Writers on American life have traditionally been wary of social class. Class analysis not only reeks of European socialism but also denies some core American beliefs, namely, that social identities are fluid, that they are individual rather than collective and they are achieved by a determined effort rather than ascribed at birth. Tagging people with a class label makes it a permanent feature of their lives – or let us say semi-permanent because there is always room for social mobility. The preferred view in America is that class is one feature among many – and a highly mutable one at that. Today of course we know that it is not as mutable as it once was.
Conservatives believe that speaking the language of class was, and is, politically dangerous and should be avoided. Thus Al Smith excoriated candidate Franklin Roosevelt in 1931 for stirring up class against class. It applies in Britain too. Stanley Baldwin, Britain’s interwar Prime Minister, thought that appeals to social class differences stoked “class hatred”, and John Major, who was Prime Minister in the nineties, insisted that Britain was on course for a “classless society”. Before steep, graduated income tax came in and before the labour movement was established as a major force, class differences were celebrated by those who profited by them; now that both of those things are present, the toxic reality of class must be denied.
However, the language of class, although slippery, is in widespread use. In Europe, the term is grounded in occupation and to a lesser extent in income and education. In Britain it refers to businessmen and qualified professionals, semi-professionals like nurses and teachers and white-collar workers. The rest of the population is working class: less qualified and less educated but not necessarily less skilled or less well paid. By contrast, social class fits awkwardly with the American dream. America has developed a number of “myths” during 20 years (by which I mean enduring and meaningful narratives) which have created a sort of orthodoxy: individualism, egalitarianism, enterprise and freedom of opportunity. These notions collide head-on with the concept of class. Accordingly, American English has found a more inclusive use for the term “middle class” which makes it seem less divisive. Any worker with a secure job, “benefits” and perhaps a specialisation (not even a skill) is “middle class”. In Europe, a trucker or a well-paid assembly line worker is working class; he is middle class in America. It would be an interesting piece of lexical archaeology to unearth how that usage came to be established.
The election of Donald Trump was founded in part on the fact that this great American middle class had hit the rocks and is headed for further decline. A sharp polarisation has set in. The rich and the affluent are growing in number, so are the working (and non-working) poor and social mobility is declining. The meat in the sandwich is the American middle class, down in numbers from 61 per cent to 50 per cent of adults between 1971 and 2017 (Pew Research Centre). This book examines that phenomenon from every angle.
We’ll start with some simple figures. The print version of the American Middle Class: An Economic Encyclopedia of Progress and Poverty comes in two volumes; there are seven parts comprising 250 individual entries; also included are 20 essays and 7 class “portraits”. There is one index and the number of illustrations is precisely nil. The contents of each “part” are worth listing: economics (easily the longest); politics and public policy; education, housing and labour; health; crime; culture and media; and lastly, “norms”. Norms really deal with middle-class values: personal and sexual issues, such as divorce, homophobia, sexism, and public issues, such as environmentalism and school prayer. When one considers the cross-currents in modern American society and the cleavage between religious fundamentalists with their Old Testament morality and urban liberals with a largely secular outlook, this is potentially the most interesting section of all.
My first reaction to this book is bafflement. Its scope is so all-encompassing and its reference group so large (at least half of America’s 300 million people), that the task seems too big for any two volumes. Inevitably, this leads to problems – to superficiality and over-selectivity. Take the article on divorce: in the space of 1,200 words, Chris Wienke gives a perfectly good round-up of some of the key factors affecting it: long-term statistical trends, changing employment opportunities between the sexes and the age of marriage, patterns of cohabitation, infidelity and levels of education and income. He also covers abuse within marriage and the impact of divorce on children. Wienke finishes with six items of further reading. So far so good. But he might also have looked at regional differences, religious factors, value differences between young and old and the varied legal situation. He is silent on these points – leaving the reader to follow them up himself.
Liam Molloy writes on intergenerational mobility. His piece is very statistical and abstract, concentrating on “elasticity” between generations, and differential chances of movement up and down the class ladder by quintiles and deciles. He also considers race and social mobility. But he never has chance to put flesh on the bones by quoting real-life examples or to examine the factors which determine inter-class movement such as the impact of government policies. A book as ambitious as this is bound to suffer such limitations, so we have to live with them. Professor Rycroft, the editor, has no doubt imposed a word limit on his authors – which seems to be about 1,000.
The American Middle Class is not historical. Its field is twenty-first-century USA. Indeed, to have folded in a mass of historical material would have made the whole enterprise impossible. Nor does it offer many biographies. There are twenty entries on people out of 250, and the selection is interesting: Malcolm X is included as an example of upward mobility, but not Dr King who was middle class. Both Clintons are covered because they were sound advocates of affirmative action, but Reagan who disliked and neglected that approach, is omitted. Al Sharpton is here but not Jesse Jackson. And it seems the height of arbitrariness that the Culture section should include Woody Allen and Bruce Springsteen but not others.
However, let us be positive about the book. Its sheer range has advantages. Once can go to it on a great number of social, political and economic topics and find a brief but useful summary of key points with a short bibliography to match: from de-industrialisation and minimum wage through sexual harassment and the legalisation of marijuana to community college and public housing; from autism and obesity through hate crimes and police misconduct to school Prayer and Allen Ginsberg. An astonishing total of 300 contributors, professors of history, English, business, criminology and psychology, bankers, accountants, medical doctors and people from city hall, have put pen to paper for this book. In traditional subject terms the articles are politics, economics and sociology (despite the title, this is the dominant one) but other subjects are represented too.
I know it is illogical but I should like to end with a word about how the book begins: a collection of short essays offering a conspectus of the American middle class. This includes its origins and its future, how middle-class Americans see themselves and (never far from the surface in the USA), the question of race. Then there are portraits of the different component parts of the middle class, divided by ethnicity (race again!). After a portrait of the black middle class, there is one on the new black middle class. Theodore Wilson’s case here is that following Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and President Johnson’s big welfare reforms in the sixties, aspiring black families got a boost and were able to book a seat in the middle class for the first time. In 1972, 60 per cent of black families were poor, 40 per cent in the middle or upper reaches of the income level. Forty years later, those proportions have almost been reversed – no mean feat when you consider that this affects maybe 20 million people.
The print version of this book contains just over 1,000 pages in two volumes of encyclopedia size, (10 inches high). Beyond that I cannot go since I have based my review on the electronic version. The navigation of the online work is easy and contains all the standard features. Dr Robert Rycroft, (Economics Professor, Virginia) has edited a useful book with the caveat that he may have spread his net a little too widely.
