Myths of a classless society

Myths of a classless society
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Date: Saturday November 24, 2012
Section: Opinion

A pedigree is no longer something you’re just born with. It can be learnt, earned, inherited, pretended. Perhaps that’s why class is still such a touchy subject: no one really knows how the class system works anymore.

Most of us claim to be middle class, except few of us really know what ‘middle class’ means. It can mean poor, but with credit cards. Or it can mean wealthy, but with working class values.

I have a friend, a top-notch lawyer, who declares he’ll always be blue collar at heart. He says he pines for well behaved children, a respectful wife, humble sports stars, union leaders who don’t lie and Labor politicians who care about the hoi polloi. (He also keeps a fluoro safety vest in the wine cellar in case he ever has to change a light globe.)

Middle class is now a destination:  those who claim it stretch from the highly privileged, (people who would never call themselves ‘rich’ in public) to families paying off the two year loans on their home theatres and ipads. Middle class people tout their disposable income, even if they relentlessly dispose of it.

Why do so many now aspire to be called ‘middle class?’ Does the class struggle no longer exist? Of course, we’re all equal now – how nice! I guess that means ‘working class’ has become a dirty word? It used to be worn as a badge of honour – a respectable way to earn a quid with your muscles. Skill with a shovel distinguished real blokes from pen-pushers, construction brawn from the soft-skinned and the un-tanned.

Luckily for me, journalism is rarely choosy about the social standing of its recruits. In television, the gift of the gab and an ear for storytelling are prized whether you were born rich or grew up on welfare cheques. And those who hailed from out in the sticks often had the common touch – that ability to make people feel so at ease, they willingly poured out their stories and then asked: ‘Would you like to stay for tea?’

Politicians target us like we’re some bland mass of supplicants. We’re not. Take that hackneyed Labor line ‘working families’ – it has been trotted out ad nauseum for the past five years. Politicians imagine we’ll swallow rhetoric like ‘working families’ because the phrase appeals to blue and white-collar workers alike. Actually, it’s a cliché that makes even the well-to-do feel included.

The mining boom has been a wonderful leveler. It has enabled the unskilled, tradies and construction blokes (and gals) to set themselves up for life. But if you ever needed proof that high society doesn’t tolerate upstarts, then the mindless label ‘cashed-up bogan’ says it all. Poseurs looks upon the nouveau riche as a blight on the social landscape – as an unwelcome species who carve up the genteel tranquility of waterfront living with their jet skis and over-sized runabouts.

Even the Wall Street Journal swooped in for a closer look at Australia’s new money when it unearthed a 25-year-old high school drop-out from Mandurah who was earning $208,000 a year as a long hole driller up north. He happily admitted to blowing every cent he earned on his Chevy ute, custom bikes, electronic gadgetry and partying: “Without mining, I’d be an auto mechanic making $600 a week. I love mining, mate.”

Blue collar workers have become a precious commodity in this country – rarely has manual labour been in such demand. Who’s not fascinated by a resources boom that has driven wages into hyperdrive? But why isn’t a Forex trader with a Ferrari a cashed-up bogan too?’ Only the working class cop it for daring to rise above their station. Perhaps Australia’s middle is uncomfortable about relying on mine workers to keep the economy afloat by splurging their red-dusted paychecks.

Urban myth would have us believe every frustrated shop-hand and salesman has packed it in and headed north to drive a dump truck for $150-grand. That’s a flight of imagination, not a Skywest flight to Paraburdoo. A cashed-up bogan might be the much lampooned poster-boy for the mining boom, but why denigrate the thousands of workers who’ve committed to the disruption of a fly-in fly-out existence? Men and women slogging it out on 12-hour shifts, knocking off for a half- life in a hot dusty town, a donga to call home, leaving families elsewhere to cope for long periods on their own.

How do newly affluent mine workers fit into our class structure? They’d give Karl Marx a nervous breakdown: wage slaves with nothing to lose but their gold chains? Revolutionaries with Rolexes? And let’s not kid ourselves that class discrimination is dead – it’s as common as a mock Prada handbag. There are always rich peoples’ kids blushing at their Peppermint Grove addresses and ordinary people mocked for saying ‘haitch.’ (At parties in posh suburbs, that’s ‘haitch’ as in ‘hypocrisy.’)

Guilt, anger, shame, pretence – few of us escape the confusions of class. And social climbers  are everywhere, (as they’ve always been) now driving leased Range Rovers and flashing their fake tans and fake personalities.

Perhaps my fantasy of a classless society is fantasy in itself. I’d like to return to that time, not so long ago, when people were admired for what they did, not because they owned a weekender at Eagle Bay. That era before celebrity culture drove ego and reckless materialism into places it should never have gone – into schools and playgrounds. Last week I overheard a 9-year-old girl complaining to her mum: ‘Jessica gets to go skiing in Japan, how come we only get to go to Bali?’ A month ago, I asked my eldest what he wanted to be and he gave me a smirk and said “rich.” He thought it was funny. I’m still not sure if he meant it.

I hope education, not affluence, opens the door to better lifestyles. We all want to choose our careers, not have the choice taken away by disadvantage. Snobbery amongst the younger set is usually nothing more than the parroting of their parent’s pretension, of having no clue (and no curiosity) about how the other half lives. I hope my children learn early on that delusions of grandeur are more likely to make them an object of ridicule than an object of envy. And I want them to believe me when I tell them kindness and thoughtfulness will gain them respect far quicker than loading up on ‘stuff’ and showing off. Perhaps then, they’ll end up in a class of their own.