November: Red

Session 5: Class

Class is a concept that cannot be isolated. Even if we take the simplest understanding of class—the amount of wealth that a person has—we are immediately confronted with the difficulty of drawing meaningful conclusions based on that information alone. What does it mean if the person who has $100,000 is Black or white? What does that amount mean if their parents already have millions of dollars and what does it mean if their loved ones are in debt? What does it mean if they are a man or a woman, cisgender, trans, or nonbinary? What does it mean if they live in New York City and what does it mean if they live in Tchula, MS? What does it mean if they have $100,000 because they lost their other $900,000 on a bad investment, and what does it mean if it is their savings from a lifetime of wage work at the time of their retirement?

Now consider that most people look to employment as another clear indicator of class. The type of work you do, the pay and benefits you receive, the security of your position, the likelihood of getting a new position if you get laid off—each of these are further indicators of your class. But most people also understand that you can be a working-class parent with a “good” job and still have far fewer resources than an unemployed upper-class college graduate who is “broke.” Equally, an hour of housecleaning work does not merit the same pay as an hour of work writing software for an app that connects you to house cleaners. Rich people with enough money to invest in something can reap the profits of someone else’s work to become richer without working at all. Class mobility was, and is, theoretically, unlimited. Yet at no point in the country’s history has it ever been equally likely that a child of a poor family would become rich or that a child of a rich family would end up poor. Class, especially in a modern context, is a competition where the rules are unofficial, unspoken, and frequently changing. Understanding class requires broadening, updating, and challenging our own assumptions and the ones offered to us.

Don’t forget to check out the facilitator guide!

Readings

Core Texts

Supplemental Texts

Discussion Questions

Langston Hughes, “Ballad of Roosevelt” (1934)

  • Why did the family from the poem no longer believe Roosevelt would help? What do you think will happen next? Why is it important that we move from being focused on a single family to the collective?

The Omaha Platform of the People’s Party of America (July 4, 1892)

  • How does the discussion of “imported pauperized labor beat down their wages” connect to the current conditions of the gig economy and outsourcing labor today? How does this create a new class of individuals who are barred from the “formal” workforce?

  • In this excerpt, The Omaha Platform discuss that “the fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few unprecedented in the history of mankind” (229) will eventually destroy humanity, in what ways does this echo the antagonisms we see today between the working class and the billionaire class? What examples come to mind?

“Proclamation of the Striking Textile Workers of Lawrence” (1912)

  • How do the police work to maintain social and class order?

  • Why is it more beneficial for the ruling class for the government to fund anti-strike anti-worker militias rather than just use that money to fund workers' living wages?

Roberto Meneses Marquez, “A Day Laborer” (April 30, 2013)

  • How can workers step away from electoral politics and engage in grassroots organizing to help change the material conditions of their lives? Why is grassroots organizing so important for those who fall under poor or working class individuals?

  • How does the ruling class and employers take advantage of an individuals' immigrant status to further exploit them and force them into working in poor and unsafe conditions? How does the citizenship status of some individuals cause them to be at constant threat of economic violence?

Yip Harburg, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” (1932)

  • How has the United States used the dream of the collective good, of everyone - especially you - benefiting from your hard work, to deceive people and justify suffering?

  • What do international wars have to do with questions of class and the American dream in the US?

  • The title and the chorus address working class people turning to each other for support. In what ways does that present a legitimate hope for the future, and in what ways might that strategy be limited while we exist in a classed society?

Woody Guthrie, “Ludlow Massacre” (1946)

  • This song presents the events of the massacre from a first-person perspective. It takes the reader/listener directly into the action. Are there advantages to exploring a historical event like this, rather than, say, through a newspaper article or a history book? Are there limitations or pitfalls with personal or subjective experiences of history?

  • In a democracy, the government aims to represent the will of the people. In this case, what role did the government play? Who else had power in this situation and where did it come from?

Remaking Radicalism

  • Think about all four documents and their themes. Compare and contrast how the authors frame their struggle. How are they similar? How are they also different?

  • Particularly in the section on homelessness, it is emphasized that the movement should be led by those experiencing the oppression directly, as opposed to exterior actors. Why would exterior actors want to co-op these struggles?

  • Class factors focally in all four documents. Do you think, as Coretta Scott King mentions, that employment can dissipate ethnic tension and alleviate class distinctions?

Marilyn Buck, “To Women Who Work”

  • How do the forces of social class, both for the wealthy and for workers, undermine the idea of free will or agency? Why does the poem use verbs the way that it does?

  • What does the poem say about the way class is made invisible? This could involve geography, age, media, or anything else that you might notice.

Jimmy Boggs, American Revolution

  • Presented with a dilemma on a global scale, like that of automation and technological advancement causing mass unemployment instead of increasing standards of living, it seems clear that individual workers are not at fault and that we need to take radical action to reorganize how we distribute resources in society. In our own lives, we conceive of unemployment very differently. If we get laid off, it’s bad luck or a personal failure. Same goes for a loved one. Our main concern is getting a new job and feeding ourselves and our dependents. If we hear about an unemployed stranger on welfare, we might even be upset that we have to pay taxes to support someone who is probably too lazy to hustle and support themselves. What makes it so difficult to bring political analysis into our daily lives? How do we retrain ourselves to analyze and critique the society that produces suffering instead of attacking the sufferers?

  • Walmart, Amazon, and McDonald’s are the largest private employers in the world. Sketch out what would happen tomorrow if they figured out a way to profitably automate half of their workers. In a better world, what might happen instead?

  • Can you give an example of a form of analysis (an idea/word/phrase/way of thinking) that is outdated but still gets applied regularly?