Did the working class die on the Dance Floor?

[Hexen]

A interesting article I found on Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/books/148122/how_america%27s_working_class_died_on_the_disco_da nce_floor/

I think the article describes how the working class came into decline in the 1970s as I am positive about this. Any thoughts of this?

[hatzel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsISfQAXE60

[Raúl Duke]

Interesting article and, while some comments suggest that the 70s Working Class didn't like disco, it does align with my impression of the younger (sorry for bit of agieism, but I find the younger demographic of workers as important to look into, especially in this day and age. They tend to be the most potentially radicalized especially when faced with bleak/no future) working class demographic of the 70s. My father was 18-20 and somewhat poor (yet in a stable job; he still works for the same company to this day) during the era of disco and in Puerto Rico and NYC many poor and working class people did do the hustle.

For some reason, although I may be wrong, I feel that this analysis can be translated back into our modern times. The late 70s was in era of the beginnings of rolling back prior working class reforms/etc when capital began to move factories away from the US to other areas with low-wage labor. Since the 50s-60s one could say that working in a unionized job guaranteed a good living standard, but with the de-industrialization process many younger people who grew up in blue-collar working class communities perhaps saw no future/bleak future because they no longer had access to that same living standard that their parents enjoyed and it was difficult for some/many to get into college (particularly ethnic minorities). Another thing was during this backdrop of disappearing industrial jobs one could say there was more suburban flight especially from cities like NYC (this in itself ties with the point in the article about individual journey to escape the bleak poor existence of decaying working class communities and re-invent themselves; I guess they re-invented themselves into the "middle-class.").

Now, since the 70s-90s, some of our parents (some/many from working class backgrounds) got into college and gain stable, secure, high paying, pension/medical/etc-including professional jobs almost right off graduation but now in the millennium there are stories of our generation failing to get hired after graduation into jobs appropriate for the degree/education attained. Even than, many professional job's living standards have declined (due to many factors, i.e. wages stagnated relative to inflation, less job security, less job benefits) plus increasing college costs/debts so one could arguably say that the "middle-class" young adult generation is facing a similar crisis concerning future prospects not lining up to what we earlier foolishly believed.

[Antifa94]

Working class culture was systematically destroyed in Thatcher's England.
It's dead, and waiting to be resurrected.

[Hit The North]

Working class "culture" will exist as long as there is a working class.

Arguing that working class culture is dead is the same as arguing that the working class is dead.

If this is the case, on whose surplus value has the bourgeoisie been getting by on, this past few decades?

The truth is that "working class culture" - what ever that is - like all culture, is subject to change.

[Raúl Duke]

Working class culture, in terms of at the national or international level, is hard to ascertain or virtually non-existent; all workers are different individuals from different backgrounds. However, one can speak of culture of certain working class communities/neighborhoods.

To further make my point, if I were to become a worker by gaining employment in some low wage-medium wage job I would probably still have cultural/sub-cultural practices that are different from some of my co-workers, despite that we are all workers, depending on many factors (ethnicity/nationality, age, location, customs/mannerisms, and different preferences towards different cultural things like music, art, entertainment, etc). The differences could be so much that I could be completely different from another person and the only similarity is that we both work in the same job. "Worker" is mostly a label for those who are engaging in wage labor at the time, in the realm of culture the label doesn't always carry weight.