Muscat’s social classes: Tal-Pizza and Tas-Stejk
Wasalna, Mer! Issa m'ahniex fil-klassi tal-haddiema. Nistghu nibdew nivvutaw ghal Gonzi.
The Labour Party leader tells us that he’s progressive because he thinks Malta should have divorce legislation (he would be a weird 35-year-old if he thought differently). Then he lets slip the occasional clanger which shows that his thinking remains basically that of a peasant.
Muscat sorts people out into the ancient categories of those who eat meat and those who eat bread – or its latter-day equivalent, pizza.
This has nothing to do with vegetarianism, dietary concerns or what-have-you. It is all about the perceived desirability of meat as a status symbol. If you can afford to eat meat, then you have arrived. It is a way of thinking that has long since been left behind in the developed world. Meat is not a status symbol any more, but a matter of personal preference.
The acquisition of food for survival, with meat as the Holy Grail, is no longer the chief driving force in a person’s life – though it survives wherever there is poverty and a strong peasant culture.
We see the remnants of this way of looking at things in our choice of meat for special-occasion meals – the Sunday roast, the Christmas turkey, the Easter lamb. But it’s been a long time since the privileged classes were defined by their ability to pay for a piece of steak.
Joseph Muscat told the press last week that because people are now paying so much more for their electricity, they are spending less on other things. True, but there you go – at least they’re still spending something, unlike their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, who face a choice between being crucified by their central-heating bill and freezing in their own homes, and to whom taking out the family for a meal every Saturday, even if it’s just a pizza, is a luxury and a treat and not a God-given human right to be threatened by governments.
Muscat’s exact words were: “Families who used to go out for a steak on Saturdays now have to go for a pizza instead.”
There’s a lot to be read into that comment, apart from what it reveals about his forma mentis: steak is for the rich and bread/pizza is for the poor. Yes, it used to be that way rather a long time ago, but now it tends to be the other way round. The people who make a point of eating steak, unless they are growing young lads or anaemic girls or the steak is particularly good and the occasion warrants it (you’re in Chianti, for example, and there’s some amazing local-breed T-bone on the menu) are communicating several complex and not-so-complex messages.
Foremost among them is their belief that eating steak means they have arrived (where?), that meat represents status, and that a person’s social class is defined by his money and what it allows him to do (eat steak).
Joseph Muscat shares this way of thinking. Over the years, he has given several indications that he believes people are shifted from one social class to another as their earnings increase or decrease.
He is fascinated by the behaviour of the rich, but like so many others, fails to draw distinctions or to understand the myriad complexities of a given situation.
In one of his earliest interviews, when he was chief Super One hack, he told his interviewer that he insists on always being casual about things. His change in outlook back then, he explained, was provoked by a Damascene moment when he saw in a smart restaurant a rich businessman wearing a track-suit.
He immediately made the link between money/power and the ability to do as you please – rather than, as those who haven’t just arrived would know, the obligation to do as you should.
The rich businessman in the track-suit at a smart restaurant has clearly informed Joseph Muscat’s behaviour ever since.
I would say that every last bit of his gaucheness can be traced back to that day and the influence it had on him: declining the prime minister’s invitation to a formal dinner for the outgoing president and going to Ragusa for hamburgers with Anglu Farrugia instead; leaving the prime minister and the chairman of Public Broadcasting Services waiting for 40 minutes at a television recording studio, to make the point that he can leave the prime minister waiting; turning up late for a meeting with the King of Spain and with a flurry of loud excuses about traffic; not bothering to show up for formal ceremonies to mark the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day when even the newly elected Barack Obama did so; and, telling us repeatedly that he doesn’t stand on ceremony and that he’s uncomfortable in smart situations (a dead give-away, that).
Maybe it’s time somebody told him that with the exception of a tiny number of individuals who thrive on it, almost all of whom are very camp men, almost nobody delights in formality.
The difference is that those who aren’t like the rich businessman in the track-suit know that they have duties and obligations in this regard.
They show up, correctly dressed, and they behave as they are supposed to behave, even if what they really feel like doing is screaming with irritation and boredom, or watching a soap opera on the sofa with a Chinese take-away.
Muscat said, too, that the steep electricity bills are causing people to drop down a social class. Those who had struggled to become middle-class, by dint of their own hard work, are now at risk of becoming working-class again, he said.
I shouldn’t have been astonished when I read this, given all that stuff and nonsense about the rich businessman, his track-suit and the smart restaurant. But I was. His belief that class is shaped almost exclusively by money is the way old-time peasants think.
I have noticed that he never mentions education – academic education and social education (manners and mores) – perhaps because he doesn’t understand that this is the real agent of change.
He fails to understand something else, too: that it is quite possible to be working-class and rich or upper-middle-class and poor. Malta is, in fact, packed with people like this. It is precisely because Muscat thinks that class is defined by money that he believes it is possible for people to move from one social class to another, either up or down.
It’s not. People stay in the class they were born into until they die, no matter how much money and power they acquire or how much they lose.
Social mobility is one thing; switching class is another thing altogether. Over generations, their descendants will move into different classes – either up or down – but it takes generations for all traces of other influences to be eradicated.
This is the reason why Muscat still divides society into the meat-eating class and the bread-eating class, even though he is affluent and aspires to become prime minister within three years.
When I lived on a shoestring with three infants and barely enough money to get by, I didn’t consider myself working-class. Neither did anybody else. Muscat’s party used to describe me in disparaging terms as tal-pepe, even though my standard of living was lower than that of a dockyard welder.
If Joseph Muscat thinks that the working-class poor eat pizza while the middle class (the real ones) eat steak, he couldn’t be more wrong. The most popular restaurant in Stella Maris parish, Sliema, the heartland and headquarters of real, old-fashioned middle-class Malta, where I grew up, is a pizzeria.
It’s crowded every night with people who I would recognise as truly middle class (with all the tedium that entails) but who Joseph Muscat would not, because they don’t wear track-suits except to the gym.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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‘at least they’re still spending something, unlike their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, who face a choice between being crucified by their central-heating bill and freezing in their own homes, and to whom taking out the family for a meal every Saturday, even if it’s just a pizza, is a luxury and a treat and not a God-given human right to be threatened by governments.’
Far from the truth here in Austria, I’m afraid, Daphne. Even a single unemployed man without dependents gets €900 a month (take home) on the dole, which is calculated at about 80 % of one’s basic salary as an employee. (Us self-employed are less fortunate) Unemployment is relatively high here for this precise reason – it’s preferable to working and earns you almost as much. I know – I teach the ‘unemployed’ who sometimes come to classes in their BMWs. If any Austrians are giving you sob stories I strongly suggest you check them out thoroughly.
The restaurants are pretty full here, I assure you.
I better move to Austria then – it’s only a stone’s throw from Munich anyway: http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/3487/umfrage/arbeitslosenquote-in-den-eu-mitgliedsstaaten-im-januar-2009/
“The restaurants are pretty full here, I assure you” … as are the ones here.
Daphne, in a nut shell the problem with Labour is that they cannot understand what the majority of Maltese value. Listen to Oneradio, and they only mention gholi tal-hajja, kontijiet tad-dawl u l-ilma, etc….
In the 1980s we fought primarily for freedom and democracy and not for wealth and that is why most do not vote Labour if they treasure freedom dearly.
Labour needs to guarantee freedom and rights in order to be electable. One way of Muscat showing that he will guarantee all this is by first accepting in public that the pre 1987 period was horrible, and that he will not re-write history if elected.
Other efforts from his end are worthless.
“Other efforts from his end” – Pun intended?
The delegati have really messed up this one (what’s new?). A look at George Abela’s nine-month presidency and Muscat’s 18-month leadership of the Labour Party show the true mettle of one and the complete ineptitude of the other.
Was it Marie Antoinette who said, when the plebs were howling at the palace gate, “Let them eat steak” or was it “cake” ?
Sorry, I am not yet compos mentis on this dull and dreary Monday morning; must have a second coffee fix.
Well , “Let them eat cake” is one of the most famous phrases Marie Antoinette NEVER said!
She probably shoved the cake up her nose.
Don’t people watch any decent foreign news channels; if they did they would have seen those news items about the boom in fast food/take away shops(Macdonalds, Burger King et al) and tal-lira type shops in the UK in where the recession is biting hard.
So is Joseph Muscat lower lower middle class cause he likes to eat burgers?
Having money doesn’t make you a pulit, which is why so many very rich people are so crass, I cringe when they open their mouths. Dear Joseph has a lot to learn, but what worries me is whether he wants to learn. The Lord help us when he becomes Prime Minister.
Oh gosh, you are an expert on every subject!
Why don’t you start editing a local wickid-pedia on line ? And as for the “bistecca” you missed the most important ingredient; l’olio d’oliva.
LOL at Muscat’s Damascene moment. He is shallow beyond belief.
Loved the humour in this article, Daphne.
I’m dying for a pizza from the most popular restaurant in Stella Maris parish, Sliema – yummy! It’s one of the things I miss most since I left Malta…apart from their chocolate biscuit gateau, of course.
Iva il-haddiema mhux bhalek daphne kuljum restaurants tal pepe xarba chardonney min fuq demm il poplu. Nies bhalek se jispiccaw la jitla labour. Il flus se jmorru al poplu mhux alikom. Xi John Dalli u l portomaso apartment ja korrotti tistghu tinsuha din il lavish lifestyle once li jitla l gvern tal poplu kollha PL..mhux l gvern tal hbib tal hbib gonziPn
[Daphne – Typical Labour mentality. Vote to bring others down (you think). What was I saying earlier about the Labour vote being driven mainly by envy, class hatred and hdura? Xi Eva Peron ghandhom bzonn, hej.]
@Mark C,
“Min fuq demm il-poplu”
Hah, I suppose you think communism is the greatest system with everybody “equal”
Yours is a typical loser mentality: don’t strive to improve your lot or at least that of your children. Just prevent anybody else from succeeding so you can feel good about yourself.
Thank goodness for the EU.
David. Communism has it’s good side and bad side just like capitalism. I used to talk to a german collegue about this. She told me about the difference when she left east germany to go to the west during the fall of the berlin wall. Communism offered a safety catch for everyone, No one was left dying of hunger outside unlike capitalist countries. In capitalism it’s a fact that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Look around at all the world and you will see this happening right in front of your eyes. Ofcourse she also told me of the good things capitalism brings such as choice of products, free market enterprise etc.
Yes Mark C,
That’s why the Berlin Wall was guarded the way it was! That’s why people risked and lost their lives to escape that “safety catch”.
Communism is all about punishing those who succeed to reward those who don’t even try.
“once li jitla il gvern tal poplu kollha (presumbaly “kollu” ?) PL”.
So are you excluding quite a large chunk of The People?
Quite a chip (more likely plank) you have there on your shoulder; you must hanker after never-smiling KMB’s times.
Daphne, you left out “lanzit”. What’s the equivalent in English?
[Daphne – There isn’t a word, because there isn’t the equivalent sentiment.]
Dazgur, Mark C. Jien niftakar li bejn in-’96 u n-’98 gie jhabbatli d-deputat Laburist b’borza flus, li hadha minghand il-miljunarji Maltin biex iqassamha lilna l-foqra. U l-ministri Laburisti taw gidhom kollu lill-poplu, iddenuncjaw lill-hbieb tal-hbieb, u biddlu l-lavish lifestyle ghal wahda ta’ axxezi totali. Jigifieri jien ghandi fiducja shiha lil taht gvern Laburist, jien finalment se nistaghna u fil-Portomaso apartment nibda noqghod jien.
According to Daphne then people are seperated by class according to their manners right? So if one does not carry a hankerchief or does not place the spoons and cutlery on the right side he is ignorant and lower class right daphne? What a stupid assumption.
[Daphne – It is not a stupid assumption but an accurate deduction, Mark. Not knowing how to use cutlery a certain way does not make you working-class, but it is an indication that you are working-class. That’s why clever people who are not arrogant enough to assume that others should take them or leave them as they are (like Muscat) learn all this and behave accordingly.]
Why is there education then if people are born already with noble blood and manners.
[Daphne – My point exactly: being born into a certain kind of family ensures a certain kind of behaviour. It is the family which educates the child, or doesn’t. Then, if the child is smart, and hasn’t been educated in the family environment, he’ll find other ways of learning.]
Manners can be taught by the parents and in school. No one is superior to another irrispective of manners or money Daphne.
[Daphne – Agreed, but those who are not absolutely arrogant understand that it is desirable to adopt certain manners which were developed, after all, to make life more pleasant all round. And this includes the use of cutlery, now that you’ve brought it up. There is a reason why you shouldn’t talk while chewing, for example, or shout while ‘talking’, or play your radio too loud and annoy others, and it’s not to be tal-pepe.]
As regards as to why Pn will lose .It is not envy. It is the feeling of unfairness, where you see buildings popping up everywhere companies declaring millions in profit and yet I’m just an accepted statistic of unemployment. I’m not human for Gonzi I’m just a number. Dazgur 10% unemployment is acceptable for society it doesn’t matter for all of you what I feel. I have been working for 10 years, lost my job becuase of Gonzi’s decision regarding betting companies, tried to get some help from the goverment and they almost mocked me the way I was treated and told to go from one corner of Malta to another from the little money I had left, only to be told finally that I would not get a penny’s worth of help becuase my ex boss cheated me also. That is how I feel cheated. Maybe Muscat won’t solve my problem either but at least it will be a hard pinch for Dr. Gonzi. I hate the partisanism in this country where contractors etc fund political parties and they get tenders in return. You pat my back I pat yours. That is how this country runs. A whore(businessmen) and a lesbian(goverment) doing each other favors. If you don’t realize this is happening then surely you must be living in an enclosed castle daphne. At the end of the day every sees what the goverment did for him and not what he did for others. Maybe I should paint myself black I might get 5000 euros in cash.
[Daphne – I think you’ve more than amply illustrated my point, Mark: Labour supporters tend to vote to punish others.]
Fine Daphne, that’s your opinion though. Put yourself in my shoes and you would feel and argue differently I’m sure. I’m not saying that everyone who loses his/her job should blame the gov’ment but when I see everything is done only for show rather than sympathy that’s how I feel myself. Wow 3.1 million saved (social security benefits) mind you from authentic people like me trying to get some goverment help. Those that have been givern relief for years on end on fake addresses or fake claims of injuries are still getting the dough. Everything Dr.Gonzi does is for show. Spending thousands of euros for the pjazza acrobats ..duh it was a fine show but come on. There are more urgent matters. Then they collected money for the parties a few days before those in real need. A fine symbolic gesture of christianity. The parties first, and those in need come after.
Anyway, I’m glad at least we finally agreed on some issues.
I’m off to waste some time becuase at home without work I feel utterly useless and believe me it’s not a nice feeling.
I understand your point, Mark C., because I’m also unemployed. But chances of finding a job won’t improve by one jot if Labour get elected. In your case, since the loss of your job is the direct result of a decision taken by the government, I can see why you would want to vote Labour.
I didn’t mean to mock you in my previous comment. I only meant to say that “hbieb tal-hbieb” and “bazuzli” and “barunijiet” will exist and thrive whichever party is in power, and that I’ve been shafted by everyone. However, thanks to my EU passport, I can widen my job search .
Marc C,
And yet you can afford an internet connection which is more then many people abroad at the moment.
In case you haven’t realised there is an international recession on. It’s tough, no denying it and yes, there are always going to be people who suffer more then others.
But quite frankly, people like you make me sick. Not because of your situation, but because of your attitude.
Because you are not doing too well, you seek to bring down everybody with you, and punish others for doing better. Did it occur to you that the “gaming” scenario, as it was, was bad for Malta in the long run. Do you ever see the bigger picture? Don’t you see the disaster for Malta if Muscat gets elected?
Thank God we do have some safety net in the EU (certainly not communism) that Muscat tried his darnedest to keep us out of, not, I’m sure, because he believed it was better for us but out of pique.
Maybe you are hoping for a return of the Dejma? Good luck with that!
Hey Daphne, you seem to dislike peasants, or their mentality. Now, isn’t the PN full of them?
[Daphne – No, I don’t dislike peasants. If I did, I wouldn’t live where I do. It’s actually the ‘mittelkless’ which I dislike, because its members tend to be so utterly locked-in and b-o-r-i-n-g. I just find it interesting that Joseph Muscat still thinks like a peasant despite all the trappings of another life: ‘dawk jieklu l-laham allura orrajt hej’.]
It might be that Muscat views class from a left-wing point of view (influenced by Marxist theory), while you see it more as cultural cleavages within society rather than financial/economic ones. Traditionally left-wing parties (and not just them) defined class in economic terms.
[Daphne – More fool they. It’s just not about money.]
I must count myself among the elite: only last week my doctor warned me I was eating too much beef and that, as a result, my uric acid (not to mention that darned cholesterol) is way too high and could lead to gout at some time in the future. I am to change to chicken breast, rabbit and fresh fish and relinquish that juicy, succulent, 2cm thick beefsteak. I’ve been hearing the same for the last ten years.
I think divorce should be introduced not as a sign of progressiveness or any ideology but for the one simple reason that it is a civil right. The right to divorce is self-evident and it has been and is still being denied to the Maltese because politicians care only about themselves – whether that is because they do not want to go against their religious beliefs and risk eternal damnation if they are accomplices to legislating divorce or because they hate risking the loss of votes or both. It cannot be because of social consequences because these are identical to those brought about by separation. As Daphne once wrote so succinctly and so precisely: separation brings about all the pain of divorce without any of its comforts.
“People stay in the class they were born into until they die” this is a sweeping statement which is not always true. As Daphne hints, education (and I would add social interaction) may change the mentality and social class of an individual. I believe that the concept of class is outmoded in this day and age, anyway. It is more a matter of education, perspectives and attitudes that distinguishes one person from another and not “social class” at birth.
I could not agree more with this article. It sums up something that is becoming ever more obvious: that Joseph Muscat is too immature to become prime minister. He does not really understand what the position of PM is. I think the MLP delegates are now ruing the missed opportunity to elect George Abela. The difference is evident. Muscat should stop acting like a child (always laughing), pull up his socks and start working. If he becomes PM with this attitude than we really need some divine intervention to help us.
According to maltastar.com, reporting Joseph Muscat’s speech at Balzan, Maltese society is made up of “upper-class, middleclass, youths, pensioners and citizens”.
http://www.maltastar.com/pages/ms09dart.asp?a=6619
Considering God-knows-what goes in to grow the animal, I’ve given up beef a long time ago.
You are mistaken re the immutability of the social classes in Malta. If you look around you carefully you will find people who are intelligent and have managed to leapfrog one or more social classes at a go.
[Daphne – Not really. The fact that you know they have leapfrogged from one class to another means that they are still identifiable – by whatever means – as having just arrived from elsewhere.]
What a great blog and comments. Keep it up!
Mark C – your initial comment was not only full of hate but also ignorant and completely unrealistic – I’d like to know how “il-flus imorru ghal poplu mhux ghalikom” under Muscat. I don’t mean to be rude, but with that attitude no wonder you are jobless. Another point on your joblessness – if I were jobless I would be neither at home reading Daphne’s blog nor going out to waste time but trying my best to find a job, getting better education or training or doing something productive. Ever thought of doing something for yourself rather than expect a job to come your way as though someone owes you a living?
On the question of steaks, I’m truly amazed. So the Labour Party leader is worried because his so-called families who are struggling cannot have a steak every Saturday and instead have to settle for pizza. If the middle and lower-class can afford a steak at a restaurant EVERY Saturday then I must be part of the relatively poor or the absolute poor because for my family an outing to any restaurant, bar, McDonalds has become a luxury. A socialist leader should be less worried about the people who are going out for steaks every weekend and more about how to overcome the problems we are facing both locally and internationally.
On the question of classes I think that unless we remove the socialist/communist/Napoleonic/Mintoffian ideas that the upper classes are made up of barons and nobility and that the lower classes are made up of peasants and that in some way the lower classes need to overthrow the nobility, we will get nowhere. We need to stop stereotyping and denigrating – those in the upper classes should not be demonised. In my mind, an upper class person is one who has first of all the respect of many, who might have large resources and abundant wealth, but who is educated enough to use his wealth wisely and keep it growing, who is polite and does not need to put others down to show where he stands and so much more. There is nothing wrong in being in this class. What is wrong is when you think you are in this class because you have plenty of money but then are rude, ignorant and a downright caveman.
On the other hand, I do not think that these classes still exist. There are rich, middle-income and poor, there is educated, non-educated but trying, and the ignorant, and there is the polite, the rude and the pits. You can be rich, ignorant and rude. You may be middle-income, educated and polite, and you can be poor, polite and although uneducated are trying your best to be better.
Excellent article, Daph! Sei ancora in ottima forma cara mia! Let’s leave out Muscat for a moment and allow me to share my thoughts on your observations on this category of people you call ‘just arrived’ (parvenus). There are plenty of people, in fact the majority, who know their status, know their place and exhibit the concomitant social and behaviour patterns.
The problem arises when people think they have made some kind of quantum leap into a higher social class. Like you wrote, just because you have money to swim in doesn’t mean that you know how to behave properly. I’m sure we all know people who are rich but behave like troglodytes and people who practically live from hand to mouth but could mingle with the upper classes and hardly be noticed due to their appropriate manners and behaviour.
It is when people either try or want to be, or think they are of a higher status that this causes problems. Their behaviour jars within the social setting they so wish to thrive in and falsely believe they do. When you own something, even if you are proud of it, you should not go to any lengths to advertise it, to flaunt it.
I know so many people who belong to the working class, who have money or assets because they have earned them through hard work and talent, who might not know correct table manners, but who don’t try to be something they’re not. And it is these kinds of people whose very down-to-earth behaviour means they are accepted where the pretentious and the flashy are not.
Perhaps Joseph ‘El Comandante’ Muscat is interested in Fidel Castro’s ‘el menu de la revolucion’:Tal-Lasagne.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od24IWWNeHw
haha ajma..so now if you’re out of a job you can’t do anything apart from seeking a job?
My internet is paid by my father. Neither Gonzi nor the Eu pays for my internet thanks. The fact is..yes if I pay taxes and ni for over 10 years I’d expect goverment help (mahnies nghidu eluf ta cucati jghatu) but instead etc kept sending me from 1 place to the other so that they might fill the quota of how much was saved from social security. For me whatevr Eu has to offer is inexistant. If one doesn’t work how is he supposed to pay flights and flat rent. So as the saying goes…f dal pajjiz min …..mexa. Sib address falz u idhaq bil gvern ma ntihomx tort ghax jekk ma taqbadx tiehu f dal pajjiz hadd ma jtik xejn.