I wrote:
> > (It reminds me of when Harry Braverman reports that polls indicate that
> > most people consider themselves middle class -- and most people consider
> > themselves working class, too.)
Carrol wrote:
>Could this be interpreted that most people are both in touch with the
>reality of their lives (they are working class) but also have incorporated
>one of the core concepts of bourgeois ideology (the middle class) into
>their thinking.
It wasn't just propaganda: I think that in the US during the period from
WW2 to about 1974, there was a basis in the "reality of their lives" for
many working-class people to think of themselves as "middle class." This
was a period when the growth machine's distributional mechanism actually
allowed for some trickle-down (this was before the _laissez-faire_ emphasis
on trickle-down took over), so that many blue-collar working-class folks
had "good" jobs (in terms of pay and benefits) and could even afford to own
houses. (As an operational definition of "middle class," I use ownership of
equity in one's home.)
In the last 25 years, there's been a thinning of the middle-income groups,
with most working-class people falling relative to the elite, so that the
difference between "middle class" life-styles and working-class work-styles
is being clarified in practice (it had always been clear in
theory). However, it has become easier to "own" a home, as the Clintonians
brag, but that corresponds to rising debts to the bank (as opposed to equity).
>(This is not to deny that there is a demographically small but perhaps
>politically important class of petty producers, many of whom also consider
>themeselves both middle class and *workers*, if not "working class.")
To this "old" middle class, I'd add the "new middle class" of
administrators and staff between capital and labor in corporate
hierarchies (what Braverman calls the "middle layers"). Akin to this are
the middle layers in government, not-for-profits, etc.
>One source (or effect) of this omnipresent illusion of a "middle" class is
>the value judgments it sneaks in. There is an "upper" class and a "lower
>class" -- and "lower-class" is a not infrequent sneer word.
Nowadays, the lower class is often called the "underclass."
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
