According to research by the London School of Economics, if you’re a working class graduate with a first class degree you’re less likely to land an elite job than a middle class graduate with a 2:2.
And even if you do succeed in getting the position, you'll earn on average 16% less than your middle class counterparts. Why?
In this "investigation" Amol Rajan, media editor at the BBC, either has failed to answer why or he was censored (an editor edited him!).
The main reason according to Rajan is "class prejudice". Class, thus, is like racism "a prejudice". not a production of socio-economic structure of property and power: how production is organised, who gets the profit, who owns what, and what power relations govern the producers and the owners of capital.
Furthermore, class society has to reproduce itself in terms of power relations and ideas, (i.e. ideology). This main division in society has to be deflected towards "identity politics", "external or internal threat to our way of life or to our interests", "we are the greatest nation on earth (Blair and Johnson), "too many immigrants", "we are all in it together", "entrepreneurs as wealth creators", "aid, philanthropy and charity", "hard work" (as the documentary starts with), redefining "freedom" and of course, stirring nationalistic fervour when necessary.
In Britain, as elsewhere, this class division and reproduction of it socially and ideologically is also found not only in banks (the focus of the BBC documentary), but also reflected in the social background of Members of Parliament and Senior Civil Servants and the academic institutions they graduated from. It is also reflected in some working class people who think they are middle class. It is revealing though that Rajan has focused on a very corrupt, probably the most corrupt, industry in Britain: banking.
Capitalism, whether in its form in Britain, Iran or Brazil, is a class society. The pyramid-like social structure has only few rooms in the middle and at the top. That is what the dominant ideology tries hide when "social mobility" is invoked. That applies to the supposedly "more equal" countries like Norway and Sweden, for example.
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