Class in American discourse is a weird thing. If they had achieved suburban middle class lives, what made them working class?
In England, you might say well if your dad was working class then you are working class for your whole life regardless of anything else. But the American notion of class isn’t generally thought of that way.
In the US the term "middle class" doesn't mean the same thing. In the UK it means above working class but below upper class. In the states, it means anyone that's not poor or rich. Mostly everyone likes to think they're "middle class" in the US whether they're blue-collar or white-collar.
Right. So I would say that people working (up until then) secure government jobs with good benefits and a high enough wage to live a good suburban lifestyle middle class, not working class (which in American usage implies manual labor and low to low middle wages, neither of which applied here.)
The problem is the quote is mixing the Marxist notion of working class (someone tied to wage labor for survival) and the general American notation of middle class (comfortable but not rich, defined by income rather than family status)
"Middle class" is generally not a useful concept. The only two classes that matter to anyone but an academic are "working class" and "ruling class" (or as I like to call it, "owning class").
People often confuse the symbols of class for the class itself. Baz who grew up poor in a dilapidated tower block, speaks exclusively in east london slang, but now owns his own plumbing firm and drives a £100k land rover (with custom plates that say "working class") is not working class any more. He owns for a living. On the other hand a footballer who makes a huge salary is working class, because they have to work in order to get paid.
In the US and UK both this is deliberately obscured, but in different ways. In the UK, class is seen as inherited social status. In the US, class is seen as more or less a synonym for income or wealth. Both of these are wrong.
I think the dividing line in practice between "working" and "middle" is the four-year college degree, serving largely as a status signifier, and marking one a participant in cosmopolitan cultural aesthetics and norms. While a great many college graduates do genuine work, it makes one eligible for high-status "bullshit jobs" [0], in a way that even those in the high-paid working class (plumbers, electricians) are not. A subset of this middle class could arguably be defined as the "managerial class", engaged largely in performative busy-work, but ultimately only borrowing their power from owners.
That said, I think the "owning" vs. "working" model is incredibly valuable; and just as "lower class" has been redefined into "working class" (in a noblesse oblige of linguistic dignity!), I'll definitely be referring to the upper class as the "owning class" from now on. ;) (One complication, and arguably the reason that capitalism has proved resilient against its alleged contradictions: the middle class has managed to carve out some portion of ownership, in the forms of home ownership, stocks, etc. Not enough to carry substantive political or economic power, but enough to give them "skin in the game", and therefore a motivation to vote to preserve the ownership status quo, lest they lose their achievements of security and status.)
"Middle class" in this context refers to the level of their income and standard of living, where "working class" refers to their relationship to production (i.e. industrial wage workers).
But it wasn’t industrial. The work was cognitive not physical. It also wasn’t exactly for wages in the classic sense given that the federal government had holidays, vacation, and so on.
"Working class' is generally identified as a 'trade' job in terms of ATC it was a trade job back then because it did not require much to get the job in terms of experience or education, you were trained to do the specific job and it rarely changed over the course of your career.
I always thought "working class" means you make your living via your labour, regardless of what that labour is.
The difference would be people who make their living by owning things (stock, companies, property) that pay dividends. This is not to say that they don't work hard, but that their income isn't directly tied to their labour.
In this sense, someone can be both lower class (poor) and a part of the owner class. Someone else can be upper class (rich) and working class.
It is industrial work, and industrial work is not purely physical; even working in a modern factory often requires cognitive work. Tire production is a great example, and if you visit a Goodyear factory you will notice a profound lack of Taylorism in the actual work of the employees (of course, not in the processes themselves).
>It also wasn’t exactly for wages in the classic sense given that the federal government had holidays, vacation, and so on.
Wages are typically understood as whatever price is paid to employees for their ability to work[1]; we may be operating under different definitions, though (I studied economics rather than business).
The bearded dude doesn’t have such a great track record. Seemed like some good ideas but they didn’t pan out when they were tried. Not sure why people are still reading him.
Parent should have used e.g. or ex rather than i.e. The not all working class are industrial workers. A good test is if one sells their labor for wages then they are likely working class.
I think you may be (or I may be) confusing "i.e." for "viz."; I intended to use "i.e.", as I was specifically referring to the ATCs as industrial workers.
> If they had achieved suburban middle class lives, what made them working class
Did they earn their living by working? Then they are working class. If you make a salary or a wage, if you have a boss, you are working class.
Did they make their living by owning stuff (e.g. landlords, investors, etc.)? Then they aren't working class.
Edit: Surprised to see downvotes, Wikipedia defines it thus:
> "The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in waged or salaried labour, especially in manual-labour occupations and industrial work."
White collar jobs are definitely working class folks.
This just isn't what the vast majority of people mean when they talk about class. No one uses 'working class' in casual conversation to include doctors, hedge fund analysts and lawyers.
> No one uses 'working class' in casual conversation to include doctors, hedge fund analysts and lawyers.
Plenty of folks do. Yes, 'working class' is often synonymous with lower class in the US, but I regularly hear and use working class to mean "the class that is working". Engineers, farmhands, day laborers, doctors, grocery store clerks, analysts -- we all are working for a living, we are all working class.
It sounds like the division is really if you make a living from investments vs. from labor. In that case, a Doctor has invested a lot of time and money into certification and skill building, so they make a living more from investment and only partly from labor. Someone who owns apartment buildings is making an even higher percentage of their living from investments, however there is still a labor component to it (maintenance, management, etc). Which can be performed directly by the owner or it may be farmed out to others (which elevates the owner a bit higher in this class).
>Did they earn their living by working? Then they are working class. If you make a salary or a wage, if you have a boss, you are working class.
There's a pretty massive gulf between a heavy equipment operator who's making token contributions to retirement and would have a tough time with the mortgage if his spouse lost their job and a brain surgeon with maxed out retirement accounts, kids at ivy leagues and a vacation cottage on an exclusive lake.
They might work 500yd from each other but they are not the came classes of people. The arcs of their lives from birth to death are wildly different. Both depend on their wage to sustain their lifestyle. But the doctors (and the other people in their neighborhood) mostly wouldn't be caught dead living the way the heavy equipment operator lives (and the reverse is only slightly less true).
Referring to the latter working class is something usually only done before telling the former they need to stop drinking bud light, driving 30 cars, get the project boat out of the yard, vote a certain way, talk a certain way, etc, etc you catch the drift.
Working class carries a very strong implication of blue collar work or not significantly more than blue collar amounts of money. A social worker or paralegal is working class. An investment banker or law firm partner should find other words to use.
> There's a pretty massive gulf between a heavy equipment operator who's making token contributions to retirement and would have a tough time with the mortgage if his spouse lost their job and a brain surgeon with maxed out retirement accounts, kids at ivy leagues and a vacation cottage on an exclusive lake.
The only real difference between these two people is the number of missed paychecks they are away from bankruptcy. Sure, that number is probably small for the equipment operator and large for the surgeon, but it's still a number. Their wealth goes down when they're not working. In contrast to the class of people whose wealth goes up when they're not working.
This is a definition intended to push people towards your preferred ideology rather than a neutral description of how the phrase is used out in the wild.
Wikipedia disagrees? Yes, the colloquial usage often implies poor/lower class or physical labor, but it's not the only use of the term. (Just like the phrase 'Middle Class' has really fuzzy boundaries in the US.)
No, this is the original definition of class struggle. Anything else ("middle class", "upper class") is just an attempt by bourgeois to divide people by trying to make them feel like they're part of a different, special group.
As a brit I'd say it's kind of an education thing. If you are bricklayer that's working class and limited education required and if you get a law degree say and become a lawyer that's middle class even if your dad's a bricklayer.
We are the stupid class. We are the ones who regret our decisions 20 years later, because while our work is enjoyable, companions are fun and entertainment cheap, we realise our children won't have as many opportunities and that we should have offset our current enjoyment for our children's future
I think it implies some social mobility. So these people likely came from a working class parents to and achieved a suburban (read:upper) middle class life.
tl;dr: one of way of looking at class is that it's not one ladder, defined solely by economic status; rather it's three ladders (Working/Middle/Upper), which are largely independent, and which intersect both economics and culture. In this sense, Jeff Bezos is not actually upper class ("old money"), but the world's most successful middle class worker; and the reason Trump appealed to the working class despite exorbitant wealth, was an enthusiastic embrace of working class culture (baseball hats, fast food).
Huh, it's actually top of his blog right now [0]. Alexander is borrowing from the 80's book by Fussell, so it's apparently an idea that's been kicking around a while. O'Church's piece looks interesting, I'll dig in, thanks for sharing!
In England, you might say well if your dad was working class then you are working class for your whole life regardless of anything else. But the American notion of class isn’t generally thought of that way.