Chris Bowers argues that there is “no need for the progressive working, creative class divide.”
[T]here are opposing reasons for the grassroots activist
uprising in the Democratic Party and the creative class vs. working
class divide among progressives being pushed by Buffenbarger and the
Clintons. The grassroots activist uprising in the Democratic Party
seeks to more widely distribute power within the Democratic coalition,
and to pursue a strategic course where no geographic area or
demographic group is either dismissed out of hand as unwinnable, or is
taken for granted because it supposedly has nowhere else to go. To put
it a different way, the activist uprising is ultimately a struggle over
expanding and forming new coalitions versus maintaining a narrowly
targeted status quo. By contrast, helping to foment and further a
divide between working class and creative class progressives causes
nothing but stagnation. We should not be preventing the creation of new
and surprisingly effectively alliances.
There were surely farmer-worker alliances before. I think the key will lie less in taking the industrial age framework of unions and extending it the the creative class (whose members are very individualistic and entrepreneurial) and more in expanding creativity and the capacity for self-expression and greater individual development to the working class. And, what about the service class – the largest of the them all? It would seem like a new broadened politics would have to include them. The service class is to the creative economy, what the working class was to the industrial one.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
There’s a unique synergy and mutual respect between the creative and service classes. Many in the super-creative core that Richard describes actually pay their bills via service-class duty. From this post-partisan point forward, candidates will have to appeal to the moderate and freely thinking creative/service classes to win. The GOP has firmly moved towards the center in recognition of this new reality; to remain viable, the Dems will need to do the same.
To the now forever marginalized Rush crowd, let me sound the following lyrical send-off…drums please…:
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I’m glad the movement is swelling….It’s time for the creative class to rise and take our rightful place as the visionaries amongst our American society…..