Micah (rote) reviewed The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret on + 46 more book reviews
This book does a good job of demolishing the idiotic notion of "the middle class" that would have us believe that 80% of Americans, existing relatively comfortably and by the sweat of their brow, are sandwiched between a small number of chronically poor (and lazy?) and a few exceptionally wealthy invididuals on top.
The problem is, only a warped reading of income statistics bears out this interpretation. If you look at the NATURE of the work Americans do - particularly their ROLE in the work process - most Americans are actually 'working class.'
Zweig's analysis, simply put, sees workers as those who have very little say in their workplace. The middle class are the managers who have some control over those underneath them, and the capitalists are those who direct the work process. Starting out from this definition, Zweig finds that something like 60% of Americans are working class. He also has interesting statistics about the racial and gender composition of the various classes; he makes the observation, often forgotten, that not all workers are black and that not all whites are not workers. In fact, the percentage of working class whites and working class blacks is fairly similar. The reason this is obscured, he says, is because 60s radicals, frustrated at making no headway with 'workers,' transferred the locus of opression to categories of race and gender rather than class. This alone is a useful rebuke to certain leftist notions (particularly those of the Maoists) which claim that the white working class in the "United $Nakes of Amerikka" is a "labor aristocracy."
As a sociological sketch, Zweig's book is excellent. When he goes beyond that to address what workers ought to do to improve their lot, he backpedals into a liberal fantasyland where unions are workers' friends and politics offers anything but mystification and false hopes for the working class.
The problem is, only a warped reading of income statistics bears out this interpretation. If you look at the NATURE of the work Americans do - particularly their ROLE in the work process - most Americans are actually 'working class.'
Zweig's analysis, simply put, sees workers as those who have very little say in their workplace. The middle class are the managers who have some control over those underneath them, and the capitalists are those who direct the work process. Starting out from this definition, Zweig finds that something like 60% of Americans are working class. He also has interesting statistics about the racial and gender composition of the various classes; he makes the observation, often forgotten, that not all workers are black and that not all whites are not workers. In fact, the percentage of working class whites and working class blacks is fairly similar. The reason this is obscured, he says, is because 60s radicals, frustrated at making no headway with 'workers,' transferred the locus of opression to categories of race and gender rather than class. This alone is a useful rebuke to certain leftist notions (particularly those of the Maoists) which claim that the white working class in the "United $Nakes of Amerikka" is a "labor aristocracy."
As a sociological sketch, Zweig's book is excellent. When he goes beyond that to address what workers ought to do to improve their lot, he backpedals into a liberal fantasyland where unions are workers' friends and politics offers anything but mystification and false hopes for the working class.
