Post by Stallit 2 de Halfo on Mar 7, 2008 12:58:31 GMT
Michael Zweig, Class, Consumerism and Ireland
To most Irish political and media commentators, the Republic is a capitalist economy without a capitalist class structure. They argue that its citizens are mostly middle class, with a working class rump that exists on the margins. The past fifteen years, in their eyes, has seen an expansion of that middle class, as well as the birth of a ´new´middle class. We have more money to buy more stuff. We go on more foreign holidays. Life is better than before. The good times, even with the caveats, are now. Indeed, it is an analysis that has been embraced by the largest left-wing party in the state. Both the current leader of the Irish Labour party, Eamonn Gilmore, and his predecessor, Pat Rabbitte, have talked of the need to appeal to the ´new´middle class in Ireland.
The term, however, is extremely vague. Nobody in Irish political and media life has offered a working definition of these ´new´middle class people outside of slight mentions of their ability to buy consumer goods and to obtain a mortgage. There is talk of middle class aspirations, of decent education and a better life for their children, but such aspirations are hardly the exclusive perogative of the middle class - they are contained, for example, in the UN´s declaration of human rights. Similarly, the talk of seismic changes in southern Irish society is one concerned with the façade of change, with our different spending habits and the adoption of new, but again unnamed, social values and opinions. Unless there has been a significant change in the power structures within Irish society - the control of government policy and direction, cultural production, education and societal development - then really all that has changed is our consumerist ambitions. In that regard, what we have experienced in the past fifteen years is nothing more than a pay rise and a credit rush. We have more consumers than before, but consumption does not a middle class make. Rather, what we have seen in the South is an expansion of the working class, which constitutes over 60% of work positions.
This essay is in two parts. The first deals with the ideas of class and class analysis as expressed by the American economist and academic, Professor Michael Zweig. The second part looks to popular views of class in the South, and presents a class analysis of southern Irish working life based on the 2006 census. It concludes that in the South, the working class is in the majority, and that its voice and concerns are constantly ignored. Consumer identity is nothing more than a shopping list when compared to our rights as citizens, and it is as consumers, and not as people, that the vested interests in Irish political, economic, and cultural life see us. Not only that, it is as consumers, and not as citizens, that they want us to act.
1. The Working Class Majority
Zweig has written extensively, and with much clarity, on the issue of class and power. In his book, The Working Class Majority, America’s Best Kept Secret (Cornell University Press, 2000), Zweig challenges the view that ‘consumer sovereignty’ - the idea that “consumers rule the economy by expressing their desires for goods and services, which producers scramble to satisfy” - is somehow the great leveller in society; that consumption equals societal power.
FURTHER
www.irishleftreview.org/2008/02/21/michael-zweig-class-consumerism-ireland/
To most Irish political and media commentators, the Republic is a capitalist economy without a capitalist class structure. They argue that its citizens are mostly middle class, with a working class rump that exists on the margins. The past fifteen years, in their eyes, has seen an expansion of that middle class, as well as the birth of a ´new´middle class. We have more money to buy more stuff. We go on more foreign holidays. Life is better than before. The good times, even with the caveats, are now. Indeed, it is an analysis that has been embraced by the largest left-wing party in the state. Both the current leader of the Irish Labour party, Eamonn Gilmore, and his predecessor, Pat Rabbitte, have talked of the need to appeal to the ´new´middle class in Ireland.
The term, however, is extremely vague. Nobody in Irish political and media life has offered a working definition of these ´new´middle class people outside of slight mentions of their ability to buy consumer goods and to obtain a mortgage. There is talk of middle class aspirations, of decent education and a better life for their children, but such aspirations are hardly the exclusive perogative of the middle class - they are contained, for example, in the UN´s declaration of human rights. Similarly, the talk of seismic changes in southern Irish society is one concerned with the façade of change, with our different spending habits and the adoption of new, but again unnamed, social values and opinions. Unless there has been a significant change in the power structures within Irish society - the control of government policy and direction, cultural production, education and societal development - then really all that has changed is our consumerist ambitions. In that regard, what we have experienced in the past fifteen years is nothing more than a pay rise and a credit rush. We have more consumers than before, but consumption does not a middle class make. Rather, what we have seen in the South is an expansion of the working class, which constitutes over 60% of work positions.
This essay is in two parts. The first deals with the ideas of class and class analysis as expressed by the American economist and academic, Professor Michael Zweig. The second part looks to popular views of class in the South, and presents a class analysis of southern Irish working life based on the 2006 census. It concludes that in the South, the working class is in the majority, and that its voice and concerns are constantly ignored. Consumer identity is nothing more than a shopping list when compared to our rights as citizens, and it is as consumers, and not as people, that the vested interests in Irish political, economic, and cultural life see us. Not only that, it is as consumers, and not as citizens, that they want us to act.
1. The Working Class Majority
Zweig has written extensively, and with much clarity, on the issue of class and power. In his book, The Working Class Majority, America’s Best Kept Secret (Cornell University Press, 2000), Zweig challenges the view that ‘consumer sovereignty’ - the idea that “consumers rule the economy by expressing their desires for goods and services, which producers scramble to satisfy” - is somehow the great leveller in society; that consumption equals societal power.
FURTHER
www.irishleftreview.org/2008/02/21/michael-zweig-class-consumerism-ireland/
