Class Consciousness Is Something to Be Awakened

 A UDN Invited Commentary

Class Consciousness Is Something to Be Awakened

By Yen Chen-shen, Research Fellow, Institute of Int’l Relations, National Chengchi University

Source: UDN

July 31, 2019

After I earned my PhD degree and taught college for eight years in the US, I returned to Taiwan to teach; at the time, my wife had not started working, thus, a family of four relied on the salary of an associate professor at a national university. In spite of this, I considered myself as middle class, until one day, a colleague of mine reminded me that a family of four relying on a salary of a little more than NT$70,000 could only be called mid-lower class in Taipei. Thus, I suddenly realized that Carl Marx class theory indeed had a basis, that is, class consciousness has to be awakened; otherwise, you don't know what is meant by relative deprivation.

Since schooling in Taiwan, we all have to fill in family financial status on many forms, and the majority of Taiwan students will choose well-to-do, with very few filling in wealthy, because we are concerned that showing off one’s wealth easily invites trouble; even fewer people are willing to admit that they come from humble origins or poverty because they are worried that that could invite strange glances from others. For this reason, an absolute majority choose the safest “well-to-do.” This choice has in fact anesthetized the class consciousness that Taiwan should have had; many families ostensibly leading an extremely hard life still define themselves as middle class.

When Taiwan’s economy gradually enters an M-shaped society, the public gradually develops class consciousness. With rising housing prices, stagnant salaries, and difficulty in getting a good paying job that could raise a family, young people gradually develop class consciousness. Perhaps because of this cognizance, they begin to believe that retired military, civil servants, and public school teachers who receive pensions higher than their current salaries represent an injustice of their generation.

However, these young people’s focus should be fixated on the ruling party and the new class it represents. After the DPP has undergone two turn-overs in central governance and numerous continuous local governance, it has in fact developed and erected a new class. Through the victories of the presidential and parliamentary elections, the party has not only grasped all the political appointments of the Presidential Palace and the various government agencies of the five Yuan, and at the same time, oblivious to the civil service system, arranging their own people for employment everywhere, even appointing close relatives and cronies to various state-owned enterprises, occupying fat-cat jobs. Many grassroots DPP supporters still believe that what they have been supporting is a political party filled with justice and fighting for ideals, being completely ignorant that this new class is standing on the opposite side.

When the duty-free cigarette smuggling case by special agents of the Presidential Palace broke out this time, people of the lower classes who live in difficulty and rely on smoking for temporary relief suddenly realized that the new class with connections not only wine and dine, but spend less money on buying cigarettes. If there is something or some incident that could call up the class consciousness of the lower strata of the society, allowing them to feel a serious sense of relative deprivation, and go a step further to opt for countering the new class, then the cigarette smuggling case may perhaps be the last straw that crashes the new class.

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