The "underclass" - does it exist? If it does, what is it?
- Thread starter JHE
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butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It's your reference. You're the one over using it.
I know you have trouble with the past. I know it rarely exists for you. We're not all like you.
I know you have trouble with the past. I know it rarely exists for you. We're not all like you.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
By all means fill us in in on "something happening right now".
This is getting like the dead parrot sketch.
The question in the OP about the underclass seems to have been agreed my most posters. The underclass is the working class and the working class consists of those in work and those who would be in work if they were not unemployed because they would need to support themselves by selling their labour.
I notice that according to NewLabour the poor have disappeared to be replaced by not even the deserving or undeserving poor but Socially Excluded. Really they are just financially excluded or poor to use the correct word.
Similarly people who have fallen into Fuel Poverty are just people who are in poverty. If they could afford heating they could afford other things, the whole name giving process is designed to conceal real poverty.
The question in the OP about the underclass seems to have been agreed my most posters. The underclass is the working class and the working class consists of those in work and those who would be in work if they were not unemployed because they would need to support themselves by selling their labour.
I notice that according to NewLabour the poor have disappeared to be replaced by not even the deserving or undeserving poor but Socially Excluded. Really they are just financially excluded or poor to use the correct word.
Similarly people who have fallen into Fuel Poverty are just people who are in poverty. If they could afford heating they could afford other things, the whole name giving process is designed to conceal real poverty.
the 1000s of people who are being put out of work in the last few months
or the 1000s of people who suddenly can't afford to keep up with the repayments that they made that they could afford 2 years ago
the probably millions of people who are getting hassle from their banks for the money they 'owe'
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yeah! ronald raygun!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
None of them are now working class.
well that's why I said that this was stupid a few posts above because I wasn't disagreeing with you about what you were saying to taffboy in that sense. I completely agree like I said before that being unemployed doesn't mean you don't qualify for being working class anymore, I was pulling you up on making a thing of the 80s when the same thing is happening now
but I was going right off topic. pointlessly. so I apologise for that
Aaargghhh! 
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I can't wait for the chant
'Maggie Maggie Maggie - Dead Dead Dead'
<as long as it isn't the day before payday>
Dissident Junk
picking oakum
Hummm .... your question chimes in with some thinking I've been doing about political alternatives.
I think there is an underclass. And I think the definition of this underclass could be something like ...
... the underclass consists of people that have no economic power or economic equality, due to the fact that their skill set is perceived to have little value in a particular set of economic circumstances, and, as such, they are unable to trade their labour for goods and services, even if they should wish to do so.
This, I think, provides a more lucid insight, even though, I admit, my definition has flaws: the underclass are unable to trade their labour, while the working class are able to trade their labour (even if, sometimes, they don't want to, and maybe are not at the present time).
Then, if you look at why these people are unable to trade their labour, you then allow space for a spectrum of circumstances: they are skilled in un-economical viable forms of labour (either down to technological advances or geographical economic change, say), or they never had any economically viable skills in the first place, or they cannot trade their skills due to ill-health etc.
So then, when you consider a hypothetical situation where 1000s jobs suddenly appeared in an area where those jobs cross a wide range of skillsets, the working class people are the unemployed people that could and would be employed, whereas the underclass unemployed would still have nothing to offer -- unless they acquired the relevant economically viable skills.
This gives a definition of the underclass as a group that would fail to be employed even in a climate of full employment (within a particular paradigm of economic activity, mind).
Mibbe.
This is just a rough thought, mind. Feel free to disagree all you want.
I think there is an underclass. And I think the definition of this underclass could be something like ...
... the underclass consists of people that have no economic power or economic equality, due to the fact that their skill set is perceived to have little value in a particular set of economic circumstances, and, as such, they are unable to trade their labour for goods and services, even if they should wish to do so.
This, I think, provides a more lucid insight, even though, I admit, my definition has flaws: the underclass are unable to trade their labour, while the working class are able to trade their labour (even if, sometimes, they don't want to, and maybe are not at the present time).
Then, if you look at why these people are unable to trade their labour, you then allow space for a spectrum of circumstances: they are skilled in un-economical viable forms of labour (either down to technological advances or geographical economic change, say), or they never had any economically viable skills in the first place, or they cannot trade their skills due to ill-health etc.
So then, when you consider a hypothetical situation where 1000s jobs suddenly appeared in an area where those jobs cross a wide range of skillsets, the working class people are the unemployed people that could and would be employed, whereas the underclass unemployed would still have nothing to offer -- unless they acquired the relevant economically viable skills.
This gives a definition of the underclass as a group that would fail to be employed even in a climate of full employment (within a particular paradigm of economic activity, mind).
Mibbe.
This is just a rough thought, mind. Feel free to disagree all you want.
Hummm .... your question chimes in with some thinking I've been doing about political alternatives.
I think there is an underclass. And I think the definition of this underclass could be something like ...
... the underclass consists of people that have no economic power or economic equality, due to the fact that their skill set is perceived to have little value in a particular set of economic circumstances, and, as such, they are unable to trade their labour for goods and services, even if they should wish to do so.
This, I think, provides a more lucid insight, even though, I admit, my definition has flaws: the underclass are unable to trade their labour, while the working class are able to trade their labour (even if, sometimes, they don't want to, and maybe are not at the present time).
Then, if you look at why these people are unable to trade their labour, you then allow space for a spectrum of circumstances: they are skilled in un-economical viable forms of labour (either down to technological advances or geographical economic change, say), or they never had any economically viable skills in the first place, or they cannot trade their skills due to ill-health etc.
So then, when you consider a hypothetical situation where 1000s jobs suddenly appeared in an area where those jobs cross a wide range of skillsets, the working class people are the unemployed people that could and would be employed, whereas the underclass unemployed would still have nothing to offer -- unless they acquired the relevant economically viable skills.
This gives a definition of the underclass as a group that would fail to be employed even in a climate of full employment (within a particular paradigm of economic activity, mind).
Mibbe.
This is just a rough thought, mind. Feel free to disagree all you want.
Sorry but this is wrong in so many ways. First off you've failed to locate when the term 'underclass' arrived in this country, and what it was used to describe.
As butchers has alluded to it was during the Thatcherite period, and was intended to be a deliberately divisive right wing tool to split the working class solidarity that had grown during the 1970s. The Miners and what happened to many of them, and their communities, is probably the most obvious example of the deliberate and systematic destruction of working class values. The icing on the cake for the Right was to then term them underclass, to point to them not having the necessary 'skills' needed for the employment market.
You also talk about trading labour as if this is some kind of Sunday market where people trade their wares. Work is not about trading your labour, it's about having the value, the surplus value if you like, of your labour stolen from you. How else would the capitalist make a profit?
As for full employment. Can you point me to a time or situation when full employment has been the norm within capitalism?
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