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Kula Browne Dr. Gayle English 0701-057 19 Nov 2013 Why Americans Should Discuss Class Americans tend to dislike discussions about class. They seem, on the other whole, to find any discussion of this topic un-American. This is because many Americans truly believe that the United States is a classless society, and has been since the colonists revolted from England. This, however, has never been true from any factual point of view. It is, rather, a deeply rooted belief that can be regarded as an indelible prejudice. For there are clearly rich and poor and middle class people in America, and most of them never change their class status during their lifetimes. The ones that never change their status, however, particular the poor, tend to object the most when told they are fated to stay a part of their social class. Belief in classlessness in America borders on pathological denial. This essay will argue that this discussion of class is essential for further social and economic progress and equality in the United States going forward. To continue to pretend that there is either not a class problem in the United States, or, worse, that class does not even exist in America, is simply to ignore reality, and reality will continue to function regardless of what people believe, and usually against their interests. This essay will look at George Orwells Animal Farm to inform this discussion of class, and it will also draw on other texts such as Gregory Mantsios work in order to better understand how class functions in America, and how Americans might benefit from a full and frank discussion of class and what means might be

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employed in order to assure not only greater class mobility but also a greater equalization amongst the heavily stratified existing (though denied) class system. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as an obvious critique of Russian Soviet-style communism. This is hardly an original observation. But his cartoonish critique of the Soviet totalitarian take on communism can be instructive for other countries and systems of government as well. In other words, the scope of his critique extends much further than perhaps even the author himself intended, and this essay proposes to make use of his novel in order to look at class in America in relation to the political and education culture in this country. Animal Farm can be read as a critique, really, of any revolutionary political movement that installs certain ideals, only to have the leaders of this movement slowly becoming corrupted by power to the point that they betray the very principles they were supposedly fighting for. So this allegory could also be matched up against the American Revolutionary War and the representative democracy that it established, which has degenerated over time to the current system which favors money and power over the basic beliefs in human equality and equal treatment for all. Money is the problem, as it always is, and in the case of the Animal Farm allegory, it is represented by the perks and privileges that the ruling pig class incrementally take upon themselves. This problem in the Animal Farm allegory becomes entrenched when It had come to be accepted that the pigs, who were manifestly cleverer than the other animals, should decide all questions of farm policy (43). In American history, this point was reached early on, for instance with the adoption of the Constitution, which originally provided that U.S. Senators were chosen by state legislatures, and not by direct election of the people. This changed with the

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adopted of the Seventeenth Amendment, but by that point, the aristocratic nature of the Senate had already been established. And this tradition continues into modern times. In other words, the rich and propertied become regarded by the poor as being naturally better managers of government affairs because they are allegedly so good at managing their own money and property, and this belief can exist in even a purportedly classless egalitarian society. The obvious problem here is that by ceding power to this already powerful and privileged class of society, the lower social strata of society is throwing away much of the power that it has, or rather conceding it too easily, when it is unlikely that this power will ever be given back even if it is abused. This abuse of power is exactly what happens in Animal Farm, and in the United States as well. But by the point that the real abuses begins to occur in Animal Farm, the animals have already been conditioned to accept this kind of treatment. They have been taught to make their own brains into their own policemen, such that they fail to interpret these obvious abuses as abuses, and have no thought of doing anything about them because they agree with what is being done. This seeming miracle of self-policing is accomplished by education. In Animal Farm, the pigs accomplish this by having all the animals learn by heart the story of the Rebellion as well as the song The Beasts of England (33). This is comparable in the American educational system to the simplified version of American history that U.S. schoolchildren learn, which used to include the ridiculous and obviously false story that revolutionary leader and U.S. President George Washing chopped down a cherry tree but could not tell a lie, implying that he was superhumanly honest, even as a child. This functions as propaganda on young impressionable minds, and more controversial aspects of history, if they are taught at all, do not come until much later, until after years of being taught myths and simplified history of a favorable nature.

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Meanwhile, facts such as the fact that most of the Founding Father were slave-owners were glossed over or not taught at all, and sentiments of aristocratic superiority, such as those expressed by Alexander Hamilton, an early aid to Washington, are not taught at all. For example: our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheepThey are determined not to be freeIf we are saved, France and Spain must save us (Zinn 77) The compulsory memorized recital of The Pledge of Allegiance is another but more contemporary example, and perhaps a better one, since it entails children as young as five reciting from memory what is essentially a loyalty oath using words they dont understand such as allegiance in conjunction with repeating the idea that the U.S. government is One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. But this liberty and justice, which implies economic mobility or is at least connected in the mind of American schoolchildren as a young age, is not simply a mirage and has never been true, according to Gregory Mantsios. Mantsios argues that the notion that In America anyone can become a millionaire: its just a matter of being in the right place at the right time is a myththat it has never been true and certainly isnt true today (699). It is true in the case of very rare exceptions, who are always pointed to as proof that this class fluidity is real. Bill Gates, for instance, or Steve Jobs, are two prominent recent examples, or in the political arena, politicians like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, who both essentially started from nothing and with no initial indication or hope that they would rise as high in American society as they did. But for a majority of Americans to believe that they will somehow become like a Bill Gates or Barack Obama is a more like a form of mass delusion. Most people in the lowest class

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will be lucky if they even move up incrementally into the middle class and managed to stay there, and that is becoming even less and less likely in todays economic conditions. The contempt for the average American expressed by Alexander Hamilton may have been an extreme form of aristocratic sentiment, but it expressed something real, and something that has always operated in American behind the scenes. This becomes clear in the allegory of Animal Farm as exemplified by the character of Napoleon, who is determined to consolidate power under his personal control because the other animals are simply not as smart or amazing as his is (or thinks he is). This process of Napoleons struggle to the top ends with he and his ruling pig class gradually taking on more and more human airs, to the point that they start modifying the basic commandments of Animalism in order to give themselves power to sleep in beds with sheets, to get drunk on booze, and to kill other animals. Eventually they wind up becoming indistinguishable physically from the humans they replaced. In the United States, the ruling class by the 20th century did everything it could to make sure that the common people and especially the poor stayed in their place, especially in periods of severe economic crisis, when there was very real danger that the armed revolution begun in 1776 would be repeated in a different form. Labor uprisings became a real problem from the point of view of the elites in the 1930 during the Great Depression. Even the New Dealers and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who are today derided by conservatives as basically cryptocommunists, were actually working to prevent a social, communist, or anarchist rebellion by using liberal social redistribution and mild social engineering to placate the impoverished masses. But the New Deals organization of the economy was aimed mainly at stabilizing the economy, and secondly at giving enough help to the lower classes to keep them from turning a rebellion into a real revolution (Zinn 393).

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Real equality is something that has never yet been achieved in the United States, or really anywhere on Earth. It is an ideal, however, that we can continue to reach towards. In the United States, we can only hope to approach closer to this ideal by acknowledging the reality of our social structure. There are real poor people, and there are real, entrenched classes that determine the lives of the people born into those classes. Only by acknowledging this, and by educating ourselves about the real facts of our own history as opposed to simply absorbing myths, can we hope to transcend our current state of social and economic stagnation. The United States was founded on noble ideals, there is no denying that. But it is a mistake to pretend that these ideals have already been achieved, and that there are no problems based on income inequality or class. If Americans continue to pretend these problems dont exist, they will not only not go away, they will only continue to get worse. And they are getting worse, as the rich getting richer and the poor get poorer. This is not a lost cause, or a hopeless fight. Americans have access to enough information to educate themselves about the reality of life in America today and how it might be made better and more equal in terms of class and economic opportunity. But we have to learn to let go of our myths, and teach our children the truth about our past so we can solve the problems of the present and tackle the challenges of tomorrow. It can be achieved, but it requires a desire to come face to face with reality, and a need to do the work necessary to achieve these ends. Unfortunately, there will undoubtedly be much resistance from the top. But that is to be expected, because there are a lot of very wealthy and powerful people who are profiting from the way things are currently done in America. But just because there will be resistance from the elites does not mean that average working Americans should not make the attempt to improve their lives.

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Works Cited Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Harcourt Brace: New York, 1973. Mantsios, Gregory, Class in America: Myths and Realities (2003). Rereading America. Colombo, Cullen and Lisle. 6th Ed., 2004. 333-334 U.S. Constitution. Amend. XVII. Zinn, Howard.