#class structure

[jhsharman]

summer fun

Accidentally had an "Archie 2" there.

The recoloring --darkening -- reddening -- of the sands is interesting. Like, the cacti lead to a decision to place it in the Southwest.

"Gay" is out. "Groovy" remains.

Maybe losing sight of the color here.

[amymaebee]

[racefortheironthrone]

I think you've written about this before, but where exactly are the landed gentry in terms of the aristocracy? Are they petty lords, or slightly higher/lower? Or are they separate from the aristocracy, and if so, what is the distinction? This is a source of constant confusion for me when studying British history.

I wrote about this here.

The gentry were a liminal class, existing at the very boundary of the aristocracy and the “commonalty,” and sharing both cultural and material characteristics of both.

Like the aristocracy, the gentry were defined by landed wealth; they didn’t work for a living (which would make them “in trade”), but lived off of rental income from their estates, which made them “gently born” and thus “gentlemen.” (This also meant sharing the aristocracy’s cultural values and practices.) In no small part because their economic basis came from inherited wealth, they shared the aristocracy’s obsession with lines of descent, arranged marriages with people from the “right families,” and of course, with coats of arms. One of the few remaining perks of being ex-noble was that you got to keep your coat of arms, and were thus from an “armigerous” family.  

Like the commonalty, the gentry did not have peerages or knighthoods, because possessing those lifted you out of the gentry and into the nobility. In part because estate management isn’t cheap, the gentry would from time-to-time make marriage alliances with cash-rich merchant families looking for social advancement, so that the boundaries between the two classes could be somewhat porous and ambiguous. They occupied a similar position in the political system as well: if urban seats in the House of Commons were over-represented by elite merchants, guildmasters, and movers and shakers in local government, rural seats in the House of Commons were dominated by the gentry.

I hope that helps.

[entitledrichpeople]

As global poverty declines, we should beware the new class wars | Kenan Malik

We’re told the world is turning middle class, but those at the bottom have little to cheer

WE, the workers and the poor, don’t need to “beware” “new class wars”.  They represent the potential of freedom from the horrific class systems we live in right now.  The idea this article pushes of pretending the petty bourgeoisie are somehow engaging in the same struggle as the exploited workers (without proletarianization of the petty bourgeoisie) offers us nothing but more of the same (some argue there is overlap of interests in nations fighting colonialism-but the unifying feature there is one of national struggle).  There’s nothing “new” about petty bourgeoisie, their cooperation with the rest of the bourgeoisie, or the exploitation of workers.  We need to examine who the “we” in this article is that needs to beware working class revolution, because it certainly is not the proletariat, the poor, or oppressed peoples. Like Marx and Engels said: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

[retroreverbs]

The Status Seekers by Vance Packard (Pelican, 1963 edition).

[trashwizard]

I'm sure this won't surprise anyone, but I fucking hate banks. I use a credit union, and I swear they're pretty much just as greedy and eager to screw people over as the big banks are, just on a smaller scale.

[heightenyoursenses-blog]

Documentary: Is Love and Romance Shaped By Class?

https://vimeo.com/241595577