The New York Times has begun a three part series on “Class in America” with a discussion of income mobility. The big news, that income mobility has declined in recent years, was discussed by Paul Krugman last December in The Nation. It is good to see the Times picking up on this story, but it is disappointing that it conflates class with consumption practices.
Because the cost of consumer goods has been steadily driven down, the average worker today can enjoy all kinds of consumer goods that were not available fifty or a hundred years ago. Liberals (in the classical sense of the word) like this definition because it makes it possible to argue that inequality doesn’t matter. After all, who cares if a few people have gotten super-rich, when the poorest members of our society can afford a CD player, if not an iPod?
In fact, there are a surprising number of people in America who have to choose between putting food on the table and getting the cheapest CD player you can buy in Chinatown. But the argument for the importance of looking at inequality does not depend on such depravation. I wrote the following in my blog last February:
As Nobel Prize winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen argues, it doesn’t matter if the total bundle of goods received by the poorest is getting larger if, at the same time, social inequality is increasing. That is to say, it is harder to function as a poor person in a rich society than in a poor one, even if you have more material possessions. An argument borne out by the fact of lower life expectancies amongst poor and minority populations in industrialized nations when compared with materially poorer populations in developing nations.
Sen’s point is different from that made by Brad DeLong, who conflates power with prestige.
To the extent that goods are valued not for the services they provide by themselves but as indices of exclusivity, it is pointless to produce them for more people because then they become less exclusive and so less valuable.
Exclusivity is not why the underprivileged of the industrialized world live shorter lives than those who can purchase a much smaller bundle of goods and services in the developing world. The difference is power. (What Sen confusingly refers to as “freedom.”) Power means control over your own life. Risk management is one way to talk about such control. Daniel Davies discusses a
project that has been going on since the Thatcher-Reagan years; the attempt to load risks on to the working class which have historically been borne by the owner class
And Peter Gosselin wrote a three part series for the L.A. Times about how this increased burden has affected even comfortably middle class Americans. (Here’s a link to Gosselin on Now.)
Much of the conservative agenda is precisely about shifting the burden of risk on to those members of society who are least able to handle that burden: bankruptcy reform and privatizing social security are two prime examples.
At the heart of Marx’s contribution to social theory is his effort to shift the study of economic behavior from the arena of exchange relations and consumption to the social relations of production, where power relations matter most. At the same time, he showed that the very structure of capitalist exchange serves to obscure the social relations of production:
Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange.
Marx drew upon contemporary anthropological theory in terming this “commodity fetishism.” Unfortunately, today’s anthropologists seem to be increasingly fetishizing the commodity. There are lots of reasons for this, studies of consumption offer a useful way to explore how local cultures are affected by the processes of globalization. Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia is a wonderful example of such scholarship. Studies of consumption are also popular with students. However, I worry about this growing emphasis on consumption, especially as such studies can obscure the very nature of social inequality which is about much more than what we can consume.
it is harder to function as a poor person in a rich society than in a poor one, even if you have more material possessions. An argument borne out by the fact of lower life expectancies amongst poor and minority populations in industrialized nations when compared with materially poorer populations in developing nations.
Would you mind pointing me to citations of papers supporting these claims? Thanks.
I’ve collected some on my wiki. Amartya Sen has devoted much of his career to making these points. On my wiki I link to some of his works written for a general audience.
Thanks!
It is only with the arrival of unscientific postmodernists and cultural studies types such as Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, John Norvell, and Max Weber that ‘freedom’ has become confused with ‘power’ 😉
But seriously — I think ‘freedom’ is a perfectly normal definition for ‘control over your own life,’ particularly when you focus on the development of people’s capabilities and the way that development allows them to live freely. What’s confusing about that?
This is exactly how Sen uses the term, and it does make sense; however, I find it far from intuitive. The term “freedom” usually refers to the absence of restraints upon our actions, so it is a bit of a jump to reinterpret it as the structural foundations which make it possible to act. Of course, this is exactly the insight that Durkheim had in his own analysis of legal contracts, so it is nothing new; but we rarely talk about freedom in these terms – even if we should.
That is to say, it is harder to function as a poor person in a rich society than in a poor one, even if you have more material possessions. An argument borne out by the fact of lower life expectancies amongst poor and minority populations in industrialized nations when compared with materially poorer populations in developing nations.
Can you clarify what you mean by this? How is it harder to function as a poor person in a rich society than in a poor one? I’m having trouble seeing the connection. Are you claiming that minority and poor populations in developed countries have lower life-expectancies than poor and minority populations in developing countries? If you are, I find that to be pretty suspect.
No. I’m saying that minority and poor populations in developed countries have lower-life expectancies than those in developing countries with significantly lower purchasing power. They are not the minorities and poor in those countries – but they outlive those in the developing world who can afford a much more luxurious bundle of goods.
From Sen’s Development as Freedom:
This is from pages 21-23. He goes on to discuss differences within the African American population.
Okay, but note that Sen also says:
So Sen doesn’t minimize the importance of gains in purchasing power and increasing purchasing power as an important way of enhancing the capabilities.
Second, I think we need to be cautious in taking the experience of African-Americans as emblematic of other poor and minority populations in the developed world, including in America. For instance, non-white Latinos seem to have a higher life-expectancy than white people do, despite have a generally lower socio-economic status. Why is this the case? I don’t know, but I think the relationship between inequality and health outcomes is more complicated than you suggest.
The comparison between African Americans and Chinese or Indians seems suspicious in the sense of being chosen to produce the desired result. Absolute and relative income levels are hardly the only variables–the cultural differences are enormous.
So why not compare African Americans to black Africans? Or to Haitians? Would African Americans really live longer as absolutely poorer, but relatively wealthier Africans?
Richard Pryor once subversively declared, in a monologue about a trip to African, “Thank God for slavery”. Of course, it was intended to be an offensive, politically incorrect joke, but was he completely wrong?
Of course, the cultural differences between African Americans and Africans are large, too. Wouldn’t a better point of comparison be Mexican Americans in the southwest vs Mexicans–the cultural differences are relatively small, and the Mexican Americans are absolutely richer but relatively poorer than their Mexican relatives. Are there any data? Are Mexicans who try to come here making a terrible mistake–gaining absolute wealth but giving up ‘freedom’ and making themselves worse off?
Not to mention the rather obvious fact that life expectancy is a complicated indicator and that one of the main components is diet. Various calorie restriction studies have shown a significant increase in animal lifespan, which would jibe with anecdotal evidence of longer lifespans in certain Asian countries where food scarcity has historically been a problem.
The point is that access to “resources” is not always beneficial to the human animal. One might construe this as a class issue, since in addition to their increased access to food and drink the rich also have access to superior health care, health education, and fitness clubs, but it is more rightly, in my opinion, a consequence of personal choices.
In the US the poor have the “option” of eating terribly and too much. In poorer countries the actual consequence of the lack of these “options” is likely to be beneficial to long-term health, which is what your study shows. Which is not to say whatever point about class Sen (or whoever) wants to make cannot still be made, but using this methodology to make it is suspect.
Javier. I am offering a counterfactual example that challenges the notion that purchasing power is what defines class status. I am not making an anti-American argument or an anti-development argument, or even suggesting that purchasing power is unimportant. If you want to look at models of development, inequality, and purchasing power, you can’t do better than compare India and China. While China currently has higher life expectancy, it is losing out to India. China has leveled off, if not reversed some of its early gains, as a result of its abandonment of most social saftey nets, while India’s more democratic society is beginning to outpace China. But these are very different arguments from the one I’m making above.
Class as cannon fodder, now there is a true paradigm for you. Upward mobility via the rifle – you want off the rez’, off the farm, you want a ticket out of the ghetto and out of the factory? Sign on the dotted line, buddy. You get a community college or tech school of your choice by killing a few of the collective’s enemies. Tried and true.
Somewhere I saw in the commentary a something about Black Americans and African Americans. When I did a stint in W. Africa, I had any number of Africans tell me that American Blacks were not Africans. Go figure. Culture is where you hang your hat and there ain’t much class to it.
Class as cannon fodder, now there is a true paradigm for you. Upward mobility via the rifle – you want off the rez’, off the farm, you want a ticket out of the ghetto and out of the factory? Sign on the dotted line, buddy. You get a community college or tech school of your choice by killing a few of the collective’s enemies. Tried and true.
I think that’s a pretty basic misunderstanding of the motivation of enlistees — U.S. enlistees anyway. The Dullsville Community College option is always there–nobody needs to join the military to do that. Joining the military is not a way to get to Dullsville Community College, it’s a way to avoid it (for a few years anyway). It’s a way out of Dullsville. The uniforms, the respect, the high-tech equipment, the foreign travel (even the possible danger) are attractive to a lot of 18-year-olds facing the prospect of life in Dullsville.
Your “off the farm, out of the ghetto, and off the ‘rez” is a bit off the mark as well. Enlistees in recent decades have been working class, but not poor. High-school dropouts don’t qualify. And minorities really aren’t overrepresented (in fact, I believe they’re a bit underrepresented in combat units).
The standards for enlistment always drop when the body bags start to come home, i.e. note the extension of tours of duty in Iraq, the quotas for enlistment dropping and the recent scandal of recruiters breaking the rules. All of this may or may not be a reflection on the actual motives for enlistment, but I do note the extensive use of the GI bill after the big one, WW2, and Viet Nam. Listen to any parent or college student and one will hear the moaning over rising costs of tuition, books, housing, etc. See Administrators scurry to tighten budgets, see Anthro and Soc Departments getting the short end of the stick. Pell grants and loans aren’t doing the trick like they used to. I still contend that educational incentives play a significant role in enlistments, as well as better pay than many jobs offer in the civilian sector.
I agree with many people here that life expectancy is not a good indicator of ‘social inequality’. Since this idea is counter-intuitive, I would need to see a lot of evidence before I really bought into the notion that the people who are poor in the United States, for example, would be better off if their material wealth was reduced, as long as everyone else’s was reduced by more.
I have a simpler explanation of why poor people in a rich society might have a hard time functioning. If you have a hard time functioning in the society, then you are likely to be poor (relative to other members of the society). In other words, I think the casuality goes the other way. At the same time, people with less material wealth in a poor society (but wealthier compared to other members of that society) have demonstrated a greater ability to function effectively in that society. So it would hardly surprise me if they also do more with less than the poor people in a rich society.
Racism is another reason why minorities might not live as long as other members of society.
I like the larger point about risk. Sen gets at this via the notion of a total entitlement bundle, which includes various kinds of fallbacks that you may not ordinarily use, but which come in handy if, say, you get sick.
We can distinguish between a synchronic approach, which is interested only in what you can or are consuming right now, and a diachronic approach, which thinks about people as having projects that they try to achieve, rather than just living in the moment as “globules of desire,” in Veblen’s phrase. Synchronic measurements of how much people have right now are certainly interesting, but don’t give you any sense of how resilient someone’s current consumption level may be or how worried they are, how vulnerable to a small crisis — e.g. kid gets sick, stay home from work, lose your job, fall behind on rent, lose housing. Sen is very good at pointing to the importance of having a diversified and robust entitlement set.
To move to Marx for a moment, the emphasis on production is also a choice to pursue diachronic analysis — i.e. workers and capitalists, in the simplest model, inhabit time differently because workers must work to eat while capitalists can get credit. Power becomes manifest in how you can use time and manipulate other peoples’ lives in time.
So I agree with the last paragraph above. I’m all for analyses of consumption. What worries me are critiques of consumption that pose as replacements for analyses of production, sometimes by gluing bits of Marxian terminology on top of what is really work in the Mauss-Simmel-Sombart tradition.
Longevity and race, quite a pandora’s box once opened. What I always wonder about are the high incidents of violent crime and homicide and how that factors in with such things as employment, health care, access to health care, diet, housing, availability and efficacy of emergency services etc.
On one hand we hear of racial profiling and high arrest rates and our prisions being heavily populated with minorities, Blacks in particular, which suggests a heavy police presence and policing in Black communities, yet this is a contradiction in lieu of the high homicide rates. Whether or not this variable is factored in with the high attrition rates I think remains unanswered.