What is this argument about gaining the suport of the working classes, and how some people are more working class than others? In society today you can get an office dogs- body who works for f**k all an hour and is considered white collar middle classed! But say a mechanic who owns his own business and contributes more to what we are all fighting against is considered working class!
Its a messed up system where the only class everyone in this society has to worry about is the landowning, money grabbing, exploitative upper middle and higher classes that remain untouched by our actions and it is my opinion that if you want class war, it is these people who should be targeted with as much determination that the trade organisations have been in the past couple of years!
Only then will the 'working classes' truly see that they are being used and will rise up with the rest of our global movement against upper classe's greed and hatred!
Lets raise those black flags against our true enemies and show them the power of their victims!

The only restaint on the working class is their own lazyness. If people want to get a good job, they can (I am living proof of such). Now grow up, and stop blaming other people for your own problems.

I can see where your coming from and understand why your pissed off about it. But calling people who frequent IMC UK middle class wankers is not is just being a pratt.
Sure there are some of the types on IMC are psuedo intellectual probably from what you'd call a middle class background. They love to quote their favourite writers who are invariably boring old farts who have little or no idea about what it's like to be skint. Make an effort to get on with everyone even if they speak posh. We need to work together and unite against the dividers that rule, and means black white middle class the lot.

all the beast LB

This is not meant to be offensive, and I am despertly trying to bridge the gap, between the two.
Unfortunatly the above posting by myself was not meant to be a new thread, it was a reply to a what I took to be a offensive posting on another thread. Taking out of context it can be taken as a assult.
I am not normally so involved in all this class debate, but recently I meant some great middle class activists. The class snobbery actually is from my associates who see these as aloof and cranks. It is really frustrating that we don’t seem to be able to unite on even a local scale. Hence my frustration when some postings add to the problem. For the thread I was trying to reply to it was “talking about a revoloution,” now off the front page. Check it out, hopefully you’ll see why I was frustrated.
The point I was making about who would drive the busses the trains etc, I feel is a valid one. I was merely trying to suggest it is the workers who do the important jobs, not the other way around.
puk

This is just my uneducated opinion.

There can be a problem with the liberal middle class anti globalisation but I still want to be able to live in my nice detached house in the suburbs thanks all the same lot. And these do tend to come from the cultural middle classes. Fuck it - I do too. I even went to a private school! But thats a cultural backwardness. Thats because the propoganda fed to the middle classes is different to that of the working classes. We get told that we can consume our way to a better world. That if we go to the Body Shop everything will be alright. And at least we're not as bad as those nasty unwashed people on the council estate down the road who you really wouldn't want Tarquin and Fifi playing with. Its classic divide and rule tactics!

But economically we are all fucked. Course few people in this country are as fucked as the sweatshop workers in Indonesia, but whilst capitalism exists it has a need for different layers of oppression.

The culturally middle classes have their surplus value squeezed out of them the same as everyone else. They just have less history and less obvious motivation for doing something about it.

However we of the culturally middle class do have one thing - time and money. We are less squeezed dry, less fighting for mere survival. And so we bring our prejudices into the movement maybe.

But we are capable of being just as angry, just as militant, and just as fucked by the system. You didn't need to be black to fight aparteid in South Africa.

I agree that people can spout a load of self important alienating wank with names dropped and high level shite that misses the point entirely - but I've heard working class people do that as well.

Offensive shite?????- Excuse me but from what I’ve read the only offence is that of LB calling the writer a Pratt. At no point are the ppl visiting imc called wankers (middle class or not).
I have read the postings on this site for quite some time now, though this is my first posting just thought I had to say sumink.
You are either part of the solution or else your part of the problem. Calling people Pratt’s when u ain’t even bothered to get your facts straight is a wee bit off… do u not think????
This debate has raged for a while now, but as yet no suggestions have been made, just lots of insults.
Can I suggest we reclaim some community space, a squat whatever and organize parties. Put on DJ’s, punk bands the works. I got involved in the anarchist scene thru punk in the 80’s. Not these shitty pop punk bands i.e. pistols, exploited etc. but diy anarcho punk. we organized gigs, get togethers, protests everything. It was a brilliant medium and drew in students and working class kids who mixed, sadly there doesn’t seem to be this medium now. Lets recreate???
NO COMPROMISE IN DEFENCE OF MOTHER EARTH…………
Thanx for reading …….geo

Back in the thirties Orwell hd a go at analyzing the middle class/working class difference in "The Road to Wigan Pier".

Check out the second part of the book, where he starts analyzing his own class origins and attitudes with a view to figuring out where his own prejudices lie.

The "office dogsbody" referred to in one of the previous comments would land right where Orwell placed himself- the "shabby genteel"; people who identify culturally with the more well-off parts of the middle class, but in economic situation have far more in common with the working class they hold themselves superior to than they are willing to imagine.

In fact, despite my relatively well-paid job and the extensive technical knowledge base it requires, which would probably land me in some sociologist's idea of the "middle class", I see myself as working class for one reason: I have a boss, who derives profit from my labor without doing any himself.

The same thing is true for most of the people who imagine themselves to be "middle class", and therefore "above" the workers. The rule I would propose is that if you have a boss, to whom you sell your labor, and who gives you in return a fraction of the value of your labor, keeping the rest for himself, then, no matter how much money you make, or what you conceive your social status to be, YOU'RE A PROLE JUST LIKE ME, OR THE GUY FIXING YOUR CAR.

The "middle class" is beginning to realize this, as their conditions of life and work become more and more obviously subject to the whims of the owning classes. One hopes this process of discovery will happen faster and end by obliterating the class sub-identities we all divide ourselves with.

In the meantime, check out Orwell's book. It might provide some insight about relationships between people identifying with different "class" cultures.

caro Geo, sorry you took offence to my using the word Pratt
by my standards it is almost a friendly expression,
something akin to "don't be be silly" or "don't be a pratt".
my comment was intended to encourage debate and absolutely not provoke any more mud slinging ..

absolutely no offence intended..

LB