Middle Class or Working Class?

The Pew Research Center provides a vast amount of information on US citizens through polling and surveys. Of course, it is imperative that those of us digesting that information understand the biases and misrepresentations that can distort or slant their findings. It is essential that the wording of queries, the choice of descriptions, and the connotations of words and phrases be carefully weighed before accepting Pew’s findings.

Among the more useful and telling surveys are those that show how people change their self-description over time-- how they see themselves differently under different circumstances. 

And likely one of the most interesting of those many possible self-descriptions is membership in a social class.

Now social classes are notoriously difficult to define. Problems loom immediately. One, it is extremely difficult to decide how to characterize a social class. What the most important factors are in distinguishing meaningful, useful social groups is not obvious or easy to discern. Arbitrary or artificial classes are seldom of significant import: the sophisticated and unsophisticated, the left-handed and right-handed, generations X, Y, and Z. 

Two, it is necessary to ground social classes in something objective-- perception of social status must be distinguished from the actual state of people. The class that people think they occupy is less important than what position that they actually occupy. Social class must be scientifically determined and not determined by custom, authority, or prejudice.

Three, significant sets of people grouped as classes should be relatively discretely determined-- who is inside and who is outside should have relatively sharp boundaries.

Few discussants of class address or meet these standards of rigor, including the Pew Research Center. They arbitrarily define class based upon household income, distinguishing an upper, middle, and lower class. For Pew, the middle class is defined as “those with an income that is two-thirds to double that of the U.S. median household income, after incomes have been adjusted for household size.” The upper class and lower classes are defined accordingly as above and below the middle class.

Certainly, Pew’s definition is objective and sharply defined, but questionably useful and decidedly arbitrary. 

Without mounting a stout defense-- in this context-- and without demonstrating its vitality, I would offer the Marxist class definitions as a robust alternative meeting all standards: division into the working class and the bourgeoisie. For Marxists, the determining features of social class are grounded in socio-economic relations. One set of actors, the bourgeoisie, is determined by their owning and/or controlling of the productive assets of a society. And the other set of actors, the working class, is determined by their lack of those assets and their consequent necessity to seek employment from asset-holders or the state. 

That is not to say that there cannot be problems with the Marxist definition, but it remains the most productive framework to understand class-based social behavior.

Nevertheless, the Pew surveys provide an insightful and useful look at how the working class has changed and how it sees itself.

Since the early Cold War and the decimation of the left-leaning trade unions by means of the betrayal and co-option of militant class-based unionism, bankrupt and corrupted union leaders and their politician counterparts have tried to sell the idea that workers were “middle-class.” This elusive and deceptive term served them well, giving the idea that workers had climbed from the lower class to a much higher, more stable, and “typical” status. Achieving the middle class meant enjoying the good life and signaled that success of the capitalist system for workers. To the extent that workers bought the idea of middle-class status, they accepted the notion that they could do no better and that alternative visions were unnecessary, even undesirable. Thus, the very concept of the middle class and the argument that most workers were in it became a powerful ideological tool in the fight against Communism and other alternative paths.

Consequently, ideologues, the commentariat, politicians, and labor leaders were and are energetically resolved to defend it.

A finding by the Pew Research Center in November, 2024 must have sent shock waves through this cabal of apologists for capitalism:

The share of Americans who are in the middle class is smaller than it used to be. In 1971, 61% of Americans lived in middle-class households. By 2023, the share had fallen to 51%, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. As a result, Americans are more apart than before financially.… [T]he growth in income for the middle class since 1970 hasn’t kept pace with the income growth for the upper tier and the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged. Not only do a smaller share of Americans live in middle-class households today, the incomes of middle-class households have also not risen as quickly as the incomes of upper-income households.

While the Pew definition of “middle class” is demonstrably bias-laden and misleading, it nonetheless shows an objective, statistical decline in the status of many workers in the statistical middle. Pew is forced to conclude: “The share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has fallen almost without fail in each decade since 1970.” This cannot be good news to the staunch defenders of the benefits of US capitalism.

If defenders of capitalism find this finding threatening, what must they think of the findings of a more recent poll?

A report in August concludes that “Most Americans think of themselves as “working class” today: Overall, 60% of U.S. adults say the term describes them well. And the identity is widely adopted by people across all income and educational groups – including half of both Americans who have a bachelor’s degree and those who are upper income.” (Pew emphasis)

Clearly, the fact that so many US respondents describe themselves as working class must disappoint the hucksters hustling the notion that the US is the land of a vast and socially content middle class. And further, the fact that these self-descriptions as working class largely cross over other common descriptive categories-- sex, race, education, and income-- should put to rest most of the Internet prattle over an uneducated white working class. While the numbers may vary, a majority of people in nearly all significant categories but the very rich identify as working class.

Does this also mean that most people understand social class in a way not so different from the Marxist definition?

Pew researchers are surprised that “50% of Americans who consistently pay their bills in full, have several months of emergency savings and report being able to meet their expenses comfortably, say they consider themselves to be working class.” 

The lesson of this survey is not just for those who purvey “middle class” snake oil to convince people that we all sacrifice and gain equally in the best of all societies.

There is a lesson for the left here as well. For those who have written off workers as “aristocrats of labor,” as lacking in class consciousness, as identifying with the rich and powerful, there is more than a little possibility of kindling a new class politics. There is an opportunity to place working-class interests before people who, in fact, identify as workers. That has always been the role of Socialists and Communists.

A guest on a fairly prominent left podcast recently stated emphatically that the sole goal of the left in the advanced capitalist countries should be to show solidarity with the downtrodden in the Global South. Unfortunately, that is a belief shared by far-too-many on the left.

While that goal is and should always be a necessary aim for the left, it should be remembered that class struggle-- the awakening and empowering of our working class-- is both the essence of socialist politics and the most effective way of influencing the fate of the international victims of our capitalist class. As affirmed in the Marxist canon, The Communist Manifesto, “The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.”

Class consciousness is alive and well. The excuse that US workers are too backward to understand who they are-- an underlying assumption of many self-described Marxists-- stands refuted.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Inflation and Profits

The World Health Organization declared that the Covid emergency ended in mid-2023. Since then, the 500 Standard and Poor's companies (the benchmarks of US capitalism) have enjoyed a steady and significant increase in earnings growth. This remarkable growth persisted quarter after quarter, culminating in “more than 440 S&P 500 companies reporting second-quarter earnings so far [and] 86% have beaten analysts’ estimates, according to FactSet data” as reported in The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ further adds: “Companies are reporting earnings that are around 29% higher than those estimates, on track for a record earnings surprise in data going back to 2008.” [my italics]

So, US capitalism’s leading insider mouthpiece is surprised at the rising profit margins of the system’s leading monopoly corporations.

“These earnings are ridiculous,” said Phil Blancato, chief market strategist at Osaic. “These profit margins are incredible.” 

Yes, they are. These outlandish profits are both ridiculous and incredible. 

The WSJ author, Shradha Dinesh speculates that the mystery may lie in “skyrocketing energy prices from the Iran war.” Alternately, “AI remains a primary driver of profits across the other leading sectors.” 

But the boost from the Iran war cannot account for the earlier steep climb in earnings growth, nor can the AI investment-driven boom, which really became a major factor only in 2025. 

Even more striking than the profit explosion is the widely reported and worsening so-called “affordability crisis.” Inflationary tides have ripped through the customary standard of living of millions of US workers. Since 2021, in order to meet a wave of insidious price increases, workers have reset their purchasing regimen, borrowed from savings or lending institutions, or gone without. 

Interestingly, the pundits and political operatives have either failed to notice the relationship between rising prices and exploding profits or chosen to simply ignore it. In fact, they are connected. The coronavirus epidemic attacked economic activity as well as killing millions. With earnings (profits) depressed, the US government provided $4.65 trillion in relief funds, resulting in a massive increase (and restoration) in S&P earnings in 2021 and unleashing crushing price increases in 2021 and 2022, as corporations exploited the profitability “crisis.” Both painful inflation and profit growth continued unabated for the next four years.

The lessons of the early years of Marxist thought are often forgotten, even by Marxists. Marx went to great lengths to warn against fetishizing social relations, especially economic relations. Economists of every stripe see inflation (and deflation) as a malady of an otherwise functional economy. They separate it from the logic of capitalism, from its incidence as a completely rational development of capitalism under specific conditions. Instead of recognizing inflation as a variant of the social relation between workers as consumers and employers as price setters, they insist that inflation is a separate phenomenon requiring a theory of inflation. Inflation-- in this view-- exists as an interloper on the regular course of a capitalist economy. This view is especially appealing to social democrats who hope to manage capitalism. 

Lost in this fetishizing of inflation is the assuredly obvious fact that inflation is the work of some of the subjects of social relations. It is the CEOs, COOs, boards of directors, and owners of corporations and businesses that choose to raise prices. They do not make their decisions to keep up with their costs, to benefit the consumer, to appease their critics, or because God directs them. They make the decision in order to accumulate more capital. 

That is why a shock like the oil crisis of the early 1970s or the pandemic of the early 2020s generates inflation. The opportunity to press price increases is not lost on the bourgeoisie. And they will pursue this competitive race until it fails to yield profit growth. 

Some may dismiss this account of crisis-sparked inflation as a psychological explanation, an explanation based upon the contingent avarice or self-regard of capitalists. Far from it. Chronic inflation, as experienced in the 1970s and today, is best understood as a social phenomenon: the predictable response of a social class that seizes every opportunity to increase the rate of accumulation. In a capitalist society, shocks like pandemics, wars, and other catastrophes provide the trigger for aggressive and persistent price increases. Increases will continue until they negatively impact profits.

I have been frequently advocating this view of sticky, persistent inflation based on price-gouging since November of 2021, when mainstream economists were shrugging off inflation as a temporary result of supply chain disruptions. 

I noted nearly five years ago:

In a revealing article, The Wall Street Journal exposes the real cause of escalating inflation. Inflation Helps Boost Profit Margins: Companies seize rare opportunity to increase prices and outrun their own rising costs [print edition] tells that “[n]early two out of three of the biggest U.S. publicly traded companies have reported fatter profit margins so far this year than they did over the same stretch of 2019… Nearly 100 of these giants have booked profit margins-- the share of each dollar of sales a company can pocket-- that are at least 50% above 2019 levels” [my emphasis]. The authors note: “Executives are seizing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to raise prices…”

They continue today to exploit this “once-in-a-generation opportunity,” creating a vicious human catastrophe that politicians only now-- after five years-- label an “affordability crisis.” They didn’t want to address it then, and they don’t want to acknowledge it now.

While economists search for a theory of inflation that will enable leaders to tame inflation, to manage the crisis that ensues, workers should recognize that the problem and its solution come from deep in the very logic of the capitalist system. They must understand that it is an axiom that capitalists will always exploit every opportunity to accumulate additional capital at the expense of the worker/consumer. The only way to eliminate that possibility is to eliminate capitalism.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com