ABSTRACT
The Communists make the accusation against us that our forms of education make people dissatisfied with manual labour and glorify the ‘bourgeois’ ideal. The working-man who passes through a University, equally with the working-man who gets money, ceases, as soon as possible, to be a workingman. It must be admitted that a ‘rise in life’ does mean, as a matter of course, the adoption of bourgeois habits. It is, in fact, natural and inevitable that the working-man, or relatively poor man, who achieves getting a middle-class income, does not like to feel himself ‘out of it’ with that class. The conviction that he and his family are ‘as good’ as anyone else expresses itself in the desire to have all the same things which the middle class accept as belonging to their social status. The lamentable thing is that the instinct for equality, sound in itself, should find expression in ideas which are purely materialistic. It is, at least, a sign of advance that we have begun to feel uncomfortable in talking about ‘upper’ and 23‘lower’ classes. Nevertheless, in practice, the ‘upper’ does still represent in the minds of the vast majority of people just what it expresses—a position to be aspired to. To adopt the usages of this class so as to be received within it, so soon as income permits, and to be afraid of deviating from these usages even when one’s position is established, is practically universal. Like the force of gravitation, the pressure of public opinion is constantly and powerfully and yet unnoticeably at work upon one’s habits, upon one’s point of view, above all upon one’s standard of values—a constant drag towards materialism. It is wealth which commands the most universal respect; think of the difference in the standard of good manners towards the rich and towards ‘the poor’! In itself wealth gives social standing and powers of influence independently of the many means of influence—such as the control of the Press—for which it pays cash. There are, of course, many stages in the social pyramid, and the social code of the public-school man includes customs and privileges which are not quite the same for the yet larger middle class that for the most part can never aspire to his distinction and importance. But the ideal, the objective, is essentially the same, and the important thing about it is that it is self-regarding. It means spending vast sums of money on oneself as soon as one gets the chance. So soon as one acquires the money it is spent on a larger house, more 24servants, luxurious entertaining (of those who are as little in need of good food and of amusement as oneself), luxurious travelling, a handsome car, a particular type of dress, the one peculiar merit of which is that it stamps the wearer as the possessor of wealth, thereby establishing his or her claim to deference and honour. Men and women base their conduct on the ‘done’ thing, i.e., they accept a standard not for its intrinsic value judged by a code of Christian ethics, or any other worthy of the name, but as a ticket of membership for the class they belong to or aspire to.
