Class Consciousness in Country Music :: Music Musical Class Essays

Class Consciousness in Country Music The term class consciousness, like any term which attempts to define group mentality, is somewhat imprecise. This lack of precision, of course, lends itself to the provocation of scholarly dispute. Historians of the labor movement in the United States have written volumes about both the meaning of class consciousness and the question of whether American workers possess it, however defined. While there are some demurs, most historians, including the non-Marxists, have accepted a Marxist interpretation of the term "class consciousness."1 Generally, Marxists insist that class consciousness is composed of two elements, a recognition by a particular group that they occupy a common, usually inferior, position within a society, and a commitment to changing that position through some type of political activity. "Class consciousness," according to an oft-cited definition by the English Marxist historian E.P. Thompson, "happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or sha red) feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs. The class experience is largely determined by the productive relations into which men are born or enter voluntarily.2 Regardless of how class consciousness is defined, most historians of the labor movement in the United States, Marxists and non-Marxists alike, agree that American workers never developed it. Their explanations of why this is so, however, vary. Some of the more acceptable explanations for this lack of class consciousness among American laborers are the racial and ethnic minorities within the work force, the greater social mobility of the American worker compared to that of his European counterpart and the generally higher wages received by American workers, which it is claimed, allows them to join the middle class. Recent historians have identified as a cause republican virtues nourished by the American Revolution which established a political democracy in the United States before the coming of the Industrial Revolution.3 The failure of American workers to become class conscious in the Marxist sense does not, however, indicate a willingness to accept the status quo. Rather American workers were acutely aware of their inferior economic and social status. The method they chose to improve their status was trade unionism, not politics. Trade unionism sprang from what Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor termed class awareness, a camaraderie among workers devoid of political consideration. This class awareness of American laborers, historians contend, is evident in the long, arduous and ultimately successful struggle to build a trade union movement.