I am certainly with Carol on his larger point about the myth of the middle class et al. This 'post-New Deal era' of a "new society" is TODAY a particularly preposterous perspective (sorry), on simple empirical grounds - we are rapidly reverting (I don't know what is with me this morning) to a 1920's income distribution. This is not hyperbole on my part, I find that even progressives are amazed to learn just how much things have changed. On a different list I recommended to Yoshie a paper that draws on the entirely official data (census bureau, etc) to show this reversion in clear, chilling graphs (Dumenil&Levy - "Trends in Capital Ownership and Income", it should be on their website http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/index.htm or, if not, people can contact me offlist).
In THIS anecdotal discussion raised by Michael Pollack (who seems to have fled - in the face of mud? coward) I was simply pointing out that a worker-activist alliance would have been particularly effective (for reasons I explained) since the clientele being appealed to by this particular type of supermarket/in this particular location WERE middle class (upper middle to be clear) and NOT mythical middle. Those ARE the sociological facts in this anecdotal example. But to be clear: the goal would be to secure a minor victory for the workers in their unionization efforts. A second goal would be to promote worker-activists links. "Conversion" of the (upper) middle class clientele was not my focus or purpose.
[Yes the activists themselves are also often from an upper middle class *background* (with others being called "middle class" in background but that is a misnomer, as Carol points out). But *background* is a different issue than actual instrumentality; a relevant issue since background does often color your perspective; but still it is different than an actual day to day relationship to those workers.]
The worker-activist links was what motivated my post. Is it fair to say that the 1960s-'70s floundered on this issue? Are we doing better today?
Paul