Skip to content or view screen version

The Dark Dim Knight & Other Middle Class Militants

Jack Common | 28.03.2009 17:06 | Sheffield

Despite their oh so revolutionary rhetoric the G20 protesters don't really understand the lifestyles of those who have found themselves impoverished by current events. The vast majority of working class people do not hanker after the trappings of middle class consumerism, we are not the ultra-competitive wankers that their education system would like us to be. And yet Schnews has declared...

“Poverty hasn't been made history but is instead coming home to us. A response – albeit harsh – to those affected by the credit crunch is 'welcome to the majority world'.9 0% of the world’s population don’t go through consumer goods as if they fell out of a corn flakes packet, so why should we in Britain? ”

This attitude is typical of middle class 'activists'; they see the working class as somehow responsible for climate change and consumerism. Even if the working class were a glut on world resources – the real statistics show a different story where the oh so fucking eco middle class hog the wealth and use more resources than anyone else – we would only be doing what was expected of us under a system designed and controlled by the middle class. The same issue of Schnews ( http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news670.htm) goes on to quote Duritti...

“We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth, there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute”. - Bienventura Durruti - 1936

But Spain in 1936 had already witnessed practical, grass-roots anarchism in it's towns and villages. People had learnt first hand that they could change the world around them and, as working class people, they had the skills to do so. The modern middle class militant living in their Brighton enclave has no idea how to even interact with working class communities, let alone fucking inspire them to create a new world in the corpse of the old.

So what do the militant middle class have to offer us. Apparently Anthropology Lecturers can tie a noose if the posturing of Chris Knight is anything to go by. Some of them are good at planting flowers, many of them are web designers and they all write darn good letters to their MPs. But when it comes to the shit work of cleaning their sewers (or digging their humanure pits) and picking their organic crops, we know full well that we'll be back to square one in no time at all.

Who are the MPs? Who are the bankers? Who are the businessmen? Who are the parasites? They are none other than the middle class. Despite their claims to radicalism they maintain a position of privilege and, as the writer of the Schnews article has shown all too clearly, they cannot disguise their contempt of the working class.

None of this is new, it is all too familiar in the history of working class struggle. As my namesake, Jack Common, wrote many years ago...

“One of the distressing things about the socialist movement is the remarkable number of twisters and crooks it turns out. Not even borstal apparently produces so many ornaments of a piratical society as the movement which discovered the piracy. The biography of almost any Socialist leader is apt to be the story
of a falling rocket.”

The militant middle class are overwhelmingly composed of 'twisters' and 'crooks'; working class people are all too aware of this, but middle class activists – with typical arrogance – see our unwillingness to indulge their fantasies as a lack of political understanding or class consciousness. But we're savvy enough to know our enemy and we also know that a middle class media circus like the G20 protest will never help to improve conditions in working class communities. Again, Jack knew what was needed...

Socialism must be built in the working-class, by the creation of nerve-centres throughout that class which provide cultural contacts and prepare the new world-feeling which is the basis of the new order. We will have inevitably parties of the class-war. What we need is communities in which classlessness is a virtue and is understood in all its forms.

Yours in working class solidarity,
Jack Common/underclassrising

Jack Common

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Fair enough...

28.03.2009 17:41

... but where the fuck are the working class? Show me the militant hordes waiting to seize power or struggling against the elite. Talk shit about middle class militants all you like but as far as I can see they're up to a bit more. Maybe a more practical approach would be to drop this 'written in stone' notion of class.

As any self respecting member of the middle class would do in this situation I will refer you to the guardian:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/09/class-war-mosaic-database

DW


hello

28.03.2009 21:43

the whole article is undermined by your first premise.
the schnews quote does not specify one class of people. it is directed at those affected by the recession. this includes the oap's, independent shopowners, shareholders, taxi drivers, people made redundant, first-time home buyers.

-oap's incomes are reduced with lower interest rates on pensions
- sainsbury's has declared profits after 'feeding families for a fiver' while independent businesses feel the chrunch
- banks aren't lending despite being bailed out.

these people are from all classes- with whatever meaning you take for 'class'.

your whole classist rant is unfounded; just attempting to twist words so you can fill some internet space with your own prejudices.

'fuck all middle class revolutionaries' as they say --- fuck that... don't split the movement with these classless jibes unless of course they are relevant and supported.

actually.. maybe your politics is just fucked and archaic. and the world and capitalism has changed since middle-class marx wrote his manifesto.

come wednesday fuck whether the person standing next to you is middle class or not... as long as they are standing next to you, standing up to the banks, the state and the police.







alias


ACTION AGAINST CLASSISM

28.03.2009 22:33

This will come as no surprise to anyone who understands the nature of class in Britain, as Action Against Classism say…

Economic inequality in the UK is at the highest it has been since records began in 1961. A child’s social class background at birth is still the best indicator of how well he or she will do in school and later on in life. The lower your socio-economic position the greater your risk of low birth-weight, infections, cancer, coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, accidents, nervous and mental illnesses – in other words, class can kill!

 http://classism.org.uk/flashes/intro.html

Jack Common


Spherical objects

28.03.2009 22:46

In what way is this bloke 'middle class'? He apparently exchanges his (intellectual) labour for a wage, which surely makes him working class. If you've got a job to lose you are working class, if you are worried about your business going bust you are middle class, if you are worried about which seat you'll be getting at the next royal wedding - then you're beyond hope come the revolution..

=:o)

Jocasta Woolfolk


it's not 1880 anymore

29.03.2009 00:47

I like the Anarchist Federation take on things.... Cops, Politicians & Bosses = Enemies of our Class.

This is good but even a bit limited....

I mean the 80s saw a huge rise in 'middle management' who were not really bosses in the traditional sense (able to hire and fire at will). Almost everyone above the level of administrator and co-ordinator in office-based jobs is responsible for line-managing someone....

but anyway, without getting lost in analysing how Marx got things wrong and using his analysis not as one tool in a kit to understand society and capitalism, but as a way to stop a social revolution through divisivness....a lot of this has to do with allegiance, and with action.

So if the author of this post sits on his arse, voting for labour, criticising demonstators at the G20 or even against capitalism, then I couldn't care less if he works or worked in a factory. Likewise, I couldn't care less if someone was 'working class', disadvantaged, and lives in a slum estate - if he's a copper or a fascist, then he's not working towards the same goals as me. I'd prefer to have some priviliged inbred who picks up a stone and defends a crowd from police attack on my side anyday.

Not Karl Marx