What's the Status of Status?
On Class Analysis in Paul Fussell
I recently read Slate Star Codex’s review of Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through The American Status System.
The core point is that we should distinguish between wealth and status. Class, in America, at least, isn’t about purchasing power, but about how one understands one’s place in the world. The summary of the argument is that the upper class doesn’t have anything to prove, whereas the middle class and upper middle class do. Education and tech innovation are byproducts not of the upper class, but of the middle and upper middle-class.
My question is why any of this matters? What does an analysis of class in terms of social status rather than wealth accomplish?
One answer is that it exposes inequality (and envy) to be more substantial than what economics can address. As I’ve written about Fukuyama and Hegel, it shows the struggle for recognition to be more fundamental than the struggle for sustenance or material wellbeing.
It also shows—as a matter of explanatory, if cynical, power—that our social values emerge from where we stand in a status pecking order. I suppose Fussell’s argument lends fodder to a critique of meritocracy insofar as it shows it to be an invention of the middle and upper middle class who are particularly anxious about proving their worth.
In my view, Fussell’s argument is a revision of Marx by way of Hegel, but is nonetheless reductive. I can see its value as a matter of anthropology and sociology, but it seems normatively irrelevant.
There is little wisdom to be gained from looking at oneself through the lens of an analysis of status, except to better understand where one’s values come from. But knowing the socialized origins of one’s values is neither an argument for nor against them.
For the most part, and in the end, a fascination with status is a distraction. Fussell’s book—as presented by Slate Star Codex—is a work of self-critique, betraying the status-obsessed anxiety of one member of the intelligentsia.
Why am I wrong? When, if ever, should we care about status?
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