20101215.1724

I have several things to note today. One is that today is my dear younger brother's birthday; I have already called to wish him well.

Another is that my copy of Profession 2010 has arrived. It seems to be of slightly less extent than the previous few editions, and I am not yet sure of the implications of that. I have not yet had a chance to read it fully, though I have gotten through the two introductory pieces. I do, though, intend to do as I have been doing with the journals I take: after reading through, or reading into, I am going to write some kind of response to one or more of the articles contained within. As usual, they will appear here when done.

In the interim, though, I offer the following (in part so that I will have examples for my students in coming terms):

On December 13, 2010, the online New York Times released an op-ed piece by David Brooks, "Ben Franklin's Nation." In the article, Brooks notes that the world is increasingly composed of the middle class, and that the growth of the middle class across the globe will increase in the next few decades. Brooks sees this as an opportunity for a redefinition of the place of the United States in the world; rather than being the world leader in standard of living (which we will not be able to sustain), we can become the world leader in determining what it means to be middle-class. He writes: "Americans could well become the champions of middle-class dignity. The U.S. could become the crossroads nation for those who aspire to join the middle and upper-middle class, attracting students, immigrants and entrepreneurs." He goes on to note that doing so would oblige the US to redefine and enhance what it means to be middle class, arguing that doing so could make the twenty-first century "another American century."

I am, in part, pleased by this message. As I have noted elsewhere, I am (despite being a liberal elite who, as an academic, is supposed to hate America) more or less fond of the country of my birth, and so I cannot help but be moved by the idea that American exceptionalism can be perpetuated; I confess to being enough of an egotist that I like seeing that which is associated with me and with which I identify valorized. And, if nothing else, it is a better view of American exceptionalism than that which holds that the country has the right and duty to police the world.

That said, as one of the "pointy-headed elitists," I am aware that there are problems with the middle-class ideology that Brooks espouses. In its current form, at least, the American middle-class-ness of which I partake and which Brooks lauds is based upon the exploitation, both historical and current, of various populations. Immigrant laborers and overseas sweatshops do much to make the kind of consumption upon which middle-class life depends--even when predicated upon social contexts, following Brooks, since "the community clubs, the professional societies, the religious charities and Little Leagues" that he notes have material requirements--possible. So for Brooks' idea of a worldwide middle class led by the American concept of the same to work in an equitable, sustainable, ethical sense will require not so much a refiguring of what the middle class is as a resetting of it to an (idealized or romanticized?) earlier notion of it.

There was a time in the United States, so goes the story, that a solid manufacturing job would enable a person to enter into some kind of middle-class life. Perhaps wealth and "luxury"* were beyond the average factory worker, but that worker could support a family of four or five reasonably comfortably, taking an annual vacation and making another annual trek back to old homes to meet with family over the holidays. Parents could afford to help their kids through college, helping the next generation do better than they themselves did.

That condition, if it ever actually existed, certainly no longer does in the United States, and I have doubts that it exists elsewhere in any great abundance. Until and unless it does, unfortunately, the utopian middle-class world Brooks envisions cannot--and damned well ought not to--come to pass.

*I use the term advisedly, realizing that for many people, having enough food to eat each day and a secure place to live is a luxury currently beyond their means.