Saturday, May 31, 2003

Thatcher

Just So You Know

Had Thatcher’s Tory government made alternate arrangements for workers and miners that would have eased their transition. But they were pretty much just out on the street. It doesn’t make much sense to solve high unemployment problems by creating more unemployment. As to Thatcher overhauling Britain and improving its economy, historian Kenneth O. Morgan, in The Oxford History of Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) argues that while Thatcher’s policy did introduce some recovery to Britain’s economy in the early 1980s, the economy tanked again in the late 1980s after a decade or so of Thatcherism. According to Morgan,

“Most serious of all [difficulties], the apparent revival in the economy began to lose credibility. The tax-cutting policy of the Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, was now seen to have led to a huge balance of payments deficit, at 20 billion pounds the worst figure on record. Unemployment rose sharply and the pound came under pressure. Worse still, the conquest of inflation, the government’s main boast, was now threatened by a consumer-credit and spending boom. Bank rate soared to 15 per cent, and the impact was felt by every mortgaged home-owner in the land” (Morgan 660). [Note: I tried to block this appropriately but can’t figure out how. Apologies.]


Posted by Mike on 05/31/03 at 07:58 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Class War

Partisan Politics

Correct. The masses never got behind a global class war/revolution, or even in Imperial Russia. The Marxist prophecy never materialized. It didn’t happen. Marx prophesied that the vanguard of the proletariat would initiate the class war and the rest of the proletariat would quickly follow. That did not occur. As far as I know, Jesus hasn’t shown up again either. The Marxist prophecy will never happen because the world changed significantly after the mid-nineteenth century, and no, the workers never got behind it, nor will they ever.

The United States does have a class system, but as you indicated it is what the sociologists call an open stratification system. Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day so the sociology folks were bound to get something right thanks to law of averages. But still. Just because mobility is possible between classes it does not mean the classes do not exist. They are fluid, but they are there. Upward and downward mobility is possible, people can go from working to middle to upper and back down to working again. But at every step, there is a step. A permanent social structure is called a caste system. That’s when the social ladder is entirely hereditary and is also known as a closed stratification system where no mobility is possible.

In the United States, classes are based entirely upon wealth and education. There is no hereditary aristocracy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a class structure. See, in Britain and much of Europe, with the industrial revolution, the hereditary aristocracy constituted the upper class, non-titled wealthy and well-to-do educated professionals, shopkeepers, etc. constituted the middle, urban and rural workers the working class. With the industrial revolution, Britain and Europe moved from a caste to a class social structure when mobility became possible between the working and middle classes. Not guaranteed, no, but possible. Hell, some people in the middle class even bought themselves a title to move into the aristocracy. Thus, it is mobility that distinguishes a class from a caste structure, and the United States holds the possiblity fo mobility, be it upward or downward. My terminology in describing the United States as a nation with a class structure was correct.


Posted by Mike on 05/31/03 at 07:19 PM
Partisan Politics • Permalink