The problem those arguing for a 'revival' of Centerism have (this morning Phillip Collins/Observer) is that they draw centrism wide enough to draw in Blairs' Labour & Cameron's Tories.
If that's the liberal centre then its been in power for decades & got us to the stagnating, unequal, failing juncture we have reached.... why would anyone think they now have the answers (other than their feeling of entitlement to govern?) as the are worried less by Reform than the Greens?
I was struck by this:
"In the 1950s about 70% of manual workers voted Labour and the same percentage of non-manual workers voted Conservative. Today, education and age both predict voting affiliation better than class."
It is an example, I think, of the myopia of centrist or 'liberal' thinking. It misses the point that the current association of education and age with political affiliation comes out of the expansion of higher education in the 60s and 70s, then the generational inequality perpetrated by the single-generation handout of neoliberal privatisation, that has produced a society in the UK (and to some extent elsewhere) in which lots of well-educated young people don't have any assets to fall back on - which is really what being working class means - rather than having a regional accent or liking chips, as 'liberals' would have it - and lots of older people living longer that are less well educated but have both assets and relatively generous pensions.
What is 'social class' supposed to mean if not the difference between having no choice but to keep working all hours for somebody else, or conversely receiving unearned asset income ?
But naturally 'centrists', 'liberals', whatever you call them, must never see this, because if they did they would have to admit the economic interests (in preserving the status-quo) that really lie behind their own supposedly a-historical 'ideas' and 'values'.
@GeofCox
Ah.. But something I've run into continuously with my own parents' aspirational politics: if they constrain "class" to not really exist, then it doesn't and they can conveniently ignore any discussion using that language.
Any discussion of socialism immediately stops when you mention classes. They insist classes don't exist in the US, therefore this entire discussion is factually incorrect, and a waste of time.
It won't matter if you point out their embrace of the Epstein class as "peers" politically. (Aspirational politics) They just won't see it.
It won't matter if you point out our family interactions with the American justice system as white privilege; that we had to interact at all proves to them that there's no privilege.
#Blinders or #LeadPoisoning ? IDK.
Among the shibboleths of liberalism/centrism are such ideas as 'equality before the law', equality of opportunity', etc - but without some basic economic equality these are meaningless (if, for example, you can pay for the best lawyers, or private tutors for your kids). It's precisely the same double-think that enabled the Founding Fathers to say 'all men [sic] are created equal' and own slaves - liberalism/centrism must exclude the economic realm - and as Chris points out in another thread of this discussion, must exclude history, or the origins of wealth and privilege - just as it must not extend 'liberal democracy' to the insides of its businesses.
But the denial that social class exists in the US I think relates to two main threads in its history: its foundational assertion of equality as a counter to the royalty/aristocratic class differences of feudalism (in favour of capitalist class differences), and the long disguise of class by race, immigration, etc, in what is really still a post-colonial society.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
GeofCox
Nate