                 B.7 What classes exist within modern society?

   For anarchists, class analysis is an important means of understanding
   the world and what is going on in it. While recognition of the fact
   that classes actually exist is less prevalent now than it once was,
   this does not mean that classes have ceased to exist. Quite the
   contrary. As we'll see, it means only that the ruling class has been
   more successful than before in obscuring the existence of class.

   Class can be objectively defined: the relationship between an
   individual and the sources of power within society determines his or
   her class. We live in a class society in which a few people possess far
   more political and economic power than the majority, who usually work
   for the minority that controls them and the decisions that affect them.
   This means that class is based both on exploitation and oppression,
   with some controlling the labour of others for their own gain. The
   means of oppression have been indicated in earlier parts of [1]section
   B, while section C ([2]What are the myths of capitalist economics?)
   indicates exactly how exploitation occurs within a society apparently
   based on free and equal exchange. In addition, it also highlights the
   effects on the economic system itself of this exploitation. The social
   and political impact of the system and the classes and hierarchies it
   creates is discussed in depth in section D ([3]How do statism and
   capitalism affect society?).

   We must emphasise at the outset that the idea of the "working class" as
   composed of nothing but industrial workers is simply false. It is not
   applicable today, if it ever was. Power, in terms of hire/fire and
   investment decisions, is the important thing. Ownership of capital as a
   means of determining a person's class, while still important, does not
   tell the whole story. An obvious example is that of the higher layers
   of management within corporations. They have massive power within the
   company, basically taking over the role held by the actual capitalist
   in smaller firms. While they may technically be "salary slaves" their
   power and position in the social hierarchy indicate that they are
   members of the ruling class in practice (and, consequently, their
   income is best thought of as a share of profits rather than a wage).
   Much the same can be said of politicians and state bureaucrats whose
   power and influence does not derive from the ownership of the means of
   production but rather then control over the means of coercion.
   Moreover, many large companies are owned by other large companies,
   through pension funds, multinationals, etc. (in 1945, 93% of shares
   were owned by individuals; by 1997, this had fallen to 43%). Needless
   to say, if working-class people own shares that does not make them
   capitalists as the dividends are not enough to live on nor do they give
   them any say in how a company is run).

   For most anarchists, there are two main classes:

   (1) Working class -- those who have to work for a living but have no
       real control over that work or other major decisions that affect
       them, i.e. order-takers. This class also includes the unemployed,
       pensioners, etc., who have to survive on handouts from the state.
       They have little wealth and little (official) power. This class
       includes the growing service worker sector, most (if not the vast
       majority) of "white collar" workers as well as traditional "blue
       collar" workers. Most self-employed people would be included in
       this class, as would the bulk of peasants and artisans (where
       applicable). In a nutshell, the producing classes and those who
       either were producers or will be producers. This group makes up the
       vast majority of the population.
       (2) Ruling class
       -- those who control investment decisions, determine high level
       policy, set the agenda for capital and state. This is the elite at
       the top, owners or top managers of large companies, multinationals
       and banks (i.e., the capitalists), owners of large amounts of land
       (i.e. landlords or the aristocracy, if applicable), top-level state
       officials, politicians, and so forth. They have real power within
       the economy and/or state, and so control society. In a nutshell,
       the owners of power (whether political, social or economic) or the
       master class. This group consists of around the top 5-15% of the
       population.

   Obviously there are "grey" areas in any society, individuals and groups
   who do not fit exactly into either the working or ruling class. Such
   people include those who work but have some control over other people,
   e.g. power of hire/fire. These are the people who make the minor,
   day-to-day decisions concerning the running of capital or state. This
   area includes lower to middle management, professionals, and small
   capitalists.

   There is some argument within the anarchist movement whether this
   "grey" area constitutes another ("middle") class or not. Most
   anarchists say no, most of this "grey" area are working class, others
   (such as the British Class War Federation) argue it is a different
   class. One thing is sure, all anarchists agree that most people in this
   "grey" area have an interest in getting rid of the current system just
   as much as the working class (we should point out here that what is
   usually called "middle class" in the USA and elsewhere is nothing of
   the kind, and usually refers to working class people with decent jobs,
   homes, etc. As class is considered a rude word in polite society in the
   USA, such mystification is to be expected).

   So, there will be exceptions to this classification scheme. However,
   most of society share common interests, as they face the economic
   uncertainties and hierarchical nature of capitalism.

   We do not aim to fit all of reality into this class scheme, but only to
   develop it as reality indicates, based on our own experiences of the
   changing patterns of modern society. Nor is this scheme intended to
   suggest that all members of a class have identical interests or that
   competition does not exist between members of the same class, as it
   does between the classes. Capitalism, by its very nature, is a
   competitive system. As Malatesta pointed out, "one must bear in mind
   that on the one hand the bourgeoisie (the property owners) are always
   at war amongst themselves. . . and that on the other hand the
   government, though springing from the bourgeoisie and its servant and
   protector, tends, as every servant and every protector, to achieve its
   own emancipation and to dominate whoever it protects. Thus the game of
   the swings, the manoeuvres, the concessions and the withdrawals, the
   attempts to find allies among the people and against the conservatives,
   and among conservatives against the people, which is the science of the
   governors, and which blinds the ingenuous and phlegmatic who always
   wait for salvation to come down to them from above." [Anarchy, p. 25]

   However, no matter how much inter-elite rivalry goes on, at the
   slightest threat to the system from which they benefit, the ruling
   class will unite to defend their common interests. Once the threat
   passes, they will return to competing among themselves for power,
   market share and wealth. Unfortunately, the working class rarely unites
   as a class, mainly due to its chronic economic and social position. At
   best, certain sections unite and experience the benefits and pleasure
   of co-operation. Anarchists, by their ideas and action try to change
   this situation and encourage solidarity within the working class in
   order to resist, and ultimately get rid of, capitalism. However, their
   activity is helped by the fact that those in struggle often realise
   that "solidarity is strength" and so start to work together and unite
   their struggles against their common enemy. Indeed, history is full of
   such developments.

B.7.1 But do classes actually exist?

   So do classes actually exist, or are anarchists making them up? The
   fact that we even need to consider this question points to the
   pervasive propaganda efforts by the ruling class to suppress class
   consciousness, which will be discussed further on. First, however,
   let's examine some statistics, taking the USA as an example. We have
   done so because the state has the reputation of being a land of
   opportunity and capitalism. Moreover, class is seldom talked about
   there (although its business class is very class conscious). Moreover,
   when countries have followed the US model of freer capitalism (for
   example, the UK), a similar explosion of inequality develops along side
   increased poverty rates and concentration of wealth into fewer and
   fewer hands.

   There are two ways of looking into class, by income and by wealth. Of
   the two, the distribution of wealth is the most important to
   understanding the class structure as this represents your assets, what
   you own rather than what you earn in a year. Given that wealth is the
   source of income, this represents the impact and power of private
   property and the class system it represents. After all, while all
   employed workers have an income (i.e. a wage), their actual wealth
   usually amounts to their personal items and their house (if they are
   lucky). As such, their wealth generates little or no income, unlike the
   owners of resources like companies, land and patents. Unsurprisingly,
   wealth insulates its holders from personal economic crises, like
   unemployment and sickness, as well as gives its holders social and
   political power. It, and its perks, can also be passed down the
   generations. Equally unsurprisingly, the distribution of wealth is much
   more unequal than the distribution of income.

   At the start of the 1990s, the share of total US income was as follows:
   one third went to the top 10% of the population, the next 30% gets
   another third and the bottom 60% gets the last third. Dividing the
   wealth into thirds, we find that the top 1% owns a third, the next 9%
   owns a third, and bottom 90% owns the rest. [David Schweickart, After
   Capitalism, p. 92] Over the 1990s, the inequalities in US society have
   continued to increase. In 1980, the richest fifth of Americans had
   incomes about ten times those of the poorest fifth. A decade later,
   they has twelve times. By 2001, they had incomes over fourteen times
   greater. [Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, p. 79] Looking at the
   figures for private family wealth, we find that in 1976 the wealthiest
   one percent of Americans owned 19% of it, the next 9% owned 30% and the
   bottom 90% of the population owned 51%. By 1995 the top 1% owned 40%,
   more than owned by the bottom 92% of the US population combined -- the
   next 9% had 31% while the bottom 90% had only 29% of total (see Edward
   N. Wolff, Top Heavy: A Study of Increasing Inequality in America for
   details).

   So in terms of wealth ownership, we see a system in which a very small
   minority own the means of life. In 1992 the richest 1% of households --
   about 2 million adults -- owned 39% of the stock owned by individuals.
   The top 10%, owned over 81%. In other words, the bottom 90% of the
   population had a smaller share (23%) of investable capital of all kinds
   than the richest 1/2% (29%). Stock ownership was even more densely
   concentrated, with the richest 5% holding 95% of all shares. [Doug
   Henwood, Wall Street: Class racket] Three years later, "the richest 1%
   of households . . . owned 42% of the stock owned by individuals, and
   56% of the bonds . . . the top 10% together owned nearly 90% of both."
   Given that around 50% of all corporate stock is owned by households,
   this means that 1% of the population "owns a quarter of the productive
   capital and future profits of corporate America; the top 10% nearly
   half." [Doug Henwood, Wall Street, pp. 66-7] Unsurprisingly, the
   Congressional Budget Office estimates that more than half of corporate
   profits ultimately accrue to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers,
   while only about 8 percent go to the bottom 60 percent.

   Henwood summarises the situation by noting that "the richest tenth of
   the population has a bit over three-quarters of all the wealth in this
   society, and the bottom half has almost none -- but it has lots of
   debt." Most middle-income people have most of their (limited) wealth in
   their homes and if we look at non-residential wealth we find a "very,
   very concentrated" situation. The "bottom half of the population
   claimed about 20% of all income in 2001 -- but only 2% of
   non-residential wealth. The richest 5% of the population claimed about
   23% of income, a bit more than the entire bottom half. But it owned
   almost two-thirds -- 65% -- of the wealth." [After the New Economy, p.
   122]

   In terms of income, the period since 1970 has also been marked by
   increasing inequalities and concentration:

     "According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and
     Emmanuel Saez -- confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget
     Office -- between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the
     bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent.
     Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the
     income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of
     the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent." [Paul Krugman, "The Death of
     Horatio Alger", The Nation, January 5, 2004]

   Doug Henwood provides some more details on income [Op. Cit., p. 90]:

                        Changes in income, 1977-1999

                         real income growth
                              1977-99      Share of total income
                                           1977 1999 Change
             poorest 20%        -9%        5.7% 4.2% -1.5%
             second 20%          +1        11.5 9.7   -1.8
             middle 20%          +8        16.4 14.7  -1.7
             fourth 20%         +14        22.8 21.3  -1.5
               top 20%          +43        44.2 50.4  +6.2
               top 1%           +115       7.3  12.9  +5.6

   By far the biggest gainers from the wealth concentration since the
   1980s have been the super-rich. The closer you get to the top, the
   bigger the gains. In other words, it is not simply that the top 20
   percent of families have had bigger percentage gains than the rest.
   Rather, the top 5 percent have done better than the next 15, the top 1
   percent better than the next 4 per cent, and so on.

   As such, if someone argues that while the share of national income
   going to the top 10 percent of earners has increased that it does not
   matter because anyone with an income over $81,000 is in that top 10
   percent they are missing the point. The lower end of the top ten per
   cent were not the big winners over the last 30 years. Most of the gains
   in the share in that top ten percent went to the top 1 percent (who
   earn at least $230,000). Of these gains, 60 percent went to the top 0.1
   percent (who earn more than $790,000). And of these gains, almost half
   went to the top 0.01 percent (a mere 13,000 people who had an income of
   at least $3.6 million and an average income of $17 million). [Paul
   Krugman, "For Richer", New York Times, 20/10/02]

   All this proves that classes do in fact exist, with wealth and power
   concentrating at the top of society, in the hands of the few.

   To put this inequality of income into some perspective, the average
   full-time Wal-Mart employee was paid only about $17,000 a year in 2004.
   Benefits are few, with less than half the company's workers covered by
   its health care plan. In the same year Wal-Mart's chief executive,
   Scott Lee Jr., was paid $17.5 million. In other words, every two weeks
   he was paid about as much as his average employee would earn after a
   lifetime working for him.

   Since the 1970s, most Americans have had only modest salary increases
   (if that). The average annual salary in America, expressed in 1998
   dollars (i.e., adjusted for inflation) went from $32,522 in 1970 to
   $35,864 in 1999. That is a mere 10 percent increase over nearly 30
   years. Over the same period, however, according to Fortune magazine,
   the average real annual compensation of the top 100 C.E.O.'s went from
   $1.3 million -- 39 times the pay of an average worker -- to $37.5
   million, more than 1,000 times the pay of ordinary workers.

   Yet even here, we are likely to miss the real picture. The average
   salary is misleading as this does not reflect the distribution of
   wealth. For example, in the UK in the early 1990s, two-thirds of
   workers earned the average wage or below and only a third above. To
   talk about the "average" income, therefore, is to disguise remarkable
   variation. In the US, adjusting for inflation, average family income --
   total income divided by the number of families -- grew 28% between 1979
   and 1997. The median family income -- the income of a family in the
   middle (i.e. the income where half of families earn more and half less)
   grew by only 10%. The median is a better indicator of how typical
   American families are doing as the distribution of income is so top
   heavy in the USA (i.e. the average income is considerably higher than
   the median). It should also be noted that the incomes of the bottom
   fifth of families actually fell slightly. In other words, the benefits
   of economic growth over nearly two decades have not trickled down to
   ordinary families. Median family income has risen only about 0.5% per
   year. Even worse, "just about all of that increase was due to wives
   working longer hours, with little or no gain in real wages." [Paul
   Krugman, "For Richer", Op. Cit.]

   So if America does have higher average or per capita income than other
   advanced countries, it is simply because the rich are richer. This
   means that a high average income level can be misleading if a large
   amount of national income is concentrated in relatively few hands. This
   means that large numbers of Americans are worse off economically than
   their counterparts in other advanced countries. Thus Europeans have, in
   general, shorter working weeks and longer holidays than Americans. They
   may have a lower average income than the United States but they do not
   have the same inequalities. This means that the median European family
   has a standard of living roughly comparable with that of the median
   U.S. family -- wages may even be higher.

   As Doug Henwood notes, "[i]nternational measures put the United States
   in a disgraceful light. . . The soundbite version of the LIS
   [Luxembourg Income Study] data is this: for a country th[at] rich, [it]
   ha[s] a lot of poor people." Henwood looked at both relative and
   absolute measures of income and poverty using the cross-border
   comparisons of income distribution provided by the LIS and discovered
   that "[f]or a country that thinks itself universally middle class [i.e.
   middle income], the United States has the second-smallest middle class
   of the nineteen countries for which good LIS data exists." Only Russia,
   a country in near-total collapse was worse (40.9% of the population
   were middle income compared to 46.2% in the USA. Households were
   classed as poor if their incomes were under 50 percent of the national
   medium; near-poor, between 50 and 62.5 percent; middle, between 62.5
   and 150 percent; and well-to-do, over 150 percent. The USA rates for
   poor (19.1%), near-poor (8.1%) and middle (46.2%) were worse than
   European countries like Germany (11.1%, 6.5% and 64%), France (13%,
   7.2% and 60.4%) and Belgium (5.5%, 8.0% and 72.4%) as well as Canada
   (11.6%, 8.2% and 60%) and Australia (14.8%, 10% and 52.5%).

   The reasons for this? Henwood states that the "reasons are clear --
   weak unions and a weak welfare state. The social-democratic states --
   the ones that interfere most with market incomes -- have the largest
   [middles classes]. The US poverty rate is nearly twice the average of
   the other eighteen." Needless to say, "middle class" as defined by
   income is a very blunt term (as Henwood states). It says nothing about
   property ownership or social power, for example, but income is often
   taken in the capitalist press as the defining aspect of "class" and so
   is useful to analyse in order to refute the claims that the free-market
   promotes general well-being (i.e. a larger "middle class"). That the
   most free-market nation has the worse poverty rates and the smallest
   "middle class" indicates well the anarchist claim that capitalism, left
   to its own devices, will benefit the strong (the ruling class) over the
   weak (the working class) via "free exchanges" on the "free" market (as
   we argue in [4]section C.7, only during periods of full employment --
   and/or wide scale working class solidarity and militancy -- does the
   balance of forces change in favour of working class people. Little
   wonder, then, that periods of full employment also see falling
   inequality -- see James K. Galbraith's Created Unequal for more details
   on the correlation of unemployment and inequality).

   Of course, it could be objected that this relative measure of poverty
   and income ignores the fact that US incomes are among the highest in
   the world, meaning that the US poor may be pretty well off by foreign
   standards. Henwood refutes this claim, noting that "even on absolute
   measures, the US performance is embarrassing. LIS researcher Lane
   Kenworthy estimated poverty rates for fifteen countries using the US
   poverty line as the benchmark. . . Though the United States has the
   highest average income, it's far from having the lowest poverty rate."
   Only Italy, Britain and Australia had higher levels of absolute poverty
   (and Australia exceeded the US value by 0.2%, 11.9% compared to 11.7%).
   Thus, in both absolute and relative terms, the USA compares badly with
   European countries. [Doug Henwood, "Booming, Borrowing, and Consuming:
   The US Economy in 1999", pp.120-33, Monthly Review, vol. 51, no. 3, pp.
   129-31]

   In summary, therefore, taking the USA as being the most capitalist
   nation in the developed world, we discover a class system in which a
   very small minority own the bulk of the means of life and get most of
   the income. Compared to other Western countries, the class inequalities
   are greater and the society is more polarised. Moreover, over the last
   20-30 years those inequalities have increased spectacularly. The ruling
   elite have become richer and wealth has flooded upwards rather than
   trickled down.

   The cause of the increase in wealth and income polarisation is not hard
   to find. It is due to the increased economic and political power of the
   capitalist class and the weakened position of working class people. As
   anarchists have long argued, any "free contract" between the powerful
   and the powerless will benefit the former far more than the latter.
   This means that if the working class's economic and social power is
   weakened then we will be in a bad position to retain a given share of
   the wealth we produce but is owned by our bosses and accumulates in the
   hands of the few.

   Unsurprisingly, therefore, there has been an increase in the share of
   total income going to capital (i.e., interest, dividends, and rent) and
   a decrease in the amount going to labour (wages, salaries, and
   benefits). Moreover, an increasing part of the share to labour is
   accruing to high-level management (in electronics, for example, top
   executives used to paid themselves 42 times the average worker in 1991,
   a mere 5 years later it was 220 times as much).

   Since the start of the 1980s, unemployment and globalisation has
   weakened the economic and social power of the working class. Due to the
   decline in the unions and general labour militancy, wages at the bottom
   have stagnated (real pay for most US workers is lower in 2005 than it
   was in 1973!). This, combined with "trickle-down" economic policies of
   tax cuts for the wealthy, tax raises for the working classes, the
   maintaining of a "natural" law of unemployment (which weakens unions
   and workers power) and cutbacks in social programs, has seriously
   eroded living standards for all but the upper strata -- a process that
   is clearly leading toward social breakdown, with effects that will be
   discussed later (see [5]section D.9).

   Little wonder Proudhon argued that the law of supply and demand was a
   "deceitful law . . . suitable only for assuring the victory of the
   strong over the weak, of those who own property over those who own
   nothing." [quoted by Alan Ritter, The Political Thought of
   Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 121]

B.7.2 Does social mobility make up for class inequality?

   Faced with the massive differences between classes under capitalism we
   highlighted in the [6]last section, many supporters of capitalism still
   deny the obvious. They do so by confusing a caste system with a class
   system. In a caste system, those born into it stay in it all their
   lives. In a class system, the membership of classes can and does change
   over time.

   Therefore, it is claimed, what is important is not the existence of
   classes but of social mobility (usually reflected in income mobility).
   According to this argument, if there is a high level of social/income
   mobility then the degree of inequality in any given year is
   unimportant. This is because the redistribution of income over a
   person's life time would be very even. Thus the inequalities of income
   and wealth of capitalism does not matter as capitalism has high social
   mobility.

   Milton Friedman puts the argument in this way:

     "Consider two societies that have the same distribution of annual
     income. In one there is a great mobility and change so that the
     position of particular families in the income hierarchy varies
     widely from year to year. In the other, there is great rigidity so
     that each family stays in the same position. Clearly, in any
     meaningful sense, the second would be the more unequal society. The
     one kind of inequality is a sign of dynamic change, social mobility,
     equality of opportunity; the other of a status society. The
     confusion behind these two kinds of inequality is particularly
     important, precisely because competitive free-enterprise capitalism
     tends to substitute the one for the other." [Capitalism and Freedom,
     p. 171]

   As with so many things, Friedman is wrong in his assertion (and that is
   all it is, no evidence is provided). The more free market capitalist
   regimes have less social mobility than those, like Western Europe,
   which have extensive social intervention in the economy. As an added
   irony, the facts suggest that implementing Friedman's suggested
   policies in favour of his beloved "competitive free-enterprise
   capitalism" has made social mobility less, not greater. In effect, as
   with so many things, Friedman ensured the refutation of his own dogmas.

   Taking the USA as an example (usually considered one of the most
   capitalist countries in the world) there is income mobility, but not
   enough to make income inequality irrelevant. Census data show that 81.6
   percent of those families who were in the bottom quintile of the income
   distribution in 1985 were still there in the next year; for the top
   quintile, it was 76.3 percent.

   Over longer time periods, there is more mixing but still not that much
   and those who do slip into different quintiles are typically at the
   borders of their category (e.g. those dropping out of the top quintile
   are typically at the bottom of that group). Only around 5% of families
   rise from bottom to top, or fall from top to bottom. In other words,
   the class structure of a modern capitalist society is pretty solid and
   "much of the movement up and down represents fluctuations around a
   fairly fixed long term distribution." [Paul Krugman, Peddling
   Prosperity, p. 143]

   Perhaps under a "pure" capitalist system things would be different?
   Ronald Reagan helped make capitalism more "free market" in the 1980s,
   but there is no indication that income mobility increased significantly
   during that time. In fact, according to one study by Greg Duncan of the
   University of Michigan, the middle class shrank during the 1980s, with
   fewer poor families moving up or rich families moving down. Duncan
   compared two periods. During the first period (1975 to 1980) incomes
   were more equal than they are today. In the second (1981 to 1985)
   income inequality began soaring. In this period there was a reduction
   in income mobility upward from low to medium incomes of over 10%.

   Here are the exact figures [cited by Paul Krugman, "The Rich, the
   Right, and the Facts," The American Prospect no. 11, Fall 1992, pp.
   19-31]:

     Percentages of families making transitions to and from middle class
                    (5-year period before and after 1980)

                      Transition          Before 1980 After 1980
             Middle income to low income      8.5        9.8
             Middle income to high income     5.8        6.8
             Low income to middle income     35.1        24.6
             High income to middle income    30.8        27.6

   Writing in 2004, Krugman returned to this subject. The intervening
   twelve years had made things worse. America, he notes, is "more of a
   caste society than we like to think. And the caste lines have lately
   become a lot more rigid." Before the rise of neo-liberalism in the
   1980s, America had more intergenerational mobility. "A classic 1978
   survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25
   percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23
   percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the
   first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of
   upward mobility was a real experience for many people." However, a new
   survey of today's adult men "finds that this number has dropped to only
   10 percent. That is, over the past generation upward mobility has
   fallen drastically. Very few children of the lower class are making
   their way to even moderate affluence. This goes along with other
   studies indicating that rags-to-riches stories have become vanishingly
   rare, and that the correlation between fathers' and sons' incomes has
   risen in recent decades. In modern America, it seems, you're quite
   likely to stay in the social and economic class into which you were
   born." [Paul Krugman, "The Death of Horatio Alger", The Nation, January
   5, 2004]

   British Keynesian economist Will Hutton quotes US data from 2000-1
   which "compare[s] the mobility of workers in America with the four
   biggest European economies and three Nordic economies." The US "has the
   lowest share of workers moving from the bottom fifth of workers into
   the second fifth, the lowest share moving into the top 60 per cent and
   the highest share unable to sustain full-time employment." He cites an
   OECD study which "confirms the poor rates of relative upward mobility
   for very low-paid American workers; it also found that full-time
   workers in Britain, Italy and Germany enjoy much more rapid growth in
   their earnings than those in the US . . . However, downward mobility
   was more marked in the US; American workers are more likely to suffer a
   reduction in their real earnings than workers in Europe." Thus even the
   OECD (the "high priest of deregulation") was "forced to conclude that
   countries with more deregulated labour and product markets
   (pre-eminently the US) do not appear to have higher relative mobility,
   nor do low-paid workers in these economies experience more upward
   mobility. The OECD is pulling its punches. The US experience is worse
   than Europe's." Numerous studies have shown that "either there is no
   difference" in income mobility between the USA and Europe "or that
   there is less mobility in the US." [The World We're In, pp. 166-7]

   Little wonder, then, that Doug Henwood argues that "the final appeal of
   apologists of the American way is an appeal to our legendary mobility"
   fails. In fact, "people generally don't move far from the income class
   they are born into, and there is little difference between US and
   European mobility patterns. In fact, the United States has the largest
   share of what the OECD called 'low-wage' workers, and the poorest
   performance on the emergence from the wage cellar of any country it
   studied." [Op. Cit., p. 130]

   Indeed, "both the US and British poor were more likely to stay poor for
   a long period of time: almost half of all people who were poor for one
   year stayed poor for five or more years, compared with 30% in Canada
   and 36% in Germany. And, despite claims of great upward mobility in the
   US, 45% of the poor rose out of poverty in a given year, compared with
   45% in the UK, 53% in Germany, and 56% in Canada. And of those who did
   exit poverty, 15% of Americans were likely to make a round trip back
   under the poverty line, compared with 16% in Germany, 10% in the UK,
   and 7% in Canada." [Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, pp. 136-7]

   A 2005 study of income mobility by researchers at the London School of
   Economics (on behalf of the educational charity the Sutton Trust)
   confirms that the more free market a country, the worse is its levels
   of social mobility. [Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin,
   Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America, April, 2005]
   They found that Britain has one of the worst records for social
   mobility in the developed world, beaten only by the USA out of eight
   European and North American countries. Norway was the best followed by
   Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Canada.

   This means that children born to poor families in Britain and the USA
   are less likely to fulfil their full potential than in other countries
   and are less likely to break free of their backgrounds than in the
   past. In other words, we find it harder to earn more money and get
   better jobs than our parents. Moreover, not only is social mobility in
   Britain much lower than in other advanced countries, it is actually
   declining and has fallen markedly over time. The findings were based on
   studies of two groups of children, one set born in the 1950s and the
   other in the 1970s. In the UK, while 17 per cent of the former made it
   from the bottom quarter income group to the top, only 11 per cent of
   the latter did so. Mobility in the Nordic countries was twice that of
   the UK. While only the US did worse than the UK in social mobility

   The puzzle of why, given that there is no evidence of American
   exceptionalism or higher social mobility, the myth persists has an easy
   solution. It has utility for the ruling class in maintaining the
   system. By promoting the myth that people can find the path to the top
   easy then the institutions of power will not be questioned, just the
   moral character of the many who do not.

   Needless to say, income mobility does not tell the whole story.
   Increases in income do not automatically reflect changes in class, far
   from it. A better paid worker is still working class and, consequently,
   still subject to oppression and exploitation during working hours. As
   such, income mobility, while important, does not address inequalities
   in power. Similarly, income mobility does not make up for a class
   system and its resulting authoritarian social relationships and
   inequalities in terms of liberty, health and social influence. And the
   facts suggest that the capitalist dogma of "meritocracy" that attempts
   to justify this system has little basis in reality. Capitalism is a
   class ridden system and while there is some changes in the make-up of
   each class they are remarkably fixed, particularly once you get to the
   top 5-10% of the population (i.e. the ruling class).

   Logically, this is not surprising. There is no reason to think that
   more unequal societies should be more mobile. The greater the
   inequality, the more economic power those at the top will have and,
   consequently, the harder it will be those at the bottom to climb
   upwards. To suggest otherwise is to argue that it is easier to climb a
   mountain than a hill! Unsurprisingly the facts support the common sense
   analysis that the higher the inequality of incomes and wealth, the
   lower the equality of opportunity and, consequently, the lower the
   social mobility.

   Finally, we should point out even if income mobility was higher it does
   not cancel out the fact that a class system is marked by differences in
   power which accompany the differences in income. In other words,
   because it is possible (in theory) for everyone to become a boss this
   does not make the power and authority that bosses have over their
   workers (or the impact of their wealth on society) any more legitimate
   (just because everyone -- in theory -- can become a member of the
   government does not make government any less authoritarian). Because
   the membership of the boss class can change does not negate the fact
   that such a class exists.

   Ultimately, using (usually highly inflated) notions of social mobility
   to defend a class system is unconvincing. After all, in most slave
   societies slaves could buy their freedom and free people could sell
   themselves into slavery (to pay off debts). If someone tried to defend
   slavery with the reference to this fact of social mobility they would
   be dismissed as mad. The evil of slavery is not mitigated by the fact
   that a few slaves could stop being slaves if they worked hard enough.

B.7.3 Why is the existence of classes denied?

   It is clear, then, that classes do exist, and equally clear that
   individuals can rise and fall within the class structure -- though, of
   course, it's easier to become rich if you're born in a rich family than
   a poor one. Thus James W. Loewen reports that "ninety-five percent of
   the executives and financiers in America around the turn of the century
   came from upper-class or upper-middle-class backgrounds. Fewer than 3
   percent started as poor immigrants or farm children. Throughout the
   nineteenth century, just 2 percent of American industrialists came from
   working-class origins" [in "Lies My Teacher Told Me" citing William
   Miller, "American Historians and the Business Elite," in Men in
   Business, pp. 326-28; cf. David Montgomery, Beyond Equality, pg. 15]
   And this was at the height of USA "free market" capitalism. According
   to a survey done by C. Wright Mills and reported in his book The Power
   Elite, about 65% of the highest-earning CEOs in American corporations
   come from wealthy families. Meritocracy, after all, does not imply a
   "classless" society, only that some mobility exists between classes.
   Yet we continually hear that class is an outmoded concept; that classes
   don't exist any more, just atomised individuals who all enjoy "equal
   opportunity," "equality before the law," and so forth. So what's going
   on?

   The fact that the capitalist media are the biggest promoters of the
   "end-of-class" idea should make us wonder exactly why they do it. Whose
   interest is being served by denying the existence of classes? Clearly
   it is those who run the class system, who gain the most from it, who
   want everyone to think we are all "equal." Those who control the major
   media don't want the idea of class to spread because they themselves
   are members of the ruling class, with all the privileges that implies.
   Hence they use the media as propaganda organs to mould public opinion
   and distract the middle and working classes from the crucial issue,
   i.e., their own subordinate status. This is why the mainstream news
   sources give us nothing but superficial analyses, biased and selective
   reporting, outright lies, and an endless barrage of yellow journalism,
   titillation, and "entertainment," rather than talking about the class
   nature of capitalist society (see section D.3 -- [7]"How does wealth
   influence the mass media?")

   The universities, think tanks, and private research foundations are
   also important propaganda tools of the ruling class. This is why it is
   virtually taboo in mainstream academic circles to suggest that anything
   like a ruling class even exists in the United States. Students are
   instead indoctrinated with the myth of a "pluralist" and "democratic"
   society -- a Never-Never Land where all laws and public policies
   supposedly get determined only by the amount of "public support" they
   have -- certainly not by any small faction wielding power in
   disproportion to its size.

   To deny the existence of class is a powerful tool in the hands of the
   powerful. As Alexander Berkman points out, "[o]ur social institutions
   are founded on certain ideas; so long as the latter are generally
   believed, the institutions built on them are safe. Government remains
   strong because people think political authority and legal compulsion
   necessary. Capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system
   is considered adequate and just. The weakening of the ideas which
   support the evil and oppressive present day conditions means the
   ultimate breakdown of government and capitalism." ["Author's Foreword,"
   What is Anarchism?, p. xii]

   Unsurprisingly, to deny the existence of classes is an important means
   of bolstering capitalism, to undercut social criticism of inequality
   and oppression. It presents a picture of a system in which only
   individuals exist, ignoring the differences between one set of people
   (the ruling class) and the others (the working class) in terms of
   social position, power and interests. This obviously helps those in
   power maintain it by focusing analysis away from that power and its
   sources (wealth, hierarchy, etc.).

   It also helps maintain the class system by undermining collective
   struggle. To admit class exists means to admit that working people
   share common interests due to their common position in the social
   hierarchy. And common interests can lead to common action to change
   that position. Isolated consumers, however, are in no position to act
   for themselves. One individual standing alone is easily defeated,
   whereas a union of individuals supporting each other is not. Throughout
   the history of capitalism there have been attempts by the ruling class
   -- often successful -- to destroy working class organisations. Why?
   Because in union there is power -- power which can destroy the class
   system as well as the state and create a new world.

   That's why the very existence of class is denied by the elite. It's
   part of their strategy for winning the battle of ideas and ensuring
   that people remain as atomised individuals. By "manufacturing consent"
   (to use Walter Lipman's expression for the function of the media),
   force need not be used. By limiting the public's sources of information
   to propaganda organs controlled by state and corporate elites, all
   debate can be confined within a narrow conceptual framework of
   capitalist terminology and assumptions, and anything premised on a
   different conceptual framework can be marginalised. Thus the average
   person is brought to accept current society as "fair" and "just," or at
   least as "the best available," because no alternatives are ever allowed
   to be discussed.

B.7.4 What do anarchists mean by "class consciousness"?

   Given that the existence of classes is often ignored or considered
   unimportant ("boss and worker have common interests") in mainstream
   culture, its important to continually point out the facts of the
   situation: that a wealthy elite run the world and the vast majority are
   subjected to hierarchy and work to enrich this elite. To be class
   conscious means that we are aware of the objective facts and act
   appropriately to change them.

   This is why anarchists stress the need for "class consciousness," for
   recognising that classes exist and that their interests are in
   conflict. The reason why this is the case is obvious enough. As
   Alexander Berkman argues, "the interests of capital and labour are not
   the same. No greater lie was ever invented than the so-called 'identity
   of interests' [between capital and labour] . . . labour produces all
   the wealth of the world . . . [and] capital is owned by the masters is
   stolen property, stolen products of labour. Capitalist industry is the
   process of continuing to appropriate the products of labour for the
   benefit of the master class . . . It is clear that your interests as a
   worker are different from the interests of your capitalistic masters.
   More than different: they are entirely opposite; in fact, contrary,
   antagonistic to each other. The better wages the boss pays you, the
   less profit he makes out of you. It does not require great philosophy
   to understand that." [What is Anarchism?, pp. 75-6]

   That classes are in conflict can be seen from the post-war period in
   most developed countries. Taking the example of the USA, the immediate
   post-war period (the 1950s to the 1970s) were marked by social
   conflict, strikes and so forth. From the 1980s onwards, there was a
   period of relative social peace because the bosses managed to inflict a
   series of defeats on the working class. Workers became less militant,
   the trade unions went into a period of decline and the success of
   capitalism proclaimed. If the interests of both classes were the same
   we would expect that all sections of society would have benefited more
   in the 1980s onwards than between the 1950s to 1970s. This is not the
   case. While income grew steadily across the board between 1950 and
   1980s, since then wealth has flooded up to the top while those at the
   bottom found it harder to make ends meet.

   A similar process occurred in the 1920s when Alexander Berkman stated
   the obvious:

     "The masters have found a very effective way to paralyse the
     strength of organised labour. They have persuaded the workers that
     they have the same interests as the employers . . . that what is
     good for the employer is good for his employees . . . [that] the
     workers will not think of fighting their masters for better
     conditions, but they will be patient and wait till the employer can
     'share his prosperity' with them. They will also consider the
     interests of 'their' country and they will not 'disturb industry'
     and the 'orderly life of the community' by strikes and stoppage of
     work. If you listen to your exploiters and their mouthpieces you
     will be 'good' and consider only the interests of your masters, of
     your city and country -- but no one cares about your interests and
     those of your family, the interests of your union and of your fellow
     workers of the labouring class. 'Don't be selfish,' they admonish
     you, while the boss is getting rich by your being good and
     unselfish. And they laugh in their sleeves and thank the Lord that
     you are such an idiot." [Op. Cit., pp. 74-5]

   So, in a nutshell, class consciousness is to look after your own
   interest as a member of the working class. To be aware that there is
   inequality in society and that you cannot expect the wealthy and
   powerful to be concerned about anyone's interest except their own. That
   only by struggle can you gain respect and an increased slice of the
   wealth you produce but do not own. And that there is "an irreconcilable
   antagonism" between the ruling class and working class "which results
   inevitably from their respective stations in life." The riches of the
   former are "based on the exploitation and subjugation of the latter's
   labour" which means "war between" the two "is unavoidable." For the
   working class desires "only equality" while the ruling elite "exist[s]
   only through inequality." For the latter, "as a separate class,
   equality is death" while for the former "the least inequality is
   slavery." [Bakunin, The Basic Bakunin, p. 97 and pp. 91-2]

   Although class analysis may at first appear to be a novel idea, the
   conflicting interests of the classes is well recognised on the other
   side of the class divide. For example, James Madison in the Federalist
   Paper #10 states that "those who hold and those who are without have
   ever formed distinct interests in society." For anarchists, class
   consciousness means to recognise what the bosses already know: the
   importance of solidarity with others in the same class position as
   oneself and of acting together as equals to attain common goals. The
   difference is that the ruling class wants to keep the class system
   going while anarchists seek to end it once and for all.

   It could therefore be argued that anarchists actually want an
   "anti-class" consciousness to develop -- that is, for people to
   recognise that classes exist, to understand why they exist, and act to
   abolish the root causes for their continued existence ("class
   consciousness," argues Vernon Richards, "but not in the sense of
   wanting to perpetuate classes, but the consciousness of their
   existence, an understanding of why they exist, and a determination,
   informed by knowledge and militancy, to abolish them." [The
   Impossibilities of Social Democracy, p. 133]). In short, anarchists
   want to eliminate classes, not universalise the class of "wage worker"
   (which would presuppose the continued existence of capitalism).

   More importantly, class consciousness does not involve "worker
   worship." To the contrary, as Murray Bookchin points out, "[t]he worker
   begins to become a revolutionary when he undoes his [or her]
   'workerness', when he [or she] comes to detest his class status here
   and now, when he begins to shed. . . his work ethic, his
   character-structure derived from industrial discipline, his respect for
   hierarchy, his obedience to leaders, his consumerism, his vestiges of
   puritanism." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 119] For, in the end,
   anarchists "cannot build until the working class gets rid of its
   illusions, its acceptance of bosses and faith in leaders."
   [Marie-Louise Berneri, Neither East Nor West, p. 19]

   It may be objected that there are only individuals and anarchists are
   trying to throw a lot of people in a box and put a label like "working
   class" on them. In reply, anarchists agree, yes, there are "only"
   individuals but some of them are bosses, most of them are working
   class. This is an objective division within society which the ruling
   class does its best to hide but which comes out during social struggle.
   And such struggle is part of the process by which more and more
   oppressed people subjectivity recognise the objective facts. And by
   more and more people recognising the facts of capitalist reality, more
   and more people will want to change them.

   Currently there are working class people who want an anarchist society
   and there are others who just want to climb up the hierarchy to get to
   a position where they can impose their will to others. But that does
   not change the fact that their current position is that they are
   subjected to the authority of hierarchy and so can come into conflict
   with it. And by so doing, they must practise self-activity and this
   struggle can change their minds, what they think, and so they become
   radicalised. This, the radicalising effects of self-activity and social
   struggle, is a key factor in why anarchists are involved in it. It is
   an important means of creating more anarchists and getting more and
   more people aware of anarchism as a viable alternative to capitalism.

   Ultimately, it does not matter what class you are, it's what you
   believe in that matters. And what you do. Hence we see anarchists like
   Bakunin and Kropotkin, former members of the Russian ruling class, or
   like Malatesta, born into an Italian middle class family, rejecting
   their backgrounds and its privileges and becoming supporters of working
   class self-liberation. But anarchists base their activity primarily on
   the working class (including peasants, self-employed artisans and so
   on) because the working class is subject to hierarchy and so have a
   real need to resist to exist. This process of resisting the powers that
   be can and does have a radicalising effect on those involved and so
   what they believe in and what they do changes. Being subject to
   hierarchy, oppression and exploitation means that it is in the working
   class people's "own interest to abolish them. It has been truly said
   that 'the emancipation of the workers must be accomplished by the
   workers themselves,' for no social class will do it for them . . . It
   is . . . the interest of the proletariat to emancipate itself from
   bondage . . . It is only be growing to a true realisation of their
   present position, by visualising their possibilities and powers, by
   learning unity and co-operation, and practising them, that the masses
   can attain freedom." [Alexander Berkman, Op. Cit., pp. 187-8]

   We recognise, therefore, that only those at the bottom of society have
   a self-interest in freeing themselves from the burden of those at the
   top, and so we see the importance of class consciousness in the
   struggle of oppressed people for self-liberation. Thus, "[f]ar from
   believing in the messianic role of the working class, the anarchists'
   aim is to abolish the working class in so far as this term refers to
   the underprivileged majority in all existing societies. . . What we do
   say is that no revolution can succeed without the active participation
   of the working, producing, section of the population. . . The power of
   the State, the values of authoritarian society can only be challenged
   and destroyed by a greater power and new values." [Vernon Richards, The
   Raven, no. 14, pp. 183-4] Anarchists also argue that one of the effects
   of direct action to resist oppression and exploitation of working class
   people would be the creation of such a power and new values, values
   based on respect for individual freedom and solidarity (see sections
   [8]J.2 and [9]J.4 on direct action and its liberating potential).

   As such, class consciousness also means recognising that working class
   people not only have an interest in ending its oppression but that we
   also have the power to do so. "This power, the people's power," notes
   Berkman, "is actual: it cannot be taken away, as the power of the
   ruler, of the politician, or of the capitalist can be. It cannot be
   taken away because it does not consist of possessions but in ability.
   It is the ability to create, to produce; the power that feeds and
   clothes the world, that gives us life, health and comfort, joy and
   pleasure." The power of government and capital "disappear when the
   people refuse to acknowledge them as masters, refuse to let them lord
   it over them." This is "the all-important economic power" of the
   working class. [Op. Cit., p. 87, p. 86 and p. 88]

   This potential power of the oppressed, anarchist argue, shows that not
   only are classes wasteful and harmful, but that they can be ended once
   those at the bottom seek to do so and reorganise society appropriately.
   This means that we have the power to transform the economic system into
   a non-exploitative and classless one as "only a productive class may be
   libertarian in nature, because it does not need to exploit." [Albert
   Meltzer, Anarchism: Arguments For and Against, p. 23]

   Finally, it is important to stress that anarchists think that class
   consciousness must also mean to be aware of all forms of hierarchical
   power, not just economic oppression. As such, class consciousness and
   class conflict is not simply about inequalities of wealth or income but
   rather questioning all forms of domination, oppression and
   exploitation.

   For anarchists, "[t]he class struggle does not centre around material
   exploitation alone but also around spiritual exploitation, . . . [as
   well as] psychological and environmental oppression." [Bookchin, Op.
   Cit., p. 151] This means that we do not consider economic oppression to
   be the only important thing, ignoring struggles and forms of oppression
   outside the workplace. To the contrary, workers are human beings, not
   the economically driven robots of capitalist and Leninist mythology.
   They are concerned about everything that affects them -- their parents,
   their children, their friends, their neighbours, their planet and, very
   often, total strangers.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secBcon.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secCcon.html
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secDcon.html
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC7.html
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD9.html
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB7.html#secb71
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD3.html
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ2.html
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ4.html
