Re: some thoughts on globalism/imperialism & class

These thoughts on social classes seem to be based entirely on material goods, if I am following this correctly. One says we can get rid of them, the other says they are here to stay. What defines a class?

 

My thoughts on this - getting off the commuter train at 8.30 in the morning, I walk to the coffee shop to stand in line with the other white collars around me to order a coffee from some immigrant worker who is still learning English. They have been there since 5.30 or 6 in the morning, scurrying like busy bees to fill our orders and learn what English they can from "two milk only" s.

 

Another example, tonight, I'll put out the garbage so that tommorow morning a truck will come along and take it away to some mysterious place that I have never visited but sometimes see and hear about on the news.

 

Now, it seems to me that there is a relationship there, between I and the migrant worker and garbage men, who are doing jobs that as a white bourgeois male is supposed to  be beneath me. And it galls me when members of this class I belong too, the bourgeois, act all snoby and turn up their noses at these nescessary occuputions. If the goal of the neo-liberal economy is to make us all bourgois, then who is going to serve us coffee and take away our garbage? It seems to me the problem is not eliminating classes, but in recognizing the value and the dignity in all ocupuations and treating people accordingly.  It is not about 'power', or making things more fair, since I don't know what that could possibly mean. What does fair mean when we pay people minimum wage?

 

T. Comeau