Repeat after me, children: LABOUR IS A MIDDLE CLASS PARTY AND MINTOFF SOWED THE SEEDS OF MIDDLE CLASS EMPOWERMENT
Hello, are you middle class too?
Here’s Joseph Muscat’s Sunday sermon about, among other things, what Maltastar insists on calling “the innovative concept of living wage”.
Maltastar, this afternoon
Muscat said that the concept of living wage goes further than just the concept of the minimum wage- it is the calculation of how much is needed for a family to live decently.
“The Labour Party is a middle class party. Former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff sowed the seeds of middle class empowerment that eventually grew under Fenech Adami’s governance. But the concept of a middle class is wilting under Lawrence Gonzi’s rule,” said Dr Muscat.
“However it will be the Labour Party which empowers the middle class yet again”
The Labour Leader also focused on the living wage concept as a policy to ensure families live decently. He said that it is not a concept that can be implemented overnight, but a concept that needs to be discussed extensively and seriously.
“People need a decent wage- they need it in order to live, and not just exist,” Muscat said.
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Why is he using “middle class” when “chavs” will do nicely?
Once again Joseph Muscat tries to draw a parallel between himself and Mintoff. Labour followers might be happy with the idea of a new Mintoff but will disgruntled Nationalists be as thrilled?
You make a very good point, Antoine.
No wonder Joseph Muscat is asking for volunteers, considering that his highly paid advisors cannot come up with questions like this.
Muscat is trying to be passionate in his statements and meetings, copying Fenech Adami.
His appeal to such living standards brings to mind the 1980s political speeches, though at the time, such pleas were required as the country was stagnated.
The realities of these times are different.
It is amazing that we speak of a poor economy and no money: just go to popular areas, and witness food outlets full to the brim.
There is no doomsday scenario, but rather our life expectations have grossly over ridden our incomes, and even those who have been working for just a few years want it all. Then we complain that we want a living wage, that we want to afford homes and so on, and demand that profitable businesses should share their profits with us.
I have crossed the line from being an employee to that of a business owner. After working hours, I go home and my business is still running in my head.
When I was an employee I left work and that’s all. Whenever my business goes bad, no one tops up my bank account to feed my family every month.
So please cut out this living wage crap, Joseph Muscat.
Muscat said, ”not a concept that can be implemented overnight”. Seems like he hasn’t got the magic bullet yet.
And what a short memory he must have. He didn’t suggest the concept while Malta was going through a recession because of the global financial crisis. He blamed GonziPN then, instead.
And will it be a floating ”living wage”, according to Malta’s economic performance?
the PN blames the 70s recession solely on Labour.
[Daphne – Not just the PN. Most other people do too.]
since you hate wikipedia…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
He’s backtracking already.
If he keeps insisting, he’s going to face a lot of opposition from the business sector and from the middleclass.
I don’t think I understand the importance of middle class other than as a stratum in the social fabric.
Why is it important? And which level of middle class? Off the top of my head I can discern three Maltese “middle classes”.
My understanding of “middle class” is probably outdated, as I don’t think any amount of empowerment – whatever that means in this context – will allow an individual to cross the “boundary wall”.
I firmly believe that if you’re born working class you’ll die working class, even if you become the richest person in the world along the way.
[Daphne – You’re right. But what Muscat means when he says middle class is not what I would think of as middle class: he means up and coming chavs. The real middle class, as opposed to those who have earned enough money to buy the trappings of wealth (which the largely impoverished real middle classes don’t have) are what Muscat’s cohorts would call ‘tal-pepe’.]
A middle class implies a lower and an upper class. If the upper class are the pépé, and the middle class are the skilled/technical/manual employees, do we really have an upper and lower class to speak of?
[Daphne – That’s exactly what I was thinking. In Malta, so very small, the so-called classes are actually groups of people who are instantly recognisable to each other. There are rural peasants, who are not – according to the British definition, working class because that refers to urban society. There is the harbour area underclass which is very similar to the harbour area underclasses in all the port cities of Europe. There are the tal-pepe. There is a very large group of what, in Britain, would be the lower middle-class – decent, hardworking people in ordinary jobs who are clearly distinct from up and coming chavs who have more money than they do. I could go on, but I have a deadline to get to grips with. The thing is that when Joseph Muscat says middle class, I know he doesn’t mean me, even though I fit the bill according to the British definition. He means people like him, who I define as working class.]
Exactly!
When he says middle class he actually means lower class, but uses a convenient euphemism, right?
[Daphne – Right.]
I think you’re all wrong. He seems to rate classes in terms of income, (not so) subtly trying to imply that he’s upper class. It’s all about him, remember?
When he says middle class he means the mittel klass.
We need a Dictionary of Joseph Muscat Terminology.
There are classes in Malta. Nobody can deny that.
I would say they’re based on the British “model” and consequently their distribution would be comparable (or so I would think, I have no data or research to back it up).
I think that unless you are brutally honest with yourself, you always fail to pigeonhole yourself correctly (I would have liked to use the impersonal “one”, but it’s too ponderous). You generally tend to “upgrade” yourself.
[Daphne – I don’t upgrade myself. I know exactly what I am: textbook middle-class tal-pepe.]
My interest in classes is anthropological/evolutionary rather than socio-economic. When I talk about classes I don’t intend to be derogatory or anything. I just observe them as “niches” in a complex society.
[Daphne – So do I, but in Malta they’re very complex.]
The class to which I think concepts as “living wage” and “class upgrade” appeal are not the working class proper, but what I call the sub working class – the welfare scroungers/spongers.
[Daphne – The underclass.]
I disagree with Reuben Scicluna’s thesis. Our social classes are not based on the British model, but on the model of any ex-colony (for want of a better word, but let’s stick to the subject) with a reasonably advanced administration and economy, such as the Maghrebin countries, Egypt and the Lebanon.
We share the same pathways of access to money without access to culture, the same phenomenon of the “local boy made good”, and the same styles of hamallagni.
Indeed, you’d be very hard pressed to find the equivalent of our hamalli in Britain itself. Hamalli and chavs are not one and the same. But take a walk through the streets of Beirut and you’d think you were in Paceville surrounded by the Bylons and Rollons of Malta, complete with flashy cars and loud stereos, tons of hair gel and macho accessories and total lack of finesse.
Ditto for our millionaire hamallu contractor/explosives importer/quarry owner types. Line up the richest people in the countries I listed and you’ll get an exact copy of their Maltese equivalent: the “bling” and gold accessories, the semi-literacy, the barely-disguised disregard for legality, and everything else, down to the paunch.
Again, unlike Britain, we do not have a landed aristocracy, and the concept of the “public school élite” only existed, if at all, in St. Edward’s, which has now gone to the dogs.
Our real upper class are the descendants of all the people who figured in Edward Caruana Dingli’s paintings. Now the common link between all these people is that they either served in an administrative/legal/academic/government capacity or they were businessmen before 1964.
The very practical being, of course, that they were just about the only fully literate, cultured people on the island. You’ll see the same common thread in the ex-colonies I mentioned.
[Daphne – Well, H. P. then that makes me upper class not middle class, because that exhibition was kind of like a family portrait gallery for me and your description of who they were is right on the money – which kind of illustrates your point that we don’t follow the British model because according to the British model I’m textbook middle-class. But yes, you’re right, if people like me are the middle class then it kind of begs the question as to who the others are who are supposed to be swinging around above us. I don’t see any. But I still think of myself as middle class because my point of reference is the British ‘grading’ system. And it’s interesting that you should mention the literacy factor. When I linked literacy to social class in the rikotta debate some months ago, people became hysterical. But it’s a fact – it was with great astonishment that I discovered just how many people are only first or second generation ‘literates’. In my narrow growing-up world, grandmothers did complicated crossword puzzles, read books, magazines and newspapers, and discussed world events. So meeting people who appeared to all intents and purposes like me but who had, I discovered later, illiterate grandmothers and sometimes even illiterate mothers was a startling revelation.]
All the rest – the peasants, labourers, small shop owners, dockyard workers – have descendants who took one of two paths post-1964 and the coming of modernity to Malta. They have either educated themselves to a certain degree and acquired certain social skills which more or less enable them to interact across all levels of society. Or they have turned into hamalli.
At no point in this process does the financial situation enter the equation.
The term “lower class” can tentatively be assigned to these sub-literate hamalli, but in no way does “lower” indicate lower income, lower employment prospects, lower standards of schooling, lower living standards or lower enjoyment of life.
Finally, a word about this “middle class” nonsense. When Muscat says “middle class”, what he means is “the poor”, as in “those who struggle to make ends meet”. So 1) these people can come from any part of the social ladder, and, more importantly 2) if he means the poor, why not just say so?
Will he make the poor feel any better by calling them “middle class”?
Well, there’s always some blurring round the edges. My own grandfather was in the photo of Caruana Dingli’s students in his “academy”, on the first floor mind (I never knew he was that good). He was fully literate and cultured and all, but would never have considered himself upper class, and neither do I.
Muscat is stirring up a hornet’s nest with his “middle class”. Just when you thought we could move on to tackle the challenges of the 21st century, he comes along unwittingly sows the seeds of social discord.
and they all smiled happily ever after
http://images2.disneysites.com/cards/common/bruceSmile.jpg
There is one aspect of the whole living wage I suddenly really like. If they actually do publish the formula he intends to calculate this with (although I doubt he ever will), we would actually have a number showing what every person should strive to be making as a minimum.
If you are under the “living wage”, start studying, get a second job, send out your CV, improve yourself.
Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
People who are on minimum wage are on it for a reason. Perhaps having a figure to aim at could encourage them to empower themselves a bit, stop whining and actually do something. Wishful thinking, but one can dream.
When a company finds itself in difficulties after the living wage concept is introduced, it can always do what Joseph Muscat is doing – call for people to work for free.
“He said that an activity – Labour Connect, was being held on October 9. While this was not intended at fund raising, it would still be a call for the people to give to the party – not their money, but their time and skills.” The Times, today.
Joseph Muscat probably assesses social class in terms of money in the bank or material assets. That doesn’t make sense: segmenting society using money as the only parameter would have most classified as working class.
Middle class is a compendium of many parameters and this is what pi***s me off when he says that Mintoff built the middle class.
These seeds of middle class empowerment that Mintoff is meant to have sown never reached my allotment or that of my family and friends. We are all working middle class.
What I remember distinctly is that for a good fifteen years he screwed us all. Lest we ever forget.
Prosit, Anthony.
Also, since when has the Labour Party been the middle class party? I thought it was the Partit tal-Haddiema – the Worker’s Party and in Mintoff’s days it was more of a party for the working classes and the socially and financially deprived.
I think the leader of the opposition is trying to re-write history and again try to glorify Mintoff which we should strongly oppose.
Mintoff did not empower anyone – his idea was to try and get everyone DOWN to the same level (communist ideals) but not by improving and educating the lower classes but by increasing ignorance, demeaning intelligence and good manners etc.
This, in my opinion, is the great difference between the two parties: one believes in a levelling up approach and the other in a levelling down.
P.S. Just noticed the EU flag behind the leader of the opposition – how strange, how ironic.
Tutto fa brodo! and in this case the Maltese “brodu” fits Joey as a glove.
If I understand Joseph Muscat correctly, he is proposing a living wage for the middle classes. Why? The middle classes can do much better than that already.
So what does he have in mind for the working class?
Does he plan to pay us all the same and have just one big class of resentful people?
He doesn’t seem to understand that he is going to take his party straight to the cliff edge.
Ed Miliband had to give in to the living wage bullshit to get the union vote and beat his brother, the frontrunner, to the leadership.
My definition of a typical Maltese middle class couple:
No loans to pay
Educated up to tertiary level
Own house and a summer residence
Have some money invested on the stock exchange
Both husband and wife own a car.
Both work.
You mean a middle-aged middle-class couple.
Young middle-class couples have loans to pay – they usually do not have enough money to buy, cash-down, a house, a summer residence, two cars.
But they both work, and, as you say, have a tertiary level of education and this last asset helps them to achieve, in their middle age (unless they separate), the kind of well-being you refer to.
I would say, very much like the American suburbia. Would you agree?
It was definitely not the MLP or Mintoff who gave “a tertiary level of education” to the middle class in Malta.
Indeed, that “asset” is now widely spread among the Maltese working class as well – thanks to successive Nationalist governments.
You hit the nail on the head: middle class are middle aged, who recall vividly how people were treated by Joseph’s idol, Mintoff.
Joseph’s plan is to bring back to his fold the middle aged ‘lost sheep’ who experienced Mintoff’s far left socialist tactics at first hand.
Dom Mintoff and Eddie Fenech Adami in the same breath as begetters of the middle class. Pass me the smelling salts.
I just wonder, how those masses raised on Mintoff’s hatred of anything above working class, are going to feel?
I feel that what Muscat did lately is a reflection of his intended strategic posture to fight the next general election.
He is trying to speak highly of Mintoff with the intent of getting back the Mintoffjani that were so disgruntled during Sant’s time and at the same time he is also saying that Fenech Adami did a lot of good things so that Nationalists of a certain age who used to follow Eddie blindly would also feel at ease with Muscat’s comment.
This to the detriment of Gonzi’s image.