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The Myth Of Social Mobility
 international |
anti-capitalism |
opinion/analysis
 Tuesday October 31, 2006 00:21 by W. - Anarchist Youth
Is our social-status is purely the product of our own actions. How true is this idea and what purpose does it serve?
Social mobility is the amount which an individual in a given society can change their social status, or class, throughout their life. Under modern western capitalism we are told that through hard work, study and dedication we can all become wealthy and successful. Some even go so far as to say that we no longer live under a class system, as our social-status is purely the product of our own actions. How true is this idea and what purpose does it serve?
 Social mobility is the amount which an individual in a given society can change their social status, or class, throughout their life. Under modern western capitalism we are told that through hard work, study and dedication we can all become wealthy and successful. Some even go so far as to say that we no longer live under a class system, as our social-status is purely the product of our own actions. How true is this idea and what purpose does it serve?
Everyone has the right to free education in western capitalist democracies and this is the starting point of the social-mobility myth. Surely if they work
hard at school a working class student has the same opportunities as a bourgeois one. This ignores the fact that the class system is reproduced throughout the entire education system. While students from wealthy backgrounds attend fee-paying primary and secondary schools that can afford smaller classes with better staff and facilities, others are forced to attend run down state schools, which are often overcrowded and understaffed. Add to this the social background of wealthy students which allows them access to more resources and who have less financial and social worries which allows them to focus on their education.
On a practical level if you take a look around the plush campus of St. Andrews in Booterstown or Blackrock College (2 of the most expensive secondary schools in Dublin) and compare them to Colaiste Dhuilaigh or Darndale SNS the differences are blatant. Is it a coincidence that the best schools are located in the wealthiest areas? Add to this the fact that the fee paying secondary schools are sending up to 90% of their pupils on to third level compared to the small amount of pupils from working class areas who even go on to finish their leaving cert. The ruling class have better funded schools, which in turn means they get the best education, which gets them the best jobs and continues the cycle.
Many people hold up examples of supposedly working class people who rose to wealth but these people are an exception to rather than proof of social mobility. Tony O Reilly, multi-millionaire media monopolist, is held up as a self-made man, yet he attended the expensive Belvedere college secondary school. The nature of the class system is such that it is set up to perpetuate itself and the class education system is just one of many facets which keeps the workers in their place. Even the most idiotic members of the ruling class who no amount of money can educate still stand to inherit their families wealth and can usually be assured of a decent job working through their school chums or family contacts.
It is at school that we are first introduced to strict hierarchy and rules. The idea is to make us internalise these ideas while we are young so that we grow up to become obedient self-policing citizens. Uniformity and strict routines help us to prepare for the workplace while most of the subjects studied serve little practical purpose in our day-to-day lives. Compulsory free state education was introduced for this purpose and in Ireland we suffer the added misery of having the Catholic Church run most of our schools.
Social mobility sells us the myth that we are poor because we are lazy and makes us feel guilty for our position in society. This serves to distract people from the real problem - that the bourgeois live off the wealth we produce and that we have no real power over our own lives.
For more information check out - "a primer of libertarian education" available in Ireland from www.wsm.ie
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Comments (10 of 10)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Nice to see the youth developing ideas, wouldn't completely agree with this but it's a start.
Please give us a better link as the document that you refer to does not appear to be at wsm.ie.
For sale in the wsm book service - http://www.wsm.ie/story/592
Au contraire, this story is merely an undigested parroting of all the usual time-worn left-wing assumptions.
All the research shows that 'middle-class' values - not wealth, are the best thing a child can inherit in terms of determining its future life-chances.
Social mobility, while less marked than in the US, is a groiwing phenomonen in our society. The biggest and best example of this new mobility has been the movement of hundreds of thousands of people from the live register into paid employment as a result of the 'Celtic Tiger' and the junking of the worn-out socialist policies that blighted the 70s and 80s (the decades of socialist stagnation).
(One might wonder what Marx would have thought of 'white van man' and other contemporary socio-economic phenomena?)
One interesting study in the US compared the position of children born of single women with a high-school or college education as against a similar sample of children born to two-parent families from across a wide social-educational spectrum. The former did better in terms of upward mobility, despite being raised in much less wealthy circumstances than the average of those in the other group.
Unfortunately, social background still has consequences for the life-chances of many (just look at the children of under-class teenage mums). However, things have vastly improved in recent years with the introduction of liberal economic policies which have created the economic expansion which promotes mobility.
Incidentally, most of the movers and shakers in contemporary Ireland, from Bertie down, were educated by 'the Christian Brothers' and the Presentation and Ursuline Sisters - not Glenstal, Blackrock, and Clongowes.
Actually, while bertie and some of those puppets were educated by the christian brothers the big movers in business (the people who control capital and by extension control the government) were educated in the likes of Andrews, Belvedere and Clongows. Bertie is merely a small fish in their big pond.
All the research shows that 'middle-class' values - not wealth, are the best thing a child can inherit in terms of determining its future life-chances.
If all the research really shows that then you ought to be able to point very easily to some standard work in the social sciences or economics that bears out your statement above.
I'd agree that social mobility is possible. My father and all his siblings were very much working class, however hard work and ability has now made the the vast majority of them middle to upper middle class.
Social mobility is there for people, if they want it. And unfortunately every part of Ireland contains snobs and social climbers. How else could a nation of peasants and labourers have developed its own "elites", "ruling class", and so on. And social mobility is more available than ever before. Education is free from Primary to Degree level. If you want to quibble about how free it really is, compare it to a society where its not free, or where education simply isn't available.
The main reason "working class" people don't go to university are to do with social traditions. And in this climate of jobs for all who want them, you don't need a degree to make money. Electricians, plumbers and taxi drivers earn more than most "Arts" graduates.
Having inherited wealth and privilege will always give you a head start over others of you wish to become a wealth-accumulating social climber. The only solution to removing this situation is massive government intrusion into people lives, so that we all earn the same amount of money, all go to the same type of school, no one ever having any advantages, and so on.
come on red, there are not just two ideological outlooks to remedy social inequalities.
re: the article, the existence of social mobility that w is questioning seems to me to be a critique of the idea that the working-class can be elevated out of their lower rung of the social ladder by becoming middle-class in their thought, actions, wealth, and status through education, but that this can hardly extend to all due to various barriers. issues of economic resources are those that are mostly raised by this article but there is far more at stake here. to be working-class is often seen as backward, uncooth, unintelligent, uneducated, and undisirable. to be middle-class is positioned as the opposite of this. social mobility exists because of this distinction. because certain ways of being, acting, talking, and certain types of inherited knowledge are prioritised above others in society, they also tend to be prioritised in the education system. i agree with w to a point, social mobility is not an assertainable goal for the whole of the working-class, only those who manage to engage correctly with the meritocratic class-biased education system.
another minor criticism is the exclusion of other inequalities which intersect with class inequalities such as being a member of a minority group, such as theTravelling community for example, who are oppressed in relation to both their class position and their ethnic difference. there are of course many other examples.
final point: the existence of an education system based on meritocracy and social mobility as it's main modes of equality promotion, ignoring the structural mechanisms that place some in a position of privilage and others not, works on the premise that there will in fact always be an underclass - i.e. those who do not perform well in this system. and even if every student ireland woke up tomorrow on an equal footing with regard to social, cultural, and financial resources there would still be only a limited amount of places at each rung of the social ladder. meaning social mobility only for the few.
The only solution to removing this situation is massive government intrusion into people lives, so that we all earn the same amount of money, all go to the same type of school, no one ever having any advantages, and so on.
Actually we say the solution is the abolition of the class based society and the creation of a libertarian communist society, where people have direct control over their communities and the means of production.