What is a working class boy? Am I one?

Nov 04, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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If you are interested in philosophy and human nature then I guess you must watch the television interview slated to air on November 8 on the Al Jazeera English TV channel, in which Sir David Frost talks to Sir Paul McCartney.
In that programme, McCartney says that despite his wealth and fame, he remains a working class boy.
This is really complex stuff that involves complex explorations in psychology.
I will certainly try to see the interview on You Tube to understand what McCartney means. Now in his seventies, McCartney is listed in financial magazines as one of Britain’s wealthiest citizens and he is one of the entertainment industry’s richest singers.
What then does he mean when he says that he is still a working class boy? Class positions are determined by access to resources, more properly assets
Any first year economics major will tell you that class positions are arrived at by the possession of wealth. An industrialist who owns shipping lines cannot be classified as a working class citizen. No economist would be so crazy to refer to Bill Gates as a middle class American. He would fall into the category of what Marxist academics call the bourgeois class. Paul McCartney cannot be put in any other category except the British bourgeoisie.
A distinction must be made between a bourgeois and a capitalist. The former is classified as such by the possession of wealth.
A capitalist is someone who is involved in investments that bring in comfortable profits, which is translated to wealth.
It means then that you can refer to Tiger Woods or Oprah Winfrey as belonging to the American bourgeois society, but they are not capitalists.
How can someone as wealthy as McCartney still remain a working class boy? His first wife came from a rich, capitalist family. His present wife is the heiress of a wealthy capitalist family haulage business in the United States, New England Motor Freight.
Many years ago, on a trip to Barbados with his family, McCartney rented an exclusive apartment complex where American billionaires often stay. It needs no mention that he lives in a mansion in the UK.
It becomes fascinating then to hear what McCartney means by him being a working class boy.
Until we have his explanation (assuming he will describe what he means to Frost), we can theorize as to what McCartney means. I guess it has to do with psychology and behavioural patterns. You can be very wealthy, but at heart remain the person from the working class district that you were born into. This would involve the type of company you keep, the lifestyle you live, and the shape your behaviour takes in relation to aesthetics, philosophy and politics.
Incidentally, Bob Marley, a Rastafarian, was the client of the most expensive manicurist in the world. Would you call that bourgeois behaviour?
A financially comfortable human can be called a working class person if he maintains a close network of ordinary friends, avoids ostentatious, material things, mixes with the ordinary folks, and has a deportment that eschews arrogance, chauvinism and aloofness. There are many bourgeois persons who shop in the markets, eat at ordinary restaurants, and can be seen in the line waiting for their cars to be washed.
In British Guiana, the CEO of Bookers, Sir Jock Campbell, refused to have his breakfast, lunch and dinner at the Georgetown Club.
There was a Prime Minister of St. Lucia, who outside of official working hours, drove his own car and took his clothes to the laundry.
I will wait to see what McCartney means, but I think I can anticipate what he will say, because I know the feeling. I was born into poverty in Wortmanville and worked my way out of it by attending university.
My life at the moment is definitely lower middle class. I live in a lower middle class house. My occupation before UG terminated my contact was lower middle class. But from the time I graduated from UG until this very moment, I have lived in and with a working class psychology.
I shop at the market. I look for bargains all the time in the supermarkets. I wash my own car (and my daughter’s; did so last Sunday). I cut my own hair (but with a big scissors) and I do not buy brand name clothes. But most of all, I live in a working class world of aesthetics, culture and philosophy. I support working class political movements.
Philosophically, I strongly believe in social activism, especially the fight for human rights.
Finally, all of my very close friends, from the time I left UG until now, that I trust implicitly with my security and my life, are ordinary working class folks. I do not live a lower middle class life.
I am at heart, a working class boy. Yes I have associations with bourgeois and middle class people, but my intimate pals are certainly not middle class or from the bourgeois class.
Yes, President Ramotar was right when six years ago he said businessmen helped to build my home.
A few of them contributed and I thank them. Ramotar got that information from someone in the media I trusted at the time. No, it is not Uncle Adam Harris.

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