Origins and Evolution of the Middle-Class Concept in America

Résumé du document

The United States of America has often been viewed as a middle-class nation. Historically, the middle class is considered the class which built the nation against a feudal-like system; ideologically, it celebrates the common man and temperance; it socially represents the equality of opportunity; and it politically is a strong element of the democratic process. Within the middle class, one can find the essence of the American values, and the spirit of a whole nation. The myth of the middle class nevertheless requires clarification: who really are those people who became so emblematic? What place do they have in the socio-economic life of the country? In order to locate and define the middle class, one must go back in time, for no sociological work is static, but dynamic. In this document, I will endeavor to focus on the trajectory of the middle class by going back to its very origins and studying its evolution. For that reason, I will avoid lingering over its micro-sociological aspects like ways of life, behavior, self-consciousness, and articulate my research around the American middle class as a concept by analyzing its changing patterns and identities as a socio-economic group.

Extraits

[...] In short, most of the time, the businessman did not have manual skills. He was the type of man, actually, distrusted by Thomas Jefferson. After the Civil War however a middle-class businessman emerged: he was the “captain of industry” and became a mythic image of the small entrepreneur's world: he was an artisan who had succeeded. This old middle-class urban hero perfectly illustrates John Corbin's definition of the middle class as one that is both a class of labor and a class who does work of the mind and spirit”. [...]

[...] [Richard Alan Ryerson in Blumin 59] 2. Early Nineteenth Century: A Pervasive Middle-Class Culture The denomination “middle class” was still rarely employed at the very beginning of the century, either in the city or the country, and the use of “middling sort” or “people of middling rank” endured. Has changed nonetheless the perception of this middle, and the connotation of such terms: they are “increasingly joined to claims of social respectability.” [Blumin What has also changed is the structure of society: this is no more the nation of an elite but the nation of the people. [...]

[...] Schmoller proposed a segmentation of the middle class that, far from ignoring its diversity, rather gave it a shape. He chose to structure the middle class in two complementary dimensions (the term “middle classes” would hence be more appropriate) and basically illustrated John Corbin's statement according to which “income related to function is the touchstone of the classes.” The first dimension opposes an upper middle class, closer to the upper bourgeoisie, to an intermediate middle class, closer to the working class. [...]

[...] The independent farmer being captured economically by big business, but also captured politically, the whole structure of farming was therefore thoroughly disrupted, and questioned as representative of the middle-class ideals: “farming would take its place, not as the center of a social world as formerly, nor as a politically secured heirloom of free enterprise, but as one national industry among other intricate, rationalized departments of production.” [Mills 44] At this point of the analysis we may wonder what has become of our brave and heroic middle class. Have they lost their self-identity? [...]

[...] Besides, these sectors have contradictory reactions in the face of crises. During the Depression for instance, while the number of white collars was sharply reduced in the industrial sector, and maintained in the private sector, it grew substantially in the public one, for employees were needed to deal with the economic crisis and organize welfare programs. The white-collar world therefore lacks uniformity to such an extent that, in the end, no common values or experience bring them all together. In this prospect, middle-class identity pulled in different directions The Middle Class beyond the White-Collars Along with the white collars appeared another stratum of professionals, albeit less visibly and substantially. [...]