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
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