How to be poor

rich does not mean finding yourself; it means losing your former self.
The upstart rich man hopes to lose his identity.
    3) The most important reason for the
decline of the prestige of the rich and the rise of the prestige of the poor is
that the state itself has become poor. The splendid, glamorous, glittering
state — which but yesterday ruled half the world — walks around with holes in
its trousers, showing its naked behind. Every wage claim is answered with the
protest: we can’t afford it. No longer do we hear the old, impertinent, cry:
“No, and shut up!” It has changed to: “Sorry, we can’t afford it.” Public
expenditure must be cut and the Chancellor has become more parsimonious and
penny-pinching than the meanest suburban housewife. Britain, once the epitome
of glamour and grandeur, has not only lost its once undisputed lead, but has
slipped out of the first eleven of the League of Rich Nations. And if she is
slowly slipping back again it is not because she is getting richer but because
some others are getting poorer still. There are vast private fortunes in this
country, and those who are in work are still pretty well off. It is the state which is poor. The phrase about “public splendour and private squalor” is a
thing of the past. Today it is the other way round. This is the era of private
splendour and public squalor. (Royal occasions are exceptions. On royal
weddings we would willingly spend our last pennies; besides, the show is good
public relations.)
    The first reaction to the poverty of
the country was a silent and morose shock. It soon changed to acceptance and
later into pride, and now into a new snobbery. If Britain is poor, then it is chic to be poor. If Britain, with her glorious past, is among the new poor, why not
me? People started wearing their poverty in their buttonholes. Even rich people
started boasting about their poverty. Middle-class people were practising
cockney accents. People whose fathers were solicitors in Birmingham lied and
said their dads were miners in Durham. Fifty years ago no one would have
uttered the words: “I can’t afford it.” Today it is a proud (and often untrue)
boast.
    Take writers as an example. In the
last century they would confess to a certain literary ambition. They would
freely admit that they were anxious to create something worthwhile, perhaps
enduring; but under no circumstances would any writer admit that he had any
financial considerations in mind. Words like “sales”, “percentages”,
“commissions” etc were dirty words. Today the dirty words are “immortality”,
“literature”, “poetic” and so on, and all authors take it for granted that they
would do anything to “promote sales”. They become clowns, they travel, they
sign hundreds of copies (if they have a chance), they degrade themselves in all
possible ways — and do not regard it as degrading because it is all in the
interest of the one and only sacred matter: sales. And all this is not really
because they are destitute, or because they are less vain about their
achievements than they used to be. It is simply to emphasise how poor we are.

How to be
Middle-Glass

     
    The middle class has been partly emulated and partly
abused during the last few decades. There have been millions who wanted to
achieve middle-class status, and almost as many (indeed, often the same people)
who wanted to abolish the middle class altogether.
    The two aims are not really
contradictory. If everybody does become middle-class, the middle class will
automatically be abolished. If everybody is in the middle, there is no middle.
Complete success would mean complete failure.
    The more the middle class — the
bourgeoisie — was derided and despised and made the target of political attack,
the higher it rose in prestige and snob-value.
    The upper classes hardly exist any
more: they have taken over, more or less, middle-class habits and virtues (or
the middle class took over upper-class habits and virtues — it comes to the
same). The former upper classes look pretty middle-middle-class to me nowadays,
with the exception of the royal family which often gives me the impression of
being lower-middle-class.
    “We are all middle-class now”, was
the boast twenty-five years ago. The tendency of becoming middle-class persists
but the boast is dead: this is a desire to be achieved but not to acknowledge.
In any case, we have a situation when millions want to become middle-class but
do not