The Working Class: Too Nice For Their Own Good?

David Graeber wrote a thing for the Guardian about how “caring too much” is the curse of the working class, who are generally nicer and more empathetic overall, mostly because they have to be.

If you think about it, is this not what life is basically about? Human beings are projects of mutual creation. Most of the work we do is on each other. The working classes just do a disproportionate share. They are the caring classes, and always have been. It is just the incessant demonisation directed at the poor by those who benefit from their caring labour that makes it difficult, in a public forum such as this, to acknowledge it.

As the child of a working-class family, I can attest this is what we were actually proud of. We were constantly being told that work is a virtue in itself — it shapes character or somesuch — but nobody believed that. Most of us felt work was best avoided, that is, unless it benefited others. But of work that did, whether it meant building bridges or emptying bedpans, you could be rightly proud. And there was something else we were definitely proud of: that we were the kind of people who took care of each other. That’s what set us apart from the rich who, as far as most of us could make out, could half the time barely bring themselves to care about their own children.

And why is this being nicer and more compassionate — something we should all aspire to! — a curse exactly? Well, Graeber’s larger point is that working class people aren’t rioting in the streets because they aren’t self-obsessed enough, and they have too much compassion for rich people (OR, could it be they are too busy trying to make ends meet?), and rather than embrace the working class roots of solidarity — political solidarity arguably also a way to care for each other — the working class has accepted the rhetoric of austerity handed down to them from the ruling classes.

It’s a provocative, wildly generalizing piece.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.