>First of all, on the first page of the book, Wolfe disappears the concept
>of the working class entirely - and I have to assume knowingly. That's not
>"lapel grabbing" - that's devious. Second of all, I don't see how you know
>that people mean "middle class" when they say "working class." And third,
>ranking yourself from top to bottom on a numbered scale has a very
>different set of associations from calling yourself middle or working
>class. Who, aside from those of a certain sexual prediliction, would place
>him or herself on the bottom, given the choice?
the reason why the GSS tossed that question on lower/working/middle/etc class was because it was trying to measure self identification in terms of strata. but the names it gave people are leading. who wants to identify as "lower"? but, funny, a lot of people identify as "working"--just as many as "middle". this is because being working class is given a positive value by a significant chunk of people. they don't feel ashamed of it.
so they came up with RANK to test the proposition that those categories were misleading.
wolfe isn't after identifications with production based notions of class--where people see themselves in relation to the economy. he's after how they see themselves in terms of being "normal, typical" USers who uphold middle class values. "ordinary, average" people in the middle!
so, when he spoke of the survey your criticized him for, he wasn't wrong in his representation of it. what he said was: most people don't want to be up at the top or at the bottom: they want to identify in the middle. they want to think the values they hold are average, ordinary.
now, in addition to all the empirical research that backs this up, i'll bet that you have plenty of life experience to tell you that this is what people tend to want to believe of themselves.
can you explain why nearly 3/4 of the people asked put themselves in the middle or above? and not only that, that blacks do as well? can you explain why, despite the way in which even ranking on a scale has problems, that nearly 3x as many respondents ranked themselves at 5 than 6? if they are so happy to see themselves as working class and therefore not in the middle at all, why do so many that would say "working class" then turn around and say "well i'm in the middle" since working class certainly means below middle in this society?
>I can't speak for Yoshie, but I do think the subjective sense of class is
>important. The fact is, most USers are working class, whether they think
>of themselves that way or not. "Middle class" is more self-flattering, but
>structurally inaccurate. The term is highly conservatizing, and a product
>of a long ideological campaign to de-class American thought. Wolfe's book
>is part of that project, and doesn't deserve any kind of serious defense.
>It's no surprise the guy tried to purge the Marxists from the New School
>econ department - and if that's an ad hominem argument, so be it.
i agree that there are problems. but the technical complaint you had missed the point. and he didn't actually misrepresent anything. and no matter, it's not a productive defintion of class he's after, as was evident by the paragraph within which the claim you criticized was couched.
>Doug