Quotulatiousness

April 23, 2021

QotD: Why the British despise the middle class

Filed under: Britain, History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… any observer of that British class system will know that it is indeed a little different from that in other places.

The aristocracy have always looked down upon the middle class. That gross and inelegant disdain for trade for example. The insistence that actually doing something for a living – even professionally – just isn’t as good as doing nothing off a rent roll.

From the other end we’ve that very bolshie – in the colloquial sense – insistence that the middle class are just parasites upon the toil of the workers. This being what also informs – misinforms – that idea that we’d be better off if we had much more manufacturing. Men in flat caps doing something physical etc.

That is, much of the society dislikes the very existence of the middle class. Actually, more than dislikes, from above they’re – we’re – despised and from below hated to the point that we bourgeoisie should be eliminated as a class.

The surprise that fewer claim to be of that section of the hierarchy than are is thus, well, it’s a surprise, right?

Tim Worstall, “Sociologist Can’t Do Sociology”, Continental Telegraph, 2021-01-19.

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