Why Has Socialism Become Not Of The Working Class?

Question

it has become that of the higher classes possibly because the working class have become treated with poor education or aspirations so they do not understand it, or is because the working class people tend to want to make money out of their lives?

Answer 1

Big business, Reganomics, Thatcherism

These condemned true socialism to academic debate after the 60's

Socialism is dead, therefore it has no relevance to the working class.

You are on thin ice suggesting it is not around because they are too thick to understand it.

We live in a world of hyper capitalism now if you care to look around you

It is dead and only of interest to academics, thats the end of it

Champagne socialism is a different thing altogether.

It is as different to old socialism as New Labour is to old Labour. There the core of this issue lies

Answer 2

Guess you should start reading some books about socialism. What makes you think that Socialism intends that everybody is poor and nobody makes any money? The basic principle of socialism is that everybody should earn the same, so a mechanic or trash collector should earn the same as a doctor, not that everybody should be poor. However, it has proved to be totally ill founded, and totally contrary to human nature, that's why it has failed worldwide. The best hunter gets the best food and then distributes his left-overs to the rest of the tribe. That's how it's always been

Answer 3

it never was , Marx was not working class and the lower middle class and todays middle class swell has only been produced from the working class .

Answer 4

Socialism is first a political philosophy and secondly a political programme. The working man’s priority has always been keeping in a job and making a living. Socialism was never a purely working class thing. The theory came from the middle classes. Marx was definitely not a manual (or any other sort of  ) worker and Engels was a factory owner.

Equally not all social progress has been achieved by socialists. For instance the Liberals introduced the first old age pension prior to World War 1.

Working class socialism historically meant the labour movement and trade unionism and later the election of Labour MPs. Ironically as more working class people who wanted to be active socialists took full time jobs in unions and even became full time politicians they also became for all intents and purposes middle class. So did their offspring. Few if any of those offspring probably went into  manual jobs. If they want to retain their “working class “ roots they can make a living in one or other branch of the public or voluntary sector in jobs that did not exist pre-WW2.  Their grandparents would see a lot of those jobs as middle class.  

So you can still be working class and a socialist. The Catch22 is that if you want to be a full time active socialist you need to leave your spanners on the factory floor.

Answer 5

The misguided are either uneducated or in power.

Answer 6

There has always been three classes of people in Britain

and under different names they will out stay us all,

the lower, middle and upper classes are with movable parameters the backbone of British society,

and only traitorous so called MP's will allow the dregs of Europe to form a coalition of underclass citizens, and socialism will lose its place in this disappearing world of ours.

Answer 7

I guess because of a lack of education, the lower class fail to actually understand the whole concept of socialism.

You should read "Millennium People" by J.G Ballard - it's about socialism and rebellion amongst the Middle Class - kind of like a modern day French Revolution.

Answer 8

I don't think it's anything to do with the idea that 'working class' equates to 'badly educated' - in fact, being both proudly working class and, without wanting to sound too arrogant, reasonably intelligent, I feel a bit patronised by it.

I think the real reason that socialism has become the preserve of the middle classes has a lot to do with guilt. I've never completed any sort of survey, but I have noticed amongst the 'middle class' people I know that they seem to feel very guilty about their money. I don't really know why that is, but it's a possible reason why socialism has been taken up by the middle classes in such a big way.

Having said that, though, many of the most famous socialists were middle class. Look at George Orwell. And yes, I know he did the whole 'Down & Out in Paris and London' thing, but in the words of one of today's greatest thinkers (!) Jarvis Cocker: "You'll never live like common people/You'll never do whatever common people do/Never fail like common people/Never watch your life slide out of view".

Answer 9

Champagne Socialism: the self loathing middle classes make up for the guilt of their over-achieving lifestyles by making sure that everyone ELSE lives in poverty - and then laud it of the poor with their 'generosity'.

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