The lost class

It is certainly true that the old British working class communities are not what they once were, Sydney Grew! But there again, they never were.

According to Wikipedia, 'working class' (or lower class, labouring class, sometimes proletariat) is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs (as measured by skill, education and lower incomes), often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes. Working classes are mainly found in industrialised economies and in urban areas of non-industrialised economies.

Wikipedia - Working class

If you go to the East End, an archetypal working class district of London, it will be difficult to find many communities, let alone people, who would define themselves as working class in a traditional sense. The Docks have been transformed into luxury apartments, and the Isle of Dogs has become a financial centre to rival the City: Canary Wharf! If we work, are we not now working class, Sydney Grew?

I do not suppose that Prince Philip (of Greece) is particularly bothered to have acquired the title of Duke of Edinburgh over the course of his long life, ahinton. Out of interest, how would you attempt to segment society today, if asked to do so by kleines c?

So we are all one!

When I count, there are only you and I together, but when I look ahead up the white road, there is always another one walking beside you, gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded, I do not know whether a man or a woman, ahinton, but who is that on the other side of you?

Perhaps there is no difference to the point you made at all, ahinton. Another important point to make, however, in the context of this particular discussion, is that the lost 'working' class and/or the masses did not and do not actually exist.

Wasteland - Who is the third who always walks beside you

Crowds can be seen, but the mass, the sum of all possible crowds, turns people into a conglomerate and denies them that individuality which we ascribe to ourselves and the people we know. What do you reckon, Sydney Grew?

After Karl Marx's analysis of history, economics and prophecy have lost their persuasiveness, I suspect that it is as a sociologist that Marx will be remembered. The last word should perhaps go to Marx's great nineteenth century rival, the Russian anarchist Bakunin. Marx said we should let the workers rule OK because then they will rule on behalf of the great mass of society, the working class.

Bakunin said no. You shouldn't have any rulers, because if workers are rulers, they will cease to be workers and will be rulers. They will follow the interests of the rulers, not the interest interests of the working class. This is a bit like Orwell's 'Animal Farm'. The pigs took over, but no one could then tell the difference. Marx thought that this was all rubbish. Marx thought that people in a different society would be different people, would have different, less self-directed interests, and would work together for the benefit of all. If you look at the history of the twentieth century, Neil McGowan, Bakunin was right?