Joint Book Review: Class, by Paul Fussell(thepsmiths.com)
thepsmiths.com
Joint Book Review: Class, by Paul Fussell
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/joint-review-class-by-paul-fussell
11 comments
There is social class in the US, but that book Class by Fussell basically struck me as astrology. He makes a huge number of testable predictions and doesn't bother to test a single one. I'm not sure why people put so much stock in it.
I think it’s important to read the book more as humor than as science.
He’s not trying to defend his hypothesis at a PhD thesis defense in front of a panel.
It’s more like he’s on the stage at a small TEDx talk. He’s not trying to offer proof for each statement, he’s trying to almost play stand up comedian keeping the crowd engaged.
He’s not trying to defend his hypothesis at a PhD thesis defense in front of a panel.
It’s more like he’s on the stage at a small TEDx talk. He’s not trying to offer proof for each statement, he’s trying to almost play stand up comedian keeping the crowd engaged.
See also the Scott Alexander review
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-fussell-on-clas...
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-fussell-on-clas...
"Anyway, how should we feel about the newly class-based nature of American political conflict?
The answer is: very, very bad. Class conflict is so much messier and worse than sectional or ideological or other conflicts. The various social classes of a country are supposed to act together in harmony, and that depends on them seeing each other as part of the same nation.
There are a lot of no-good things that happen when that breaks down. To take one example, the upper classes lose all feeling of noblesse oblige, and come to despise the proles. Because they despise them, they seek to replace them, and use mass immigration to weaken their bargaining power.
Europe, which has a much older and more entrenched system of class conflict than ours, is farther down this path, and clearly heading towards some kind of social dissolution and serious civil unrest."
The answer is: very, very bad. Class conflict is so much messier and worse than sectional or ideological or other conflicts. The various social classes of a country are supposed to act together in harmony, and that depends on them seeing each other as part of the same nation.
There are a lot of no-good things that happen when that breaks down. To take one example, the upper classes lose all feeling of noblesse oblige, and come to despise the proles. Because they despise them, they seek to replace them, and use mass immigration to weaken their bargaining power.
Europe, which has a much older and more entrenched system of class conflict than ours, is farther down this path, and clearly heading towards some kind of social dissolution and serious civil unrest."
A classic if there ever was one, have read several times and will do again. After reading, I self-identify as high-prole.
"Upper-middle class teenagers go to college, and typically major in things with no obvious commercial application like English, art history, or computer science."
Yeah does CS really have no commercial application? This whole thing feels like satire to me.
Book was written in 1983 when the vast majority of people had never even seen a computer, so it at least makes sense why people would think that.
That makes some sense then
It's Fussell being humorous, at least in terms of style. His more serious books, "Wartime", and his famous essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb", have little humor. Fussell was one of the ground troops already in the staging process for the land invasion of Japan, so he's entitled to an opinion on the atomic bombing.
This modernized review of the 1983 book isn't that helpful. That book is a period piece. A more modern book in this genre is "Nickeled and dimed" (1996). That's dated, too, but more recent.
- Top out of sight people are more visible than they used to be.
- Many "middle class" jobs have experienced a "class fall". Teachers, for example, have moved own from middle class to unionized high prole.
- There are fewer unionized high proles. In the 1950 to the 1970s, about a quarter of the US workforce was unionized, and those were the core of the high proles, with good job security, pay, and benefits. They're mostly gone.
- Near the bottom, we have the "precariat": gig workers and people who get laid off a lot.
- The bottom is now the homeless. US homelessness was rare until the 1980s; there were enough crap jobs to go around, and housing was less expensive as a fraction of income. There were more slums, and from the 1960s on, welfare was more generous. Also, drugs were less of a factor; alcohol was bigger.
Class calculator, from Pew: [1]
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/16/are-you-i...