceptionally unaspiring working class, but also by an exceptionally unwelcoming middle class...

...But why," I asked, "are you looking so distressed, since surely such enthusiasm and knowledge in a young chauffeur should lift your heart...

...It is the legacy of a patrician attitude that the British bourgeoisie inherited from the aristocracy, with which it merged...

...No doubt these feelings militate against the maximum production of wealth, since they help preserve those two-nation attitudes which do so much to engender industrial strife...

...He was in Paul Lukacs is a senior at Kenyon College in Ohio, an honors major in English, and editor of Hika, the college's literary magazine...

...he did not seek definition in a single, closed vision of self, in the allThe American Spectator December 1977 7...

...I do not want to cheat in considering these matters...

...Because all societies are bound in practice to be hierarchical, it is positively desirable that the different social classes should develop and cherish their own ways of life...

...So it is not enough merely to make money...

...The rich and the poor do not merely live different lives materially, but also culturally...

...The same is also increasingly true of eating and drinking habits, since supermarket shopping is a great leveller...

...He had, it appeared, asked for directions to Boodle's—grand London clubs have no street numbers, it being assumed that anybody using them will not need such commonplace aids to identification—from a young chauffeur who was waiting in a Rolls Royce for his master to emerge from another club lower down St...

...In other words, there would be no rich and stupid members within those clubs and no poor and intelligent chauffeurs waiting outside them...

...That is only the beginning of the struggle...

...and the next, graphology...

...The next sensible person was sure it was gear ratios...

...Now that, to my mind, is a prejudiced judgment, since I do not see anything automatically undesirable about a social system which allows an intelligent working man to be happy with his lot...

...Did I not realize, he almost shouted, how wrong it was for a young man of such obvious intelligence to be happy to remain a chauffeur, waiting outside the clubs about which he knew so much...

...James Street...

...In the United States, any young man so interested in clubs would insist on belonging himself, instead of only reading about them...

...chauffeur may well have wanted to better himself if upward social mobility were easier in Britain than it is, as easy as it is in the United States...

...There was no limit to the young chauffeur's enthusiasm to impart all the clubland lore, which was the reason for my guest being late...

...At this Reston's look of concern changed to anger...

...The young man's passive acceptance of his social inferiority," Reston proclaimed indignantly, "is just another example of the iniquities of the British class system...

...Even the Soviet Union seems to be reluctantly conceding this point...

...Another reason, of course, is the existence in Britain of a middle class that is much less welcoming to new recruits than its American counterpart, since it, too, has a much more clear-cut sense of its own identity...

...The American "hard hats" or "red-necks" fall heavily and ridiculously between two stools, being neither fully bourgeois nor fully proletarian, cut off as much from the one culture as from the other...

...Anybody with talent has an opportunity to make it, if they are strongly motivated to do so...

...The existence of a proud working class, with its own traditions and values, must mean that those born within its ranks will find it painfully difficult to climb the social ladder, since such an ascent will require them to make a fundamental sacrifice: to pull up roots which are deeply embedded in fertile soil...

...Because the working-class tradition proved itself in the past, it is still cherished and honored in the present, all the more steadfastly today when the old enemy, poverty, seems bent on renewing its age-old offensive...

...Here lies the great divide, as broad as ever, between those who believe in the working-class virtues of trade union solidarity, of strength and security through disciplined mass organization, and those who favor the capitalist ethic of individualism, self-help, and standing on one's own two feet...

...In the area of recreation, however, the old distinctions do still apply, with workers overwhelmingly favoring soccer and bingo, and the middle class, rugger and bridge...

...Housing, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly classless, as all sections of society get caught up in what is basically a suburban pattern...

...So far as clothes are concerned, for example, it is no longer easy to tell the two apart, since both the cloth cap and the bowler hat have been largely abandoned in favor of the classless informality of jeans...

...That young chauffeur, for example, would not only have had to get the kind of job which would have allowed him to pay the high subscription for London clubs, but also acquire the social knowledge which would make him feel at ease in their aristocratic surroundings...

...2 / DECEMBER 1977 Peregrine Worsthorne In Defense of Class Because all societies are in practice hierarchical, it is positively desirable that Afferent social classes develop their own ways of life, their own "class consciousness," even at the expense of social mobility...

...Plainly not...

...What is so distasteful, to my mind, about the classless facade of American society is that workers are compelled to think of themselves as middle class—there being no other respectable status—thereby rendering themselves vulnerable to abuse by the real middle class, which much enjoys mocking the impostors...

...This can easily be disparaged as mere snobbery...

...And tens of thousands do...

...If this is the heritage of the class system, as it is, then surely it is something to preserve, since it is far healthier for workers to have 6 The American Spectator December 1977 a tradition of their own, with which they can genuinely identify, than that they should be encouraged, nay indoctrinated—as they are in the United States—into pretending to belong to a bourgeois tradition in which they can never truly feel at home...

...So much is obvious and undeniable...

...El Paul Lukacs Remembering Randall Jarrell When he died, Randall Jarrell was commonly considered to be one of America's finest poets, as well as a brilliant critic...

...The status of a working man is not a source of shame...

...What is involved is the adoption of a different culture, different values...

...But today, as I have already said, this is no longer the case...

...The hierarchy would be determined exclusively on the basis of merit...

...He loved football, and tennis, and motor racing (for years he read every issue of Road and Track magazine...

...These last have been much adulterated in recent years by the advent of affluence, which has manifestly done a great deal to narrow the gap between the material life-styles of the middle and working class...

...To some extent this is an unfortunate legacy of history, since it leads to conflict, particularly of course in industrial relations...

...But the credit side of this situation, to which no attention is ever paid, is that most people in Britain have a much clearer idea of who and what they are than do most Americans—no small advantage in an age characterized by increasing alienation, rootlessness, and loss of identity...

...Not only did the young chauffeur cheerfully supply him with the necessary directions, but apparently gave him a conducted tour of clubland as he escorted him up the street, explaining that the Carlton Club, on the left, was for Tories, whereas Brooks's was for the Whigs, while White's on the other side of the road was non-political, although the smartest club of all, etc., etc...

...If that kind of attitude is indeed the product of the British class system, is it necessarily an indictment of that system...

...Most of all he loved literature...

...The boardrooms of British business are now filled with self-made men, as are the higher reaches of the civil service...

...Contemporary British society really is open to talent...

...The poet's voice is compassionate...

...his knowledge, insightful...

...Not long ago, I asked James (Scotty) Reston to have a drink with me in Boodle's, which is one of London's grander clubs...

...It is a proud boast...

...love with the world, and he wanted to know all of it...

...But this cannot be done without barriers developing which unquestionably have the effect of slowing down social mobility...

...Where else would be fitting for so august a guest...

...Class consciousness, then, is far from being the unmitigated evil which many Americans believe it to be...

...What, of course, is equally obvious and undeniable is that a social system which has too many duds at the top and too many stars at the bottom is also intolerably unbalanced, since this would mean that mobility in either direction had been blocked, by the presence of excessive privilege for the top dogs and the absence of sufficient opportunities for the bottom dogs...

...Such a state of affairs makes for a much healthier relationship between the top and the bottom of society, since each group is a cross section of the bright and the stupid, the quick and the slow, the well-favored and the ill-favored...

...Let me begin this article on the very old and hackneyed subject of the British class system with at least a wholly new and original anecdote, which is nicely revealing of American prejudice against this much derided social phenomenon...

...Trade union leaders, for example, although very powerful, do not want to be middle class...

...Would this really be a desirable development...

...As a result, the folk memory of the British working class is much more potent than that of its counterparts elsewhere, having had more time to grow heavy with inspiring myths and legends about the proletarian martyrs and heroes of the class struggle, with a whole literature of ballads and novels romanticizing the sufferings of the poor, and, most important of all, with a complex pattern of rituals and customs affecting dress, eating and drinking, recreation, etc., handed down from generation to generation...

...But they are not patronized...

...It is also likely to be much less oppressive, since each stratum of society will have its own share of the weak and its own share of the strong, thereby avoiding that clear-cut concentration of ability at the top of society and lack of ability at the bottom which would both facilitate and justify the dominance of the one and the subservience of the other...

...Rather, they were the cause...

...That certainly used to be the case in Britain...

...To an American observer this is both unjust to the individual and harmful to the society, since it prevents the former from realizing his potential talents and the latter from benefiting from all that untapped ability...

...Jarrell found himself in an age and country which were both longing for definition, and unlike other poets of his generation (Lowell, Berryman, Roethke, etc...

...Few can doubt that a much healthier balance is achieved when those on top have to carry a lot of dead wood, which weighs them down, and those at The American Spectator December 1977 5 the bottom include a lot of untapped talent, which buoys them up...

...Nor does every intelligent worker...

...There can be no doubt that in the old days, upper-class privilege and lower-class deprivation combined to make life at the top too easy and life at the bottom too hard...

...The opportunities for the ambitious working-class child to climb the social ladder have been enormously increased, thanks to state education and a host of other forms of egalitarian legislation...

...When he arrived, rather late, his face was furrowed with concern, not to say distress...

...When he found something that interested him, he wanted to know anything and everything about it, and virtually every subject held this kind of interest...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL...

...What is the case is that there are still different ways of life in Britain, each with its own romance and glamor, its own snobberies, if you like...

...At least the British class system spares its lower orders that kind of humiliation...

...To some extent this is true in the United States...

...Feared they may be, with good reason...

...What shocked James Reston, and delights me, is the fact that in Britain there is still awareness of class differences—class consciousness, if you like...

...What does remain, however, is a class system, in a subtly different form, which I would maintain has much to commend it...

...Beneath the lines is what Robert Lowell once called "the merciful vision," sympathetic, illuminative—ours had we only seen...

...It was too easy for the former to avoid sinking and too hard for the latter to succeed in rising...

...How encouraging to find a working man with such civilized tastes...

...In this sense, then, the British class system does act to deter all but the most determined working-class young from struggling to escape into a superior station...

...In such an ideal society, all the bright children would rise to the top and all the dull ones would sink to the bottom...

...A social system that saddles the top group with a lot of duds and the bottom group with a lot of stars is likely to promote much more mutual tolerance and understanding and even compassion than one wherein the sheep and the goats are all in separate pens...

...But that is really not the case any longer...

...Of course, this is not only a question of learning to eat with the right knives and forks...

...Today, twelve years later, one gets the impression that Randall Jarrell is rarely read, that he is regarded as a "minor" poet, if not a "minor, minor" poet...

...The young Peregrine Worsthorne is associate editor of the London Sunday Telegraph and a contributor to The Future That Doesn't Work...

...Since workers there must be, how much better that the social system should preserve a class structure in which they have a place of their own, instead of seeking to blend them into a bland egalitarian mix which deprives them of all their strong flavor, their distinctive taste, and their marvelously indigestible roughness of texture...

...they take pride in that status, and have no desire to avail themselves of the opportunities t become members of the bourgeoisie...

...The distribution of power and wealth bore absurdly little relation to individual talent...

...It could just possibly mean that his lot was such that he had good cause to want to stay where he was...

...Perhaps he actually enjoyed being working class, and had no desire to struggle to better himself...

...Only those possessed of strong ambitions will be prepared to make the effort, which is why the upward thrust is so much less strong in class-conscious Britain than in classless America...

...But it is really much more than that...

...The "hard hats" and the "red-necks" are made to seem barbarians...

...The present leader of the Tory party, for example, is the daughter of working-class parents, as was her predecessor...

...But in Britain, they say "working class," as if proud of it, which they have every right to be...

...Might it not be to the system's credit...

...Let us consider for a moment the situation in a society where social mobility is totally unfettered by the barriers of class...

...The categories, however, are not such as to justify arrogance on the part of the top dogs or humility on the part of the bottom dogs, since the class divisions so manifestly fail to reflect anything as simple or mechanical as social merit or value...

...11, NO...

...Each has its own traditions, its own myths, its own language, its own values...