Class and Activism: The Role of the Middle Class

Introduction

Many of us don’t feel comfortable with talk about class. Unlike sexism or racism, for example, we don’t generally hear much said about class oppression, or classism. Yet to understand sexism and racism and oppose them effectively we need to understand how they interact with class. In fact, class plays a key role in every sort of social injustice, from Covid19 death rates to climate change vulnerability. It’s the family you were born into and the sort of work you do that decide how privileged, protected, or vulnerable you are. In fact, class is so central to how our societies operate that it can feel impossible to imagine any alternative system, as if tinkering with the effects of class is the most we can hope for. In this pamphlet we show that this isn’t true.

Many activists working in progressive movements and organisations are middle-class, including the two authors of this pamphlet. Class identity has big, often unintended, effects on the leadership, policies, relationships, and culture of movements and organisations.

Whatever sort of activists we are – for instance, trade unionists, environmentalists, feminists, or anti-racist campaigners – our middle-class conditioning and lifestyle can undermine what we want to achieve. To be at our most effective we need to understand how the class system operates, and how classism can affect our activism.

Activists today face two major, interlocking challenges: the worsening climate crisis and the increasing failure of the current economic system to meet the needs of ordinary people. The Covid19 pandemic has highlighted many of these difficulties while also adding an additional challenge of how to organise under the constraints of social distancing and the prevention of contagion.

To respond intelligently to these challenges, we have to recognise and understand the workings of the class system. We have to understand how it produces inequalities across the generations, how it hurts, limits, and humiliates people.

In this pamphlet we briefly describe how the class system operates, with a particular focus on the role of the middle class. We then go on to discuss what this means for our social change work as middle-class activists, particularly in the context of climate breakdown. We then look at how our class training affects our relationships with activists from other class backgrounds, and we conclude with suggestions for getting rid of classism and opposing the system of class oppression at its root.

How Class Operates in Capitalism

Class differences often show up in lifestyle, accent, skills, tastes, and education, but class itself is based in the economic system. A single system, capitalism, is now dominant across the world. The capitalist class system may look different from country to country but its basic workings are pretty simple.

In the capitalist economic system, employed people produce goods and services and receive a wage or a salary. The goods or services are sold for considerably more than the amount the workers are paid. All these employed people make up the working class in the broad sense.

This wider working class covers a huge range of employees. It includes those who work directly in producing goods and services, but also well-paid professionals and managers. It also includes more and more people who have been forced into low-paid, precarious jobs as automation, robots and artificial intelligence have reduced the core workforce. They are taken on when demand rises or when organised workers cost too much to employ, and laid off when they aren’t needed.

As well as this big group of paid workers there are huge numbers of people, most of them women, who work without pay. They raise families, do other sorts of caring and community work, grow food for their own households or in other ways keep the paid workforce going.

There are many others again who have given up hope of finding work. They may be disabled, ill or excluded from the labour market for some other reason. These people have to find other ways of surviving – benefits, unofficial paid work, or crime of some sort. Of course, many people are in more than one category, or they move between categories over their lifetimes. All of these people are, in effect, part of the working class.

Who benefits from the gap between the value of the goods and services produced and the wages or salaries paid to those who do the producing? The resulting profit goes, directly or indirectly, to various investors and shareholders. Not all of those who end up getting some of this profit are rich, and not all of them have the power to make major decisions affecting the organisation.

But there is a small group of people who regularly receive a high income, who build up considerable – or enormous – wealth and who have strong decision-making power. These wealthy and powerful people are sometimes called ‘the 1%’, the ‘mega-rich’, ‘capitalists’ or ‘the ruling class.’ They own and control the organisations that employ workers, along with the banks and other financial institutions that finance and benefit from the production of goods and services. In this pamphlet we are going to use a relatively neutral term, the ‘owning class’ to refer to this group.

It is not so much the individuals in the owning class who are the problem, even the ones who are enormously rich and even when they make cruel and destructive decisions. The real problem is the system that creates inequality and division, the roles that people play within that system, and the power the owning class has over the lives of the vast majority.

How people come to accept injustice and inequality

A large-scale economic system cannot function without the agreement of the majority of the population. That consent isn’t openly stated, but it is still there. In this system, the working class are the majority, the owning class is small. (This is true within countries and across the world.)

If working class people saw themselves as having common interests, they wouldn’t accept such an unjust and unequal system. Instead of seeing it as normal, they would be constantly criticising it, resisting it, and organising to replace it with a fair system. Of course from time to time that does happen, but the current system has survived many upheavals and is generally accepted as the way things have to be. This acceptance depends on people being divided from one another so that they can’t envisage system change, let alone unite to bring it about.

In its early history the capitalist system continued many traditional social divisions including aristocratic privilege, sexism and male domination, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism. The accumulated wealth that made capitalism possible was amassed through slavery, genocide of indigenous people and colonialism, so an ideology to justify these crimes – racism – had to be developed. All oppressions divide people, and attempts to justify them always claim that there are different sorts of people. Some people should  be privileged because they are better than others, while others should be dominated and kept lower. Sometimes the lower group is said to be kept down for its own good (women and colonised people are obvious examples). The details of these beliefs vary from place to place and time to time, but the effect is always to stop people getting together to bring about change, and to stop them supporting one another in their various struggles. As long as they are fighting among themselves, they can’t get together to agree on radical changes.

Many groups and many individuals understand very well these workings of the class system. What has never been so clear is where the middle class fits in. Who are they, exactly? What role do they play in the class system? Could middle-class people really play an effective role in ending it? If we can answer these questions, we will become far more effective as middle-class activists, whatever sort of activism we are doing.

Creating a Middle Class

We said above that the wider working class has been divided by various oppressions such as sexism and racism. Cross cutting these is another, very effective, way of dividing people: you separate off a section of this huge group and treat the people in this section as different from, and better than, other workers.

This separated section is the ‘middle class’. In return for helping the system run more smoothly, efficiently, and profitably, we receive rewards and privileges that aren’t available to other workers, such as greater job security, more autonomy at work and more comfortable lifestyles. Although most middle-class rewards are nowhere near as big as those of the small elite at the top, they are greater than those of other working people. They make a big difference to those receiving them.

Not everyone in the middle class was born into it. But those of us who were brought up in middle-class families had a different upbringing, education and training from the rest of the working class. This was to prepare us for the roles already mapped out for us. In this way separate class cultures have developed and they’ve been used to reinforce the idea that we are different and better.

In various ways we middle-class workers become agents of the owning class. We help to run the system, and we are the visible face of authority. Because of this we are a useful buffer between the owning and working classes. We are the front-line privileged people doing the controlling, although in fact we are doing it on behalf of others. The attention goes onto us rather than the owning class and makes their role less visible.

Whether we are born into the middle class or move into it as older children or adults, we get trained into the role and the belief system that goes along with it. We assimilate and take on the patterns of behaviour that fit the role we are expected to play. These patterns often come to seem appropriate and second nature to us. They are ways of behaving that reinforce the division from the rest of the wider working class and can make it difficult for other people to relate to us and work with us. For example, we learn to conform, not to ‘rock the boat’ or cause trouble, to be polite and quiet, not to be direct about our thoughts or feelings, not to show our real struggles, to constantly monitor other people’s reactions to us, and to censor what we are thinking. As we’ll see later, this system of training can damage and limit us as well as getting in the way of what we want to do as activists.

Is there a deliberate, systematic conspiracy to divide and weaken the working class in the way we’ve described? We don’t think so, although certainly at times owning-class leaders do get together to plan divisive strategies. Most of the people who run corporate capitalism see themselves as entitled to their positions and wealth. They see these as the reward for their cleverness and hard work. They believe that ‘human nature’ means no better system is possible, and that others benefit from the ‘trickle-down’ effect of their wealth, or from their philanthropy. They are also themselves trapped by the ‘logic’ of capitalism that requires owners to take any steps necessary to generate profits, however harmful these steps may be.

Defining the Middle Class

‘Middle class’ is a confusing term. In the USA it is often used as a polite way of saying ‘working class’. Often it is used as a put-down, like the term ‘bourgeois’ in Europe. It frequently gets defined in terms of income. For many people it is taken to refer to certain lifestyles, types of culture, education, accent or speech patterns. Let’s try to get some clarity about this.

We define the middle class as those people who work in various supervisory, coordinating, or professional jobs, that function to help the economic system operate as planned. Their jobs usually have strict rules for entry (e.g. a certain level of higher education). People in these positions usually have some independence in the decisions they can make, although there are always rules which they are obliged to apply. But they do not usually have people watching and micro-managing them – they are the ones who do the supervising.

Middle-class workers don’t work directly in the production of goods and (non-professional) services. For instance, they may be managers, organisers, trainers, health workers, educators, or religious leaders. What these jobs have in common is the basic role of making the economic system and its various organisations work well, profitably and smoothly, and of keeping the workforce obedient, efficient, and productive.

At any one time there are also large numbers of people who aren’t working in middle-class jobs themselves at present, but who are wholly or partly economically dependent on middle-class workers and share their lifestyle. Because of this economic dependency large numbers of women and children should also be included among the middle class. (If they were dependent on people in working-class jobs, they would be working-class). But we need to notice that while women in this group share some of the privileges of the middle class, they are still oppressed as women and being partly or wholly economically dependent is itself part of this oppression.

So while differences in terms of income, working conditions, speech patterns, degree of autonomy at work, level of authority, social status, life opportunities, education and health provision, and so on are often useful pointers to someone’s class position, they are not at the heart of what makes that person middle-class. The defining factor is the role we play.

The middle class is very diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship, family backgrounds, and so on, yet the role we have in common is the significant thing. People often feel that these other cross-cutting identities are more important. Of course they do have deep effects on our lives. For instance, middle-class people of colour will certainly have experiences and feelings that white people in a similar class position do not have. Similarly, middle-class Jews will have experiences and feelings that differ from those of non-Jews. And people who were brought up poor or working-class, but who are currently middle-class, have experiences and feelings that people brought up middle-class have never had and may not understand.

This range of feelings and experiences may be subjectively so strong that they stop people seeing themselves as middle-class, although their jobs fit the description we’ve offered. But it isn’t experiences and feelings, ethnic heritage, lifestyle preferences, family attachments or any of the huge range of possible perspectives, tastes and ways of doing things that count in the class system – it’s the role you play.  If you play that role, you are middle-class, whatever experiences and feelings you have and whatever forms of oppression you may suffer. People from any of the subgroups within the middle class are just as middle-class as those from the stereotypical subgroup of white, raised middle-class people.

What makes people middle-class is the role they play in the class system. All these subgroups have that role in common. Let’s look at this role in more detail.

The Role of the Middle Class Explored

As we’ve said, the general role of the middle class is to help manage and maintain the smooth and efficient operation of the class system. We can make this clearer by breaking it down into at least eleven constituent roles, along with two supplementary ones. Individual middle-class people may play one or a number of these roles as paid workers, as unpaid workers, or as consumers.

1. To manage, coordinate and make decisions about the work of working people. We do this as managers, supervisors, superiors, administrators, and so on.

2. To suppress, minimize or manage discontent and dissent. We do this as HR managers, trade union leaders, social workers, religious leaders, lawyers, mental health professionals, politicians, members of the police and intelligence services, and so on.

3. To make money for the owning class by developing new or better products, instruments, processes, systems, rules or controls. We do this as scientists, engineers, accountants, lawyers, stockbrokers, hedge-fund managers, politicians, and so on.

4. To focus on making money or climbing into the owning class. We do this as self-employed people and small business owners. This gives us a personal interest in the class system continuing.

5. To produce and spread ideas that paint the oppressive system as fair and natural. We do this as writers, media commentators, journalists, economists, politicians, teachers and academics, religious leaders, and so on.

6. To produce compliant and productive citizens by child-raising, educating, training, and guiding. We do this as mothers, fathers, carers, teachers, doctors, guidance counsellors, therapists, psychologists, trainers, and so on.

7. To distract people from the oppressiveness of the class system. We do this, for example, as beauty and health professionals, self-help experts, media professionals, journalists, writers, artists, and entertainers.

8. To be distracted and ‘harmless’ as consumers in ways that do not pose any threat to the class system. We do this by becoming preoccupied with comfort and security, with cultural opportunities, with our health and fitness, with having an enjoyable life, or looking and feeling good. This role actually targets people of all classes with free time to spare and money to spend.

9. To study, work hard, and be well-behaved as young people. This means restricting ourselves to smaller, ‘realistic’ dreams, and doing well enough academically to get into well-paid, high-status jobs with good career prospects. 

10. To be a model for others to aspire to and evidence that capitalism works for people of all backgrounds. Those of us who weren’t born into the middle class (e.g. the ‘upwardly mobile’) or who belong to a disadvantaged social group (for example, people targeted by racism) are used to blame others in the same social group for failing to overcome whatever the disadvantage was. Our achievements in the middle class are used as evidence that capitalism works for everyone if only they try hard enough.

11. To be a model for other women that it’s possible to ‘have it all’ (beauty, marriage, motherhood, and professional success), so that when any woman fails to meet these standards it is seen as her individual shortcoming.

Why we do it

It is completely understandable that we middle-class people take on these roles. Huge resources go into making sure that enough people agree to do this. Whatever class we were brought up in, and whatever other identities we may have, we are relentlessly manipulated into playing at least some of these roles.

Many of us originally wanted middle-class occupational roles not only because of the money and status but also because they sounded responsible, interesting and useful. Maybe we hoped to help people, or we thought that we could minimise the bad things about the organisations where we worked. And in fact middle-class people do often resist some of the expectations of their role. We break the rules, or make exceptions; we behave more humanly than we are supposed to. In this way we may make a big difference to individuals or small groups, but we’re still trapped by the requirements of our roles. It is near-impossible to transform the organisations we work in, and quite impossible to bring about system change, from within our middle-class roles. As soon as we show signs of being effective we put ourselves at risk of upheaval, attack or conflict, disciplinary measures, sacking or being passed over for promotion. To achieve radical transformation, we would have to combine with others and apply a clear understanding of how oppression works and what can be done to counter it. We return to this point later on.

Supplementary Roles

For middle-class people who cannot reconcile themselves to roles outlined above there are some alternatives that are tolerated by the class system. They may even act as a safety valve for harmlessly channelling dissatisfaction.

12. To ease the harshness of the class system through charity, fundraising, social reforms, mainstream political involvement, and so on.  These can be spare-time activities or full-time occupations. Working within the system in this way often raises awareness of injustice. It can make a substantial difference to the lives of individuals or groups, but it cannot bring about large-scale system change by itself.

13. To ‘drop out’ and create a lifestyle that keeps involvement in the oppressive system to a bare minimum – such as going off-grid and becoming as nearly self-sufficient as possible. Such a choice may reduce the oppressive role we play and allow us to feel less guilty, but unless it becomes a sizeable movement it won’t have any effect on the class system.

Not everything middle-class people do fits into roles 1 – 13. There are other radical collective actions that are not so easy for the system to accommodate or co-opt. These include experiments with different forms of organisation, and different ways of organising production and consumption.

For instance, now (as in the past) there are groups that use art or music or direct action to criticize or disrupt corporate capitalism, and that build large grass roots movements to demand change and offer an alternative vision. These tactics work best when they have a clear class perspective that puts social justice first. Their best chance of bringing about radical social change is when their vision and practice includes everyone.

The Challenges We Face

When we look at an economic system that relies on maintaining divisions between classes, we middle-class activists face a number of key challenges.

Firstly: we need to become aware of classism in ourselves, in our organisations and in our societies and take steps to get rid of it.

Secondly: we need to recognise that the capitalist system as we know it is unworkable and unsustainable and is heading for collapse.

Thirdly: using our middle-class advantages we need to organise to minimise the destructive effects of the capitalist system and of its collapse.

Fourthly: we need to end our allegiance to the current system and change the role we play in that system.  Our aim instead must be to envision just, sustainable societies free of class oppression and strategise and act to bring these about.

Let’s look at each of these challenges in more detail and examine what they will mean in our lives.

Becoming Aware of Classism

When we take on middle-class roles, without intending it we often end up in an oppressive relationship with other workers. In jobs such as teachers, managers, public servants, social workers, or other professions, middle-class people routinely exercise authority over working-class people that is often experienced as a form of oppression. This may also be reflected in our activist work.

Even when middle-class people are not in positions of authority over them, working-class or poor people often experience us as oppressive. This can happen when we:

• act as if we think we are better than working-class people and entitled to privilege;
• assume that we ourselves or other middle-class people should control or lead gatherings or meetings,
• keep our distance, stay quiet or act overly polite;
• monopolise conversations,
• ignore a working-class person’s contribution to a discussion or take credit for the ideas of those we manage;
• react over-enthusiastically or with pleased surprise to a working-class person’s good thinking;  
• speak as though we are experts on working-class people or people who are poor;
•  impose our ideas or values;
• take our way of life for granted as if it is the normal way to be.

In all these cases we come across as oppressive and classism is getting in the way of a real relationship. Such ‘classist’ behaviour may be blatant or subtle. Usually we have no intention of being oppressive, but nevertheless that is how our behaviour will come over.

Middle-class people have various ideas about what ‘people like us’ are like. Whatever it is we think is special or particular about us will often be taken as proving our superiority, and used to justify our privilege. (‘Of course I have a higher standard of living. I studied for seven years to get to where I am.’) Such assumptions make equal, respectful relationships very difficult between middle-class and working-class people.

Those of us who come into the middle class from a working-class or raised-poor background often don’t escape classism. We may still experience oppressive behaviour and assumptions from neighbours or colleagues who were brought up middle-class. These traditional middle-class people may communicate to us that we don’t fit, that we should work harder at assimilating, that our accent, clothes, skin colour, ethnicity and habits are not right. Because ‘upwardly mobile’ people were not conditioned from birth into rigid middle-class behaviour and attitudes, coming face to face with middle-class distance, superiority, entitlement, judgmental attitudes and unawareness can be a shock.  The pressure to conform and assimilate can be even stronger for Jews, people targeted by racism, migrants and other minorities.   

Getting rid of classism

We middle-class activists need to get rid of our classism. First, we need to start noticing it. Then we need to find ways of getting rid of any attitudes and behaviour that spoil our relationships with working-class and poor people. It will be hard to do this on our own. In conversations and discussions with middle-class activist colleagues, we can start the clean-up process by talking about our relationships with working-class people and people who are poor. Where does it get difficult for us in these relationships? What are some of the embarrassing or awkward things we have done, said or thought? What are the feelings that come up for us in the presence of people who are working-class or poor? This first aspect of our class-work could be called ‘consciousness-raising’. It involves uncovering the workings of classism in our relationships; learning from shared reflection on experiences, feelings, and actions.

Classist behaviour and assumptions are often institutionalised in organisations, including those aiming for social change. As middle-class people, we are not good judges of this tendency. Often, we are totally unaware of the off-putting effect of our organisation’s culture, rules and customs. The experts on this will be the working-class people we work with. We need to listen to how they experience that culture and ask them what changes they would like to see. In one particular organisation, for example, a small, middle-class ‘in-group’ ran everything, often complaining about the passivity of everyone else. This group developed its own vocabulary and ways of doing things, and it seemed to everyone else that the in-group had special knowledge that others lacked, so there was no point in challenging them. Any feelings of stupidity working-class members had previously picked up were reinforced, together with resentment at the mistakes and limitations of the existing leadership. It takes a deliberate, aware effort to stop this happening and to remain open, accountable, welcoming, and appreciative of everyone’s talents and willingness to work together.

In the context of the climate crisis, for example, classism can enter into the strategies or solutions that are proposed by middle-class activists. Carbon taxes, for example, may disproportionately affect working-class people. Lifestyle changes may require greater sacrifices from working-class people than middle-class people. Working-class jobs may be much more at risk than middle-class jobs, and facing arrest will be risker for some people than others. As long as working-class people are not at the centre of devising strategies and finding solutions, there is a real possibility that classism will unawarely distort what is proposed. The risks that people are asked to take and the prices they are asked to pay may demand much more of working-class people than middle-class people.

The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the importance and centrality of the work of direct production workers, such as  bus drivers, refuse collectors, delivery people and supermarket cashiers (as well as health care workers), all of whom have been obliged to face considerable risks during the pandemic. Without their work, the system could no longer function. Instead of this central significance being reflected in their earnings and working conditions, this new recognition has so far been limited to symbolic and potentially patronising appreciations, such as clapping for health workers or putting notes on dustbins thanking ‘Our wonderful binmen.’ What’s missing is clarity about the significant role always played by working-class people, and solidarity across class lines to oppose class inequality.

It is not easy to get rid of classist attitudes and assumptions in ourselves and our organisations, but it can be done. However, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that by doing it we are transforming the class system. To go further, we have to be willing to face the fact that the system we have helped to maintain is unworkable.

Facing the Unworkability of Capitalism

In the past, capitalism was taken for granted by many people as the established framework of any society worth living in. Now, even conservative and financial spokespeople regularly discuss its limitations and whether or not it will be able to recover from another global financial crisis. Their views are increasingly in line with those of critics of the pursuit of unlimited growth and the consequent damage to the environment.

Many signs suggest that this economic system as we know it is no longer workable or sustainable. These include the following:

• the growing polarization of rich and poor globally and within countries, along with the sheer scale of this inequality;
• crises and instability resulting from the deregulation of financial markets;
• increasing tension between major world power blocs, proxy wars, increasing danger from nuclear weapons;
• the drift towards authoritarian, xenophobic and fascist political systems, with increased surveillance and restrictions in democratic countries;
• growing religious fundamentalism and extremism, leading to violence and counter-violence;
• huge and growing movements of displaced people fleeing from wars, poverty and climate breakdown;
• on-going cuts to basic social and public services, and an increase in the number of states failing to deliver the most basic services to the majority of their citizens; 
• the use, by corporations and countries, of more and more destructive means to reach the last of the planet’s resources;
• new forms of colonialism, particularly in Africa, in an attempt to avoid the effects of expected food and other shortages elsewhere;
• the marketing of ever more unsustainable lifestyles to the owning and middle classes and the rich nations, while the poorer nations attempt to develop similar infrastructure and levels of consumption;
• failure by governments to agree on emissions reductions to avoid catastrophic global warming, and to invest in the transition to sustainable economies.
• Increase in the frequency of pandemics, the failure to agree on measures to curb them, and the inability to supply necessary protective equipment and to co-operate internationally to protect all people.

While capitalism will continue to function in particular locations, the global system of neoliberal corporate capitalism is coming under increasing pressure and beginning to disintegrate. It looks as if capitalism is collapsing of its own accord independently of what steps activists take.

If it weren’t for climate breakdown, we might expect the disintegration of global capitalism to take many decades, if not centuries. But the immediate threat of catastrophic, runaway climate breakdown changes everything. Global warming has already heightened some of the trends listed above. It has been produced by the short-term focus of the race for profits. This is so urgent that, even though it can only be a starting point, activists have to demand that capitalist enterprises accept thoroughgoing regulation. This could be compared to what happened in Britain’s industrial revolution when capitalism was actually destroying its own working class.

Huge social change is now inevitable over the coming decade involving both social breakdown and climate breakdown. This is a scary prospect to come to terms with, but, as activists we need to face it and re-examine our goals and methods. We will necessarily be campaigning for reforms to what already exists, but they need to be reforms that point towards a better, more just and more sustainable system. For example, a flat rate carbon tax would allow the rich and comfortably off to behave much as they do now, while working-class and poor people would be forced to cut down on heat and food. We need to campaign for redistributive ways of rationing carbon emissions.

There is hope. The reaction to the pandemic has shown that those in power in current societies are capable of making large-scale changes extremely fast when they can’t see any alternative. The money that has been spent on the coronavirus crisis is comparable to what is needed to prevent catastrophic global warming. It’s also clear that most people will accept inconvenience and disruption if they believe it’s in their own and others’ best interests. The current focus is on getting back to ‘normal’, but the pandemic has pointed to the possibility of a radical change of direction.  These are important lessons to bear in mind when we feel powerless and hopeless in facing the climate emergency.

Building Just, Sustainable Societies

Social change emerges from the interplay of all the various forces in the society, both progressive and reactionary. No one person, organisation or social group can determine the nature of future society, but individuals, organisations or coalitions can aim to have a decisive influence on the kind of world that emerges. As middle-class activists we are in a strong position to do this. Our access to knowledge, resources and social influence are potential strengths. These come from our roles in the system but they can help to transform it when we use them in the context of a clear vision for a just, sustainable world.

Spelling out a vision that takes the current situation as our starting point is key to strategic planning. We need sustainable societies free of class oppression/exploitation, which also means societies which are not based on racism, either at home or elsewhere.  (A ‘sustainable’ society that exports its waste and its low paid jobs to poor countries is not globally sustainable and is based on racial/class oppression.)  We cannot settle for less than an economic system or systems organised around meeting environmental needs, and the rational human needs of all sections of the people,  instead of around greed and the accumulation of even greater profits. We need to hold this long-term aim in our minds as we plan our intermediate goals and the next practical steps towards them. Over and over again, surprising events and feedback from our own actions will help us clarify or make us rethink these plans. As we do this, we will learn from and link up with others who share a similar vision.

Leadership

We know from history that when systems collapse, the process is usually very painful and destructive. How bad it will be this time depends partly on whether or not new and more rational leadership emerges. As middle-class activists, we need to recognise and support that emerging leadership, not necessarily taking the lead ourselves.

The leadership we need in order to build a new non-oppressive society isn’t likely to come from currently privileged groups, who inevitably have a vested interest in the current system. Individuals from these groups may play significant roles, but for effective change we need the leadership of indigenous people, working-class people, poor and dispossessed people, young people and young adults, women, colonised people, and people targeted by racism. Many of these have a particular understanding of the workings of global capitalism and are less compromised by a stake in the system. In addition, they are on the front line of climate change and the disintegration of the economic system. The rest of us need to learn from them, and back their leadership in the world.

In practice, this means supporting or joining organisations that have working-class leadership (for example, some community organisations or trades unions), or encouraging and backing working-class leadership in other progressive organisations (for example, churches, political parties or environmental grassroots movements).

Deciding to back other leaders does not mean that middle-class activists should go passive or decide that we are unfit to lead. We have to keep thinking about what makes most sense in each situation. Sometimes we can be most effective in supporting other people’s leadership, backing them and becoming a resource for them. At other times it will make sense to take an active leadership role, for example by leading others with similar oppressed backgrounds to our own, or leading an allies’ group of which we are a member, and so on. Some of us in an oppressor role may also be able to take useful leadership in mixed groups or organisations, for instance when there is confusion or a vacuum. Leadership works best as a collaborative process. It is not always formal – sometimes we can play an effective role in the background without any title or position. Our challenge is to lead awarely, conscious of the danger of usurping the leadership of oppressed people or blocking its emergence.

Changing Our Role

Instead of being key players in the running of capitalism, we middle-class people can decide to oppose it. We can support each other to use our minds, our training, our privilege, our positions and our access to resources to expose the harm the class system does to humans and the environment. Our priority needs to become supporting or building grassroots change movements and making solid relationships with other activists and the people to whom we are allies. This means resisting the temptations of career progression or the pursuit of material comfort and security, which, in the climate crisis, might mean looking around for a bolthole for ourselves and our families.

With grassroots change movements as our priority, we still need to earn our living or somehow support ourselves and our dependents in ways that keep us strong, resilient and able to enjoy life. We have decisions to make about what we will do in our lives from now on.

Our choices will partly depend on our stage of life. For example, younger people are under pressure to take on some middle-class role or other, or to work hard to be accepted into one. Instead, many are choosing to organise their lives around social change. Some are rejecting middle-class roles altogether. Others are working within mainstream organisations but prioritising their goals for change, rather than career progression. Some do take on middle-class roles in order to use the opportunities they offer, but without making any permanent commitment to them. These aren’t easy choices. They may involve facing disappointment, worry, and criticism from families and friends.

Those of us who have been in middle-class roles for some time need to be honest with ourselves. How much have we have been able to do towards progressive change? What have we had to do that compromised our integrity? A local government worker, for instance, might ask herself how much she can actually do to assist disadvantaged people or to change policy in the context of savage cuts to public services. In the light of this, she might decide to leave her job, or get together with others to reject its oppressive aspects. For example, teachers in the UK have successfully combined to reject standardised tests for very young children.

None of this is easy. In a climate emergency, facing the probable collapse of the economic system we live in and the aspects of its culture that we love and enjoy, we are having to decide what to do with the rest of our lives. There is no guarantee that the people we live with or are committed to will agree with the decisions we make.

As middle-class people we are often pulled to look for a formula that tells us what to do and how to do it. But there is no set of rules, just our own thinking. The point is not to get our choices exactly right nor to give up enjoyment and leisure. It is rather a question of facing the reality of the climate emergency and the incapacity of the capitalist class system to enable a just and sustainable world. Letting these facts change how we live will give us back our integrity. Despite the serious situation facing humankind, we will get more joy and satisfaction by facing reality and taking action together than from the distractions, pretence, and compromises that the current system offers.

Caroline New and Seán Ruth, 2020