Middle Class

[Beyond_Ideologies]

People use the term "Middle Class" in different ways.  In the US it is generally seen as a positive term, denoting frugality, industry, and prudence.  People use it to mean the ordinary people or the working people.
 
I'm not really using it that way, although I would say that when you get down to it there really is no difference between the way I am using it and the way other people are using it.

The French term, bourgeoisie, is usually negatively tinged.  Literally it means, "Brick House".

I think what this comes down to is just a difference in history.  In the US, property ownership was supported by government policies of giving away land.  So it became normative to own real property.

In France, by the time of their 1789 revolution, the population density was already much higher.  The people who tore down the Bastille and the women who stormed Versailles and brought Louis and Marie back to Paris under arrest, were working people who really did not own much of anything.

Now yes, the bourgeoisie did take over that revolution.  And actually the same thing happened during the American revolution.  So one might say that we are talking about the upper middle class.

Remember the novel Auntie Mame, there is this family the Upsons.  It says that they lived how every American family wanted to live.  I think this captures it, we are talking about that segment of society which is held up as the example that everyone else aspires to, and which is associated with moral virtue.

To have a working class, you first need to have class consciousness.  At various times and in various places, this has existed.

I also suggest the book "Multitude" by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt.

But I would say that in America, to be middle class means to think in certain manner, rather than to be necessarily at a particular income level.  The middle class is defensive and reactionary.  And as such, it has always depended upon exploiting children in order to legitimate the roles of the adults.

Remember also, Marx speaks of the Lumpen Proletariat, the class beneath the working class, or proletariat.  He describes this as "alcoholics, drifters, and those only occasionally employed".

This is of course why in the US politicians always say that their programs are to benefit the middle class, because the lumpens are held in extreme contempt.

According to Marx, what separates lumpens from the proletariat is a lack of revolutionary consciousness.  I go along with this.  Alcohol, drugs, and Born Again Christianity are all intended to evoke pity, and to make people pitiful.  Every American city has a contingent of people who have been forced to the margins, but they don't fight back.  Instead they are always in Recovery and Getting Saved.

Now writing over 100 years later, and of the brutal Algerian war of independence, Frantz Fanon sees the Lumpen Proletariat differently.  He speaks of petty thieves, drug pushers, prostitutes, and pimps.  As he explains it, and I think rightly so, the Lumpens are those, who because of the ravages of capitalism, have been ejected from family and clan.  But as he sees it, the Lumpens can have revolutionary consciousness.  Though they are not the most revolutionary, as this place is held by the peasants, their actions can still be extremely disruptive and helpful in making revolution.

Now, Fanon was on the short list of mandatory books for the Black Panthers.  They went with him, and I think this was right.

I feel that this is also what underlies the works of Frances Fox-Piven and Richard Cloward.  Their Welfare Rights Movement was based on the premise that poor people have more to gain by disrupting the system, then by participating in the political process.  And they show how this has been proven true in one historical situation after another.

Deleuze and Guattari don't pay homage to too many people.  But in Anti-Oedipus they do so for Sartre, saying, "The bourgeoisie lives in Bad Faith."  Then they go on to say that because of capitalism there is only one class, this bourgeoisie or middle class.  It is a defensive and reactionary class.  It is one which denies that it has choices, and it is one which depends on breaking down children so that the children will be just like the parents.

D and G talk about this saying that the generational conflict is always between interest and desire.  The parents will say that interest lies in getting a good job, a good marriage, and money in the bank.  The child will want a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a car, and a loan.

But what D and G point out is that you never can completely unthread these things.  What I take this to mean is that the things the child wants, can actually sometimes be as prudent as the things the parents promote.  I mean, all the things the child wants will improve their social cachet and their social opportunities.  So the child could actually have a chance of obtaining tremendous worldly power.  At a minimum, they won't be looked down upon, and they may even be envied.

The parent opposes this because the parent needs to have the child's desire and ambition crushed in the same way that their own was.

So what D and G go on to say is that while there is only one class, this does not mean that everyone is supporting the interests of that class.

I also associate this with what the German writer Thomas Mann said, that life always moves between two poles, that of the Artist and that of the Burgher.

So to support middle class values in America today means to live in Bad Faith and to advance a defensive and moralistic identity, and usually this means that one is having children in order to use / exploit / abuse them.

So it is against this latter move that I want to strike.  But I cannot do much alone.  I need comrades.

And also, I need the axis of animosity in order to strike.  See, most people, no matter how broken they are, they still support their parents.  Those in forums that talk about abuse, therapy, recovery, or getting Saved, still support their parents and still think very much like them.  The last thing they would ever want is any kind of redress.

So one has to look for those rare exceptions to this.  So I've spoken about the Pentecostal Molester and about how I got involved and did a great deal to help in getting him convicted and sentenced.  This worked because the daughters, though still very much like him, did turn against him and against their church, and they told the truth.

So now I am trying to work with the eldest daughter.  She wants to write a book.

And then I am also trying to arrange a meeting with another young man from the very same church, who should be getting out this year.  Ten years ago, at the age of 15, he put two .45 slugs into his father's head.

Beyond this, I want to work on legal reforms to prevent disinheritance, and on getting parental child abuse lawsuits going.  I am active in efforts to lift the civil SOL's for child sexual molestation, but I also want to find ways to sue for all other types of parental abuse of their children.  Most of the people involved in the civil arena are only concerned about institutional abuse.  I say that all of this institutional abuse only exists because of the blind spot our society has because of the familial abuse.

Familial child abuse is state sanctioned.  It keeps everyone doing what they are supposed to be doing, in harness.  So I want to oppose this and put an end to it, and to do it by any means necessary.

I want to restore that basic desire to fight back, which is being destroyed in those who fall prey to therapists, the recovery movement, or religion.

So to be middle class is to think in certain ways.  But these ways have always meant inflicting developmental harm upon children.  I want to strike back against this.  In some ways, recovering the ability to strike back and inflict consequence, is more important than the end objective itself.  But I also know that the two are the same.  Once the ability to fight back is recovered, the abuse will be stopped.

But still as of today, anyone who wants to strike back, is going to be subjected to more parental type denigration from all quarters.  So nothing about the abuse is past, it continues day after day after day, and it will always be so, until people start to band together and start to strike back.

BO

The One Ring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKU0qDpu3AM

Clapton, Japan, 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff8lz0z9FmY