sorry, which “right thing on social mobility” are we talking about here?

Completely agree Clegg’s background is irrelevant to the debate and it is a depressing reflection of our media that this is their focus.

BUT

1. Where is the evidence social mobility declined under Labour? The only evidence of declining mobility I’ve seen compares those born in 1970 with those born in 1958, suggesting the former saw a decline in mobility. Surely you are not trying to blame Labour for the social mobility of people aged 27 when they came to power? And there’s evidence suggestive of future improvements due to Labour e.g. the narrowing gaps in educational performance that even Tuesday’s strategy had to concede happened.

2. What is actually new about the strategy? It just tries to tell a nice story about the same crap social-mobility damaging policies that the Coalition were rightly slated for last year (EMA, tuition fees, declining real per-pupil school funding, Sure Start cuts etc).

I’d support the strategy if it actually had policies likely to improve mobility within it, rather than a pathetic attempt by the Coalition to pretend that the inequality and poverty they will create is unimportant (see the buried Child Poverty strategy released on the same day) and an attempt to claim credit for Labour’s successful policies on mobility of the base 13 years due to the time lags involved in measuring the impact of e.g. Sure Start on educational outcomes

Sorry, the first line should read:

“Nick Clegg is being called a hypocrite for daring to want to improve social mobility when he benefited from unfair advantages himself in the past.”

@1 and @2

The full proposals are here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/52310729/Social-Mobility-Strategy

Good article.

George,

Why do you believe the right-wing do not want social mobility? Have you ever checked the composition of the right-wing – they are not generally aristocrats or fifth-generation wealthy families you know. You’re more likely to find them in the general conservative (small c) mass of the population, because they do not want change. Out-and-out right wingers are often those who have pulled themselves up from somewhere (and believe others could do it as well) or from the mass of the squeezed middle. In fact, if you can ignore the missing trade unionists, they would probably be pretty indistinguishable in background from active left-wingers.

I think you are confusing right-wing (as with left-wing, an radical political position seeking to bring change) and conservative (a word which means resistant to change, although not totally opposed to it) or reactionary (a word which means opposed to changes) – and conservatives and reactonaries exist everywhere (for example, the anti-cuts movement). Poor use of language really.

I am also intrigued as to how the Daily Mail (not really dependent on a readership of toffs) is supposed to go about defending a position against social mobility? I could believe it of them, apart from the fact that it would be a brilliant way to irritate their readership…

You decry Cameron and so forth yet have nothing credible to say yourself. The scary thought is you claim to be one of the most popular left of centre blogs! This highlights the total atrophy of any credible intellectual voices in British opposition politics today.Cameron learnt early you set the agenda when in power and you propel your ideas forward relentlessly. He knows that there is little intellectual force in either Liberal or Labour doctrines and that particularly Labour are lost without being able to control and dominate the presentation of information.

The conservatives understand that whilst people such as yourselves chase the long tail of the story they are busy nailing their ideology into consensus. Yes it may be fractured but they understand power and its application. The Liberals in particular show clearly they can never be a credible option to govern. Leadership is in Conservative DNA and Clegg now looks like something that might pop up on FourSquare around the main point of interest. You can just see Cameron etc saying let’s put Clegg onto social mobility keep the half wit busy for an afternoon and watch the left of centre press like clueless lemmings take the agenda on.

May I suggest a new title for your blog? The Pinata

I am all for s m .
But to ask kids to work for free is wrong
We don’t all have dadys to pay our way.
If we have dads at all.
Rember on the dole you are better off not living with your.kids.
By 80 pounds a week.

They need to fix that too
Support families first.

Here’s my take! Nice article George, though I don’t think Nick is being a hypocrite http://aviewfromhamcommon.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-do-nick-clegg-and-i-have-in-common.html

I’ve read the strategy at length already – there is very little new and it is largely seems to be an exercise in spinning all existing Coalition policies – including the cuts programme and reductions in the incomes of the poor from benefit cuts – as positive for social mobility. It’s a joke to excuse the negative impacts this Government will have on ordinary working people and children.

A challenge – find 5 new policies in the strategy

P.S. A chunk of what I originally wrote has been edited out and I’ve asked Sunny to put that bit back in. I imagine part of the reason why is because I was originally quite a bit more critical of both Labour and Lib Con for the way they were reacting to the proposals.

miliband is oxford educated, the only cambridge-educated party leaders are nick clegg and nick griffin. which shows you what sort of place it is.

A few comments:

Labour’s attack on Nick Clegg has been mainly that his policies undermine social mobility – this remains true whether or not the right wing press are mean about him. The social mobility strategy is a mix of things that Labour supports (raising the school leaving age to 18), and things they don’t (tripling tuition fees).

On the living wage, the Lib Dems are actually more hostile to this than the Tories – maybe something which they might want to look at again?

On social mobility, Julian Dobson has a compelling argument:

“The flaw in this thinking is that it equates access to opportunities, which is a good thing, with an increase in opportunities, which would be a far better thing. To judge a government’s record by social mobility is like saying a lottery is OK if everyone has the same chance of winning it; it ignores the fact that in life, as in lotteries, there are far more losers than winners. A much better goal is reducing the number of losers…

It is good that Nick Clegg, like ministers before him, wants to increase social mobility and improve access to opportunities. But the real challenge is to find ways to enable those who continue to lose in life’s lottery to have a better quality of life – one where their real skills, their humanity, their ability to give and receive friendship and care, are encouraged and valued. That will never happen in a culture where poverty is equated with moral and personal failure.”

http://livingwithrats.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-mobility-picking-wrong-target.html

@9 Actually I don’t think Clegg is being a hypocrite, the first line should read “Nick Clegg is being called a hypocrite for daring to want to improve social mobility when he benefited from unfair advantages himself in the past.” but unfortunately when I wrote it I forgot to put the “called” in.

@12

Again, my mistake there. I wrote the original piece in a rush and didn’t have time to proof read it.

I can understand why Mr Potter as a Libdem sellout would want to defend his deceitful leaders and his new Tory friends. Harriet Harman put it well.

Ms Harman: I am afraid that the Deputy Prime Minister gave up the right to pontificate on social mobility when he abolished the educational maintenance allowance, trebled tuition fees and betrayed a generation of young people. When I heard that he was going to launch a commission on social mobility, I thought that it was April Fools day. In just 10 months this Tory-led Government have launched an assault on opportunities for young people, especially the poorest.

Will the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that the new Office for Fair Access has no teeth? It is presiding over soaring youth unemployment, so why have the Government abolished the future jobs fund? For many young people, mobility now means a bus down to the jobcentre. Families with young children are feeling the squeeze, so why have the Government cut tax credits? The first few years are vital to a child’s prospects, so why have they cut Sure Start?

The Deputy Prime Minister boasts about the pupil premium, but will he admit that the Government are cutting school budgets? He claims that he wants to improve social mobility, so why has he dropped section 1 of the Equality Act 2010, which would have legislated for all public authorities to play their part in narrowing the gap between rich and poor? In opposition he said that the Act did not go far enough, but now he is dancing to the tune of the Tories. Next he will be foxtrotting down to the Tory party’s fundraising ball, auctioning City internships for the children of the highest bidder. Is that not the Government’s idea of social mobility? We have further to go, but they are turning the clock back.

@16

Question:

How exactly am I a sell out?

I protested against the increase in tuition fees and the abolishment of EMA (though I am now happy with the replacement). Locally, I am campaigning against the Conservative council to stop them from making unnecessary cuts to frontline services that dozens of people depend on. At conference I made a point to make my voice heard on areas such as the NHS reforms where I think the government has got it wrong. I have held true to my principles and have been attacked by some fellow party members for it. I drafted a motion of no confidence in Nick Clegg to put to autumn conference and I’ve made a pledge never to campaign for a Lib Dem MP who broke the NUS pledge. I’m also determined to make sure that Clegg is sacked as leader by the next general election.

Again, I ask, how exactly am I a sell out?

In reply to Erica Blair is that the same Harriet Harmon who acted against the laws enacted by her own government by using a mobile while driving?

if so im not sure i want to take advice on hypocrisy from a hypocrite.

@ 16 Erica Blair

While that might contain some good points, it doesn’t seem to say anything about the policy in question.

It’s not hypocritical because he had chances himself – it would be wrong to expect anyone not to accept any breaks that come their way, even if they would close them off if they were in charge.

It’s hypocritical because the Lib Dem party isn’t following his policy suggestions – they should practice what they preach.

And why always the insinuation that because we are attacking the Lib Dems for something we must automatically support the Labour party’s policy/past performance? Is it not possible we don’t think any party has done enough?

@20

I am commenting on the Labour leadership and how they are calling Clegg a hypocrite instead of a) supporting the plans or b) explaining how they need to be improved. Given that most of them share Clegg’s background, failed to do anything about social mobility in government and regularly talk about the need for social mobility themselves, then I posit that they are being hypocritical here themselves and are betraying the disadvantaged by doing so.

Social mobility is (i) of much less interest to the Left than equality and (ii) probably unachievable without equality, for the reasons developed in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

Jon,

Social mobility is (i) of much less interest to the Left than equality

If that is true, surely the aim has to be making us all equal at the lowest level? Unless you mean equality of opportunity, which would indeed bring about social mobility, but that is actually also a policy of the right and liberals (indeed, I am struggling to think of anyone who opposes it who doesn’t have a beard and/or an unhealthy obsession with a single book).

State enforced equality clearly removes all social mobility, since you can’t actually move and must stay where you are…

@ sevillista

The only evidence of declining mobility I’ve seen compares those born in 1970 with those born in 1958, suggesting the former saw a decline in mobility. Surely you are not trying to blame Labour for the social mobility of people aged 27 when they came to power?

They would have been 4 when Labour came to power, not 27.

The charge of hypocrisy is not:
‘Clegg wants to improve social mobility but has benefited from social immobility,’
but rather:
‘Clegg says he wants to improve social mobility, but his (hypocritical) behaviour suggests that he doesn’t really.’

The policies implemented by the Condem govt will reduce social mobility. Clegg’s proposed solution to social mobility is a largely tokenistic one that it seems the govt’s actions actually contradict (http://www.labourlist.org/government-axed-paid-internship-scheme-last-week). Now it’s probably the case that this (rather vaguely cashed out) internship policy is a good thing, but all the other actions of Clegg and the govt suggest that their professed committment to social mobility is only skin-deep. That’s the hypocrisy and the problem.

A little family history research can be very enlightening; and I do recommend it. Social hierachies were more permeable in the past than we tend to imagine; and downward social mobility is also often much in evidence.

That said, “equality of opportunity” — to which we can approximate, but will never achieve –will never result in ‘equality’, and might even result in another aristocracy (v. ‘The Rise of the Meritocracy’ by the late (Lord) Michael Young, Labour Peer – and father of right-wing Toby).

If we make ‘maximising social mobility by merit’ our political goal, we must accept that (a) there will be losers — the downwardly mobile — and (b) meritocrats will slowly but inevitably inter-breed with those already at the top of the social tree – forming another, supplemented, self-perpetuating elite…

Social stratification is a fact of social life; and attempts to eliminate it — eg by abolishing the family — dehumanise us.

That said, if only on efficiency and utiltitarian grounds, a given society in a globalised economy needs to ensure the maximum equality of opportunity — we need all the talent we can get!

paul,

You analysis is good, but has an all else being equal equation that seems to rule out further generations coming through by merit. This is only likely to happen if you get the situation we are now in where access to the powerful (i.e. those with political influence and the ability to get things done) is easily controlled because there are very few powerful and very many gatekeepers.

If power is distributed more widely, it becomes more difficult for any elite to exclude others. The entire nature of elites is that they monopolise power as well as (or in some cases, in preference to) wealth.

P.S. As a clarification, wealth does not equal power, merely a tool which can be used to obtain power. Power is the ability to execute actions as you wish – Ghandi had power and no wealth for a very good example.

Page 67 of the strategy document sets out the steps to be taken to ensure that social mobility is promoted, they(i)”develop leading indicators”, (ii) ensure “a rich source of information”, (iii) “monitor progress on social mobility”, (iv) the DPM will “continue to chair the Ministerial Group on Social Mobility”, (v) will be “setting out the
key milestones” and (vi)”All departments will consider the impact of new policies on social mobility”.

I don’t see what these new policies are actually going to be, or how attacking Clegg for the obvious fact that the cuts won’t help social mobility is unreasonable.

Can someone explain to me how high government spending automatically equates to social mobility please? I think any model you produce will have to have a qualifier that spending is well-targeted and produces the desired outcomes.

Furthermore, there is an equally valid argument that a system whereby government delivers so much of the wealth and services that people require is a form of clientage (not a reference to the welfare state, but to a situation whereby people are dependent on political leaders for their wealth, job, whatever), and is thus a major bar to social mobility as clientage requires more clients than patrons. Even if all the patrons come from lowly backgrounds, the majority of people from those backgrounds will be blocked from being patrons. Furthermore, patronage creates aristocracies, as patronage can easily be diverted to suit your own family (note the oligarchies at the head of Labour and, if secondary education is included as a linking factor, to some extent the head of the Conservatives; this seems to be the result of proximity to power).

That the state may cause social mobility is a noble aim, but the reality of a situation where power is centred on a few people is that it creates elites, not mobility. Perhaps a left-wing, decentralised, state might work, but I remain to be convinced that the economic control inherent in every left-wing ideology I’ve met allows for decentralisation.

George W. Potter,

You say with regard to Labours criticism of Clegg:

” Given that most of them share Clegg’s background, failed to do anything about social mobility in government and regularly talk about the need for social mobility themselves, then I posit that they are being hypocritical here themselves and are betraying the disadvantaged by doing so.”

First point, the notion that labour failed to address social mobility is not supported by the evidence. Gavin Kelly made a more balanced assessment that clearly indicates improvement during the last government with this regard.
“The good news – and there is more of it than you might expect – is that the chances of someone moving a long way up the earnings distribution – enough to really change a person’s standard of living – increased by over 20 per cent in the 2000s compared to the 1990s….”
“Mobility may have picked up, but from a very low-base. The doubling of the chance of moving from the bottom to the top in the 2000s loses much of its gloss when you realise that the absolute increase was from a measly 3 per cent to 6 per cent. So, all in all, some important if modest gains – certainly enough to confound the story of the social mobility pessimists who say things only ever get worse – but not exactly a revolution in opportunity”

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/03/24/social-mobility-recent-decades-uk/

This is in review of Lee Savage’s work for the Resolution Foundation.

http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/moving-social-mobility-1990s-and-2000s/

As for Clegg, perhaps he can overcome the criticism he has received on social mobility by signing another pledge. Worked in the short term for tuition fees!

But he has a long way to go before his sincerity will be beleived by many, many people.

It’s a bit like someone who has deliberately broken a much prized object and then says “sorry mate I’m not really like that”.

But then — I never did beleive him and his Orange book ‘friends’ were any more than closet Tories. I don’t think he has changed, he is just sorry he has been found out.

Maybe he is like a footballer who is punished for bad behaviour. Both should not be surprised if sanctions are taken against them.

Because it’s window dressing.

@flowerpower

Good point – I obviously meant the last Labour Government.

The argument I often hear is New Labour failed on social mobility because the 1970 birth cohort didn’t do as well as the 1958 one.

“I don’t see… how attacking Clegg for the obvious fact that the cuts won’t help social mobility is unreasonable.”

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people calling him a hypocrite on social mobility because of his background. But if he’s a hypocrite on those grounds then so is half the Labour party and every male feminist.

The problem with social mobility and I agree that it is something that should concern us is that it’s almost never the blame of the government who happen to be in power at any particular time for its alleged decline. Moreover, if social mobility apparently rises during a governments time in office it has almost nothing to do with their policies as it is just sampling fluctuations . If the present government put in place policies that they expect to improve social mobility it will be thirty to forty years before we know if they were any good. Another government will be in power and they will take the credit for something that they had no part in achieving. Moreover, many academics dispute that there has been a decline in social mobility or that social mobility in the UK is any worse than other comparable nations. The key thing to keep in mind is what are they measuring. The government could certainly create an income equal society. However, there is no reason not to expect that the bright will outearn the not so bright if in fact we do live in a meritocracy.

Prof. Peter Saunders on social mobility myths.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/SocialMobilityJUNE2010.pdf

@ 35 Richard W

There’s another thing people tend to miss here. I would expect social mobility to fall dramatically after a few decades of progressive government.

If you’ve got a system where people are always judged on the circumstances of their birth, you presumably have a roughly even split between rich and poor in terms of innate skills (intelligence, body strength, managerial prowess, whatever). So when you introduce progressive laws that move the system towards a meritocracy, you can expect a hell of a lot of mobility as talented poor people become rich, and untalented rich people end up poor.

However, people tend to give birth to people who are similar to them. So the children of the new, capable rich people are more likely to be capable themselves and to remain rich, even in a totally fair playing field. So mobility would logically decline.

It’s a simplified model, and it’s absolutely not an argument against keeping opportunities equal, but it does mean that you shouldn’t be worried if your fairly equal society has less social mobility than it did straight after the old inequalities were gotten rid of.

The case for more social mobility shouldn’t realy be asked it should be a right.
And yes I think nick is a hypocrite as well as most Tory’s and labour .
The point in question is that they all come from the same school or uni town .
Its no wonder politics in general is full of people that don’t understand England at all.
The case should be are the so called social mobile that at all ?
They are for lack of the word boxed in.
I have come to this conclusion because of the things.
How else would they come to the conclusion that everyone on the dole are lazy gits that sit in their homes and watch tv.
Never thinking the same people cant afford their bus fare down town.
That all disabled people are benefit cheats, when (90% of appeals are won)
The point is it think it is them what are socially immobile for not knowing these things and for the lack of not wanting choose not too see this side of life.
The same can be said for the upper and mid classes who make assumptions on unemployed people who they have never met .
Or lazy disabled people .
I find it a tad insulting for someone like nick saying that us lower class people need to be socially mobile when the only time he getting to see normal unemployed people is when he is asking for votes from them ,may be the same can be said of any Politian.
To be socially mobile you need a few things even I know this

A good education ( cuts) health(cuts)jobs ( where are they)
Money to go looking for jobs ( cuts to benefits )
To name just a few .

So any one saying that this government are wanting socially mobility are wrong .

George, the hypocrisy comes not from him having benefited himself from such internships, but from the fact that he, his party and his department still offer them.

Clegg may not be a hypocrite (for the reasons Potter gives), but he is a liar, a Tory stooge, & a totally untrustworthy person who should be stripped of his seat and banned from parliament a la Woolas for making false statements during the election campaign.

I’d believe him more about his intention re:social mobility if he wasn’t propping up the most right-wing government we’ve seen since 1983.

Watchman @ 27: I did not mean to suggest that a meritocracy would rapidly ossify into an aristocray of achievement – though that is a worst-case scenario – but only that social stratificaion and elites are a fact of social life. And it’s probably better to have a regularly replenished elite than a static one.

“…..the most right-wing government we’ve seen since 1983.”

More like 1938. Clegg is akin to a member of a gang who’ve hacked someone’s arm off with a meat cleaver, who then wants the credit for plastering a sticking plaster over the mangled remains.

I agree the attacks on Nick Clegg for his background are cheap and unnecessary.

But that said, I think greater equality matters more (as said previously): ultimately I’m more concerned with having fewer poor people than I am with randomising who ends up poor, if I have to choose.

The worrying thing is that social mobility is being used by this Government as an alternative to reducing poverty and inequality – arguing that we can try and produce more equal opportunities instead of narrowing the gap between the poor and the rest (and thus implicitly removing the need to worry about the latter). And note that the social mobility strategy has, therefore, received much more attention than the child poverty strategy.

http://ambivalentleftie.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/dear-ministers-poverty-generally-means-not-having-enough-money/

@42 This government is also signed up to Labour’s target of abolishing child poverty.

@43

Granted that the formal target remains (though they’ve published the strategy later than they’re meant to and they’ve also failed to set up/consult an expert Commission to advise on the strategy … in contravention of the Child Poverty Act) – but it’s been downgraded. If you look at the government’s strategy, it focuses on removing educational disadvantage or generational cycles of opportunity or all manner of other things: but in terms of how they intend to abolish child poverty, in income terms, by 2020, I’m at a loss. And I suspect the reason is that shifting the focus towards social mobility is a) reflective of a preference for that over more equality and b) a shifting of the rhetorical emphasis, in terms of targets, from ones which can be measured over this Parliament and are highly likely to get worse to ones which are intergenerational and very difficult to verify until long after Cameron and Clegg are gone.

That’s not just to defend Labour’s record – poverty declined far too slowly on their watch and started rising again from around 2004/05 – but redistribution was a least increased and more money was channelled to the poor. This lot seem to be using social mobility as an alternative measure while those indices rocket in the other direction.

If he wants to be taken seriously on social mobility, Nick Clegg has to recognise that it is intricately and incontrovertibly linked with income inequality. All the best evidence proves this. And in order not to lay himself open to attacks on the subject, he should acknowledge it instead of dismissing it lightly with the back of his hand and sneering at Labour for at least tackling that side of the problem.

the thing is do we mean social mobility or do we mean that we want a redistribution of wealth.

if something is mobile it can fall as well as rise and be honest how many people would wish to see their chances of moving up decline in order for another person to become top dog?

@46

Personally I’d like to see both with the redistribution of wealth being done via a universal inheritance system.

Nobody would criticise Nick Clegg if they actually believed he wanted to improve social mobility and was actually going to do something that would produce measurable results. Instead he just says he wants to and which politician would say the opposite. The last year has proven Clegg to be an ineffectual liar on the grandest scale seen in British politics, every one of the principles he claimed he stood for have been thrown away in exchange for very little. The man has obtained the lowest price for his soul since Stanley Moon asked for a Frosbisher & Gleason raspberry flavoured ice lolly

@ 47 George

“Personally I’d like to see both with the redistribution of wealth being done via a universal inheritance system.”

Ooh! Me too! Although I’ve yet to come up with a way to bypass the problem of people giving all their worldly belongings to their kids as “gifts”, or perhaps selling them to them for 1p, shortly before they die.

@49

I imagine the best way would be to lower the threshold – to say £75,000 – and then make sure that all the money raised by the inheritance tax would be equally distributed e.g. if the amount raised goes up then the amount each individual receives goes up. Hopefully this should act as incentive for the majority of people and perhaps a more rigorous regime would prevent people from trying to get round it.

@ 50 Georgy W Potter

“I imagine the best way would be to lower the threshold – to say £75,000 – and then make sure that all the money raised by the inheritance tax would be equally distributed e.g. if the amount raised goes up then the amount each individual receives goes up.”

I think you’re up against the tragedy of the commons here. While me letting my (fictional) assets be taken as tax would slightly increase the benefit to my (also fictional) kids, me giving said assets to my kids shortly before my death would GREATLY benefit them.

Also, my kids might not benefit at all from my taxed assets upon death. It depends how the money is allocated. The system I’ve always considered would pay out a share of the total amount accrued to each person when they reach 18, thus allowing them to put it towards a mortgage, university, or whatever they thought best. However, you could have a system that divvied it up evenly across the population.

As to avoiding cheating of the sort mentioned above, I don’t see how you could litigate for it in an enforceable way. Social pressure might help, though.

The reason Labour want to criticise this government over every single action is because the party is financially bust, the polls not ahead enough, they had their worst election result since 1931, have lost 5 million voters since 1997 and with Miliband in charge they know in their hearts they cannot win against any government.

Labour are a busted flush and until they apologise for the mess they left this country in, as every previous Labour government has done before them, they are doomed.

Lose the nonsense and the leader and we may start listening again because at present the party is so irrelevant it’s pathetic…

Social mobility is nice, but it’s not what Labour should be about. Labour should be about abolishing the class system altogether, making social mobility an obsolete concept.

@ 53 Chris

“Labour should be about abolishing the class system altogether, making social mobility an obsolete concept.”

What does this mean in real terms? In other words, how would you go about achieving it, and what would such a world look like?

@43 Potter writes, ‘This government is also signed up to Labour’s target of abolishing child poverty.’

Did the Lib Dems sign their names just as they did when they pledged to vote against ANY increase in tuition fees.

How nice to see LibDem sell-out Potter supporting the halving of the money for EMA. A direct attack on the poor.

54
I can’t answer for Chris but my view of a world without social mobility is a world where all work is valued in the same way. Our concept of social mobility tends not to be grounded in a measurable way, for example, you could earn more in the 70s by working in a pit than in a middle-management post in a bank but the latter was given more status. Bankers can earn a lot more than doctors but then it is the latter which has the higher status. And it isn;t necessarily related to education and formal qualifications. And class is now about perception rather than any concrete pointer.
But the notion of equalizing reward and status and eliminating the psychological perception of class sounds incredulous within our current capitalist society, it can only exist and feel normal within a socialist society.

@ 55 Erica Blair

“How nice to see LibDem sell-out Potter supporting the halving of the money for EMA.”

If you’re going to continue to call George a sellout, you should at least answer him when he asked why you’re calling him that.

@ 56 steveb

OK, but doesn’t that mainly come down to the perceptions of individuals? How would you go about creating a society where status was not assigned by employment?

The reason I ask is that Chris said this is something Labour should be doing. Fair enough in principle, but unless someone can suggest a real-world method of achieving it, it’s not actually a suggestion, and it would be unfair to blame Labour for not doing it.

Obv you aren’t Chris, so fair play if you want to leave this one.

@55

Perhaps you could answer my question.

As for EMA, I received it when I was at school and I certainly didn’t need it, several of my friends were also eligible despite the fact that we were at a private school. I would suggest that cutting it to people like my friends and I while spending more on those who actually need it is hardly an attack on the poor.

58
No, I’m happy to expand, although the model of socialism which I prefer (it’s a liberal/socialist model) is rather more complex than a post on a blog could give.
Labour are not, and never have been, a socialist party although many moons ago I was a LP member, the reason for this is that it was a party which was leading to the transition to socialism, this all changed when Blair dispensed with Clause 4. Personally I don’t believe labour will ever return to their previous stance so I can’t answer for Chris, who may have a different take on it.
Prior to capitalism, there were basically two classes, state/church and the peasants (simplistic yes), the peasants never aspired to, or were able to change their class and it was never an issue because socially their economic activity was nothing to do with their class. So it isn’t an inevitable fact that economic activity will always trigger ideas of class, it only started doing so in the event of industrial capitalism and helped along by the division of labour and a growing moneyied middle-class.
The value of any particular job is totally fluid and relative to social change, if all people received the same monetary value for their work, there will be no perception of class/hierarchy/superiority, which may sound far-fetched but a lot of perception is based on what we work at.
How will we reach this stage in social development, probably only by a revolution or when the existing economic system becomes so messed-up it will be the only option ie strict control of public production and consumption. I would prefer the latter option.

@60

To be strictly accurate, the church did offer a chance for peasants to change their class – look at Wolsley for example. Also, it is worth noting that in early medieval England there was also a class system – namely: serf, freeman, thegn, high nobility. It was only the Norman conquest which reduced most of the population to the status of unfree peasants.

60
Yes you are right George although I did point-out that it was a simplistic description of a medieval class system.

@ 60 steveb

Fair enough, that is a genuine suggestions. I personally don’t favour it – first, it puts a lot of power into the hands of whoever’s in charge, and second, once you remove money and status, there’s very little reason for anyone to want to do the most difficult jobs, or the jobs that require the most training.

I also suspect that people would continue to ascribe more status to some people than others. It’s how we think.