Since Trump’s reelection win, there’s been this creeping temptation to redefine, or rather deliberate forgetting of what constitutes being ‘working class.’
But this deliberate forgetting isn’t coming from the actual working class, it’s coming from the liberal institutional elite, including the likes of prominent liberal feminist writer Rebecca Solnit. Solnit is best known for her 2014 essay collection Men Explain Things to Me, which popularized the term ‘mansplaining.’
Solnit regurgitates this re-questioning of what she calls a ‘nebulous’ concept and uses it as an opportunity to conveniently blame the evil white man. It’s predictable — and it’s also reductionist. (I should note that I think Solnit is a brilliant essayist, but her political writings leave much to be desired).
In her Guardian column, Solnit claims that some people use the term ‘working class’ to actually mean white men without actually naming said individuals at all. It’s an easy way to stereotype and flatten complex characters into one-dimensional beings to fit the affluent liberal narrative playbook.
Solnit has never been working class herself — she grew up in the suburbs of Marin County — though she has written about the odd minimum wage jobs she’s had in her late teens. I mention this because I think if one is to write on such topics, it’s important to be aware of the self-imposed limitations one has by way of experience (something the liberal elite likes to bring up often, but only when it serves them). One’s experience (see: ‘lived experience’—a concept oft-used among Solnit’s peers) can also contribute to a whole lot of blind spots, as is the case here, when Solnit writes:
“I don’t think [Trump] used the term “working class” at all but pandered to white racism, misogyny and transphobia, each of which can fracture solidarity and even the perception of common ground, including economic common ground.”
It’s almost required that Solnit, whose role in the liberal literary machinery is not to disrupt, but to maintain the cultural zeitgeist, regurgitates the same buzzwords sans context as a way of signalling to her own tribe that she is on their side and that she very much operates within the confines of what is socially acceptable. She’s not required to provide examples of these transgressions, all she has to do is simply repeat these mantras enough until they become fact.
It’s precisely this combination of purposeful cluelessness and moral superiority that allows Solnit to write for The Guardian and other mainstream publications, that gives her the freedom (though limited within the ideological confines of her in-group) to publish mainstream books, that wins her literary awards for being a Just-Edgy-Enough-Feminist, and that rewards her by way of social connections with equally self-important figures. Ironically, journalism used to be a more blue collar profession, but it was the liberal institutional class that has since hijacked it. It is because of Solnit’s status that she is unable to fathom why the likes of Trump garnered the support he has—and no, many of the reasons don’t stem from identity, but from class, something that she hardly acknowledges in her article.
She doesn’t understand why people would support Trump because she has been comfortably insulated (whether intentionally or not) from viewpoints that differ from her own. There are myriad reasons why the working class would vote against a party that has abandoned them and these reasons have been documented ad nauseam. Solnit may have a long history in activism and working with marginalized groups, but there’s a difference between choosing to occasionally fraternize with the invisible class, and having to live it and struggle every day.
Are we to really pretend like we suddenly don’t know what it means to be working class? Is this simply a surreptitious way for suburban Marxists to cosplay as working class and re-victimize themselves all over again?
I see this argument of working class being a ‘nebulous’ concept as borderline deceitful. It’s similar to how we redefine other terms like ‘woman’ that did not need redefining to begin with, and yet—here we are. Really the answer to both is: You’ll know it if you see it.
The Marxist argument that if you don’t own the means of production then you’re working class opens up the floodgates of what is deemed working class, as is demonstrated by online discourse surrounding this topic, where, for example, a professor at an Ivy League university insisted he was working class because he doesn’t own the means of production. No reasonable person would agree that an Ivy League professor and a minimum wage retail worker are in the same socioeconomic league.
Conveniently every self-described Marxist I’ve met have all come from comfortable suburban backgrounds—none have come from working class backgrounds, which I loosely define as low-wage employees who rely on someone else for their wages and who live in financial scarcity (i.e., living paycheck to paycheck). (For a personal anecdote of why I’m critical of communism, see my piece here). I also like to think that most of us can agree that working class is perhaps best viewed as an umbrella concept for other subcategories like blue collar, white collar, and so on.
Solnit also pretends to not know what ‘elite’ means describing it as a concept that:
“…Pretends that somehow human rights are an upscale product like designer handbags or that the majority of us in this country – if you add up women, Bipoc, queer and trans people, immigrants, etc – are a special interest group. In this framework, the 26% or so that is white and male is imagined as the majority, perhaps because they once owned and ran nearly everything.”
She continues, “White male grievance is a powerful force that cuts across class.”
It’s too bad she turned what could have been a strong piece that highlights the plight of the working class into an excuse to blame poor, white men for all the ills that ail society.
The rest of us aren’t confused as to what comprises ‘working class’, but I suppose it’s easy for those who have never been working class to not be able to make the distinction. To the elite, defining working class is simply a semantic, philosophical exercise expressed in an op-ed, or a discussion over cocktails at an upscale bar, or a debate held at an academic institution. It has no real bearing on their lives. It’s also a surefire way to render the concept of ‘working class’ ever more irrelevant by dismissing it as something that is suddenly muddied and unclear. And by muddying the concept, it allows anyone—with the exception of the upper echelons of society— to assign themselves the identity of being ‘working class’ for the sole reason that it suddenly makes them appear interesting. There’s also an added bonus that it renders people from lower socioeconomic groups even more invisible in the public and private domains.
Solnit’s article highlights one thing: why so many have left the Left. She commits the predictable crime of disproportionately focusing on identity politics while dismissing class politics, and the outcome here is muddying an otherwise well-established concept. We don’t need out-of-touch writers to tell us what working class is or isn’t. We’re fine deciphering that one on our own.
tenured professor or adjunct? because *most* of the latter are highly exploited people.
I've been working class all my life. From the age of 15, I've been a farmer, then a college student, then worked at a feed yard, went back to college, spent 13 years as an x-ray tech, then 13 years as a state correction officer, and now a detention officer in the county jail. I have never had more than 200 dollars in my bank account, after paying my bills.