The Production of Class: The Performance of the Personal in our Economic Crisis

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you know about the recent saturation of talk about the economic crisis, outsourcing jobs, the collapse of the auto industry, etc. It’s the economic analysts’ moment to shine with the facts and the figures, the expertise and the inside story on all the financial sector’s ups and downs. But what the financial sector and economic experts don’t seem to really point to is the performance of economics. I haven’t seen (and that’s not to say it’s not out there) any economists or financial experts speak to the issue of our classist economic system and how the image of a booming economy has been sold to us by the media, public sector and private sector’s incestuous relationship when it comes to money.

I was watching Book-TV today with Jon Jester speaking about his book, “Flat Broke in the Free Market.” He spoke about various economic systems around the world and their effect on the working class. One point he made is that our economy no longer produces or creates for its population. Instead we 1) outsource our jobs, having someone else make things for us paying them next to nothing (something they couldn’t get away with in this country the way they can in other countries), and 2) charge other countries ridiculously high rates, some as high as 30%, to borrow from us (something they HAVE managed to do in this country.) He also mentioned that the way we structure our economy in the U.S. is really just a continuation of the colonialist structure where you don’t work yourself. Instead you hire people for inhumane wages to work for you while over-charging others for the products made. Sound familiar?

His explanation sounded very well-researched and clear. But what I couldn’t stop thinking about is the social and valuative underpinnings of the economic structure. I’m talking about the selling of this as a good idea to the American people. How were we convinced that this was a more advanced, productive, fulfilling way to live and support ourselves? Since when does a hard days work and creating what you use and using what you create connote a dated, primitive, obsolete, uncivilized, underclass way of life? Since when is making the things you use a third-world way of working? How did we as American’s convince ourselves that it would improve us as people and as a society to have other people do things for us (that we’re totally capable of doing ourselves) for a wage that keeps them in a permanently secondary class?

I mean if you really take a look at this phenomenon I think it’s pretty pervasive in our culture today. From my time in NY, seeing the Brown nannies pushing White babies in strollers being paid by parents who often aren’t paying taxes for the nannies they employ and God only knows what else they’re not including in the wage consideration. From my home in North Carolina, you see people who, instead of buying from the farmer right down the street (a person they can look in the face and hold responsible if their food turns up tainted,) would rather buy their veggies from a mega-store that also sells tires. There people see purchasing a lower-grade product from the store as “fancier” than making it yourself or buying from a local producer. How did we get here?

I’ve seen the misery first hand of upper-class children I’ve had the pleasure of teaching. They are miserable because of 1) the pressure to remain at the top of this fabricated economic food chain and 2) the emptiness they feel not ever really having the pleasure of creating, maintaining or producing something substantive in their everyday lives. I mean really, many of these kids don’t lift a proverbial finger in their lives, know nothing of an honest, hard days work, and can’t quite figure out where the sadness in their gut comes from. They can’t sort out that cynicism is the order of the day because they are absolutely terrified to try to “do” anything a working person might struggle to do. The moment you expect many of these children of privilege to fail at something, to work hard at something, to honor the ability that each individual has, you have a totally different child.

In a culture where everything is made by someone else, society lacks the pride of creation, of knowing a craft, of honoring the individual techniques and methods garnered in the process of producing something. Sure we may have more stuff, but we’re unhappy because we’ve given away all our money to get it instead of experiencing the hard earned work it takes to make something, the pride of bartering or negotiating for something, or the gift of finding that special producer in your area that has the most unique style, talent, or signature characteristic in her or his work.

It’s the fear that false competence and karmic backlash dole out that keeps us unhappy and working way too hard. We know that this hyped-up overvalued culture we’ve sold to people is a farce. We work harder because we’re constantly spinning our wheels to make sure others don’t find out. We don’t sleep because we know that we’re screwing the people we’ve hired to work for crap wages. ( “Crap wages? Oh that’s a technical term I’ve picked up from the economists. Lol.) We know in our heart of hearts that it’s wrong to take advantage of those who will work for less but do the same job we expected to get paid well for. So we exhaust ourselves with creating all these reasons, justifications, and excuses as to why we’re really doing them a favor by not treating them as equal human beings. And then we wonder why we’re unhappy and exhausted.

I’m saying you don’t need to know much about the economy to know why we’re dissatisfied with our current economic situation. I would argue the issue is much closer to home and far more familiar than we realize. It doesn’t exist in that indecipherable financial analysis of our current condition. It doesn’t lie in the incomprehensible economic trends we’ve made an attempt to understand. Instead it lies within our own socio-cultural value system. This issue is one that I hope is a bit easier to fix and one I know is lot easier to control. It starts within each of us, a place far easier to change than Wall Street, Capital Hill, and the rest of the world. I say put on new shoes folks; don’t try to cover the world with rubber soles.