Face in a modern society

More on social transition in China, from the Intersection.

On a city street, a brush between a well-dressed couple and a poor, dirty porter triggers riots. Professor McCracken's discussion raises three interesting principles. 

• The clash in transitioning societies between the prestigious' Don't you know who I am?  and the modern citizen's Who do you think you are?
• The fact that many social benefits are extra-economic.  In this instance, honor, "face," the show of respect.  I am always bemused that people do not exploit this kind of value-added concept in, for instance, designing wages or other remuneration.
• The apparently officious and self-privileged (and, by implication, rich) participant in the argument was an official of the Communist Party, the principles of which presumably offer the populace release from the shackles of the masters in the ruling class.

--It should be mentioned that the Chinese Communist Party, in the interest of maintaining social stability for the regime, is said to have forced the man to appear on television and to declare that he was not a member of the Party.--

It is very likely that there was a long lineage of class suspicion between the protagonists here.

The US is fortunate that there was never a hereditary aristocracy here, and so, even though some are better educated and more moneyed than others, there is not any  assumption of an independent right to autocratic behavior separate from role or immediate position.  A DuPont or Rockefeller or Teresa Heinz Kerry whose money disappears  soon learns to be treated like anyone else. An aristocratic lineage (I know a few expatriated ones) adjusts with difficulty to a levelized society, and may carry a bit of deprived ressentiment into it.

In addition, in older hereditary societies the same old rulers tend consistently to surface as the new rulers or high-level managers, with different titles and claims.  Whereas, here, no one can say Abe Lincoln, or Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower, were old aristocracy in disguise. Usually even when the more privileged rise, as many accuse George W. Bush of doing, real foreign aristocrats hoot at them as fraudulent American pretenders (a differently-directed Who do they think they are?).