Current Social Theory

Sociological Concepts: Class, Status, & Party

It might strike you as odd that classical sociologists were deeply engaged with broad questions about modernity and social inequality. This led them to question the very basic structures and functions of society and how all of this further bound up with questions about social change.

Marx, Weber, and Durkheim used the concepts of “class” “status” and “party” to explain how people organize themselves into a society. Social groups, furthermore, reflected how people self-organized into social niches or social “strata.”

Contemporary sociologists still turn to this foundational work, because it furnishes concepts that we can use to understand complex issues like social inequality and the role that capitalism plays in society.

Why Should I Care About Social Inequality?

Isn’t it more or less dumb to assume that everyone should be equal? Isn’t it just “natural” that some people are smarter, stronger, and richer than other people? Don’t people achieve success and better outcomes simply because they work harder than others? Superficially, many might say “yes.” But the real answer, of course, is that “life is more complex than this.”

Concepts like social “class” allow us to think critically and pursue an answer to these questions. That’s why it is such an important component of theory building in the social sciences. Yet “class” can be understood as both a theoretical concept and as a “variable.” In the case of the latter, when we look closely at it, we find that what appears to be one variable “class” is in reality comprised of other related interlocking concepts and/or variables like wealth, income, and education. 

Given this, social science researchers are keen to study the different ways that the “class” variable is constructed. Moreover, they are interested to understand how this dynamic variable potentially interacts with other variables that reflect different levels or “dimensions” of social stratification like race and gender.

Whenever researchers try to understand the interlocking dynamics of concepts (or variables) like class, race, gender, and party, this is called taking an intersectional theoretical approach. Some people might call this a “radical” approach, however, social scientists think it merely reflects an effort to understand the complexity of human social life.

Defining concepts and variables is the first step in the process of undertaking a systematic effort to measure outcomes that embedded within social patterns. This helps us to appreciate the dynamic multifaceted nature of social group experience.

Looking deeper into social class, we find it is interesting to look at how groups maintain their “groupness.” In doing so, they often make great efforts to not only distinguish their class, but to also assert social status (because “status” confers social advantages). They do in ways that are both conscious as well as unconscious.

As part of this process, they similarly make choices about how to socially identify with political parties (and candidates). To this end, they may not have an especially deep grasp of a party or candidate’s stated policy goals; however, they make subjective choices to affiliate with them based on “feelings” as well as the sense of belonging they achieve through political group affiliation.

Groupthink

Often, and perhaps more interesting, are the ways in which individuals demonstrate their committed desire to maintain a social group affiliation, which political scientists find often overrides any one individual’s desire to demonstrate independent thought on a political issue. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as “groupthink,” a mode of thinking in which individual members of cohesive groups tend to accept a viewpoint or conclusion when it represents a perceived group consensus; they do this regardless of whether or they, as an individual group member, believe it to be valid, correct, or even optimal. For this type of person, it is more important to be socially recognized as professing beliefs that are consistent with their social group identification than it is to be “right” about any given issue.

Equality vs. Equity

Karl Marx

Marx analyzed the development of modern capitalism and predicted the emergence of polarized social class conflict. He became interested in how a given individual’s relation to the means of production. His simple approach understood people fit into one of two basic social groups. His logic dictates that people are either part the bourgeois ownership class (the capitalists) or they are part of proletariat working class…and nothing in-between.

For Marx, it is the dynamic contradictory social relationship between the two different social classes that forms the basis for social class conflict – he sees conflict as the major motive force for change in social systems based on capitalism.

Put another way, Marx saw social class as the main axis around which power relationships are organized (economic and political). An individual’s class outlook (how you see the world) is determined by their material position (wealth). Of course, there are theorists that followed Marx, who find this conceptual framing to be a bit too limited (i.e. Pierre Bourdieu). In short, they felt that there are other things like “feelings” (i.e. rage) that might motivate people to override/disregard their class interests.

Researchers have found over and over again that the material position you are born into has not only a major impact on the way you see the world, but also on how you understand things like politics, major issues, and social problems.

Sadly, they have also found that it is common for people to betray their class interests in favor of indulging their emotions, feelings, and desire to seek proximity to  power (even if that “power” seeks their perpetual subjugation).

They love the “invisible hand of the free market” until it one day slaps them in the face. This is the basis for a lot of today’s grievance politics.

Social Mobility

For the record, many people can and do change social classes. Yet despite the efforts of some people, whose engage in “hard work” to facilitate this, this is increasingly not a statistically a common occurrence. In the United States, for example, the statistical norm is for people to remain in the social class that they were born into.

The concept of social mobility refers to a process when someone moves from one class to another, either up or down. Such people are known as “class travelers.” That is to say, they change their social classes over the course of their lifetime. When this happens, the highest attained social class status will tend to exert the most influence over how one sees the world.

Despite what you might expect, even lower class/status people can possess what are called “aspirational” social identities; which is to say, they identify more strongly with the social class situated above them (the class status they hope to achieve), as opposed to their current social class.

The Tools of Distraction

Marx understood that one of the primary goals of capitalism (capitalists) was to distract working class people (the proletariat) to prevent them from achieving class consciousness. This can be accomplished though any number of ways. To this end, it accounts for why capitalists spend a lot of money and effort trying to entertain working class people – the classic “bread and circuses” ploy.

Workers are easily distracted by entertainment, because the have hard jobs and simply desire some level of pleasant distraction that doesn’t require hard thinking. They don’t always have the luxury of time to think about, let alone understand, abstract concepts like “capitalism” to reflect on how they are being exploited in society by capitalists, who can use their money and power to manipulate them into buying their products (that they often cannot afford) and serving their interests.

When working class people buy into the belief system that they must conspicuously consume/buy things (materialist ideology) to be seen as worthy, one of the outcomes of this, according to Marx, it that it prevents them from achieving class consciousness and solidarity with other workers. Now, they have to work even harder to pay for the things they bought, they remain committed to their individualist endeavors, because they are always chasing the next paycheck to pay the bills.

Why is this important? Because alienated workers who carry debt burdens are easy to manipulate; they don’t have the time or inclination to seek out/create social bonds with other workers, which are their best shot at leveraging the force of their collective power to overthrow the system oppresses them.

Now, some people may say “exploited my ass….just quit your job if you don’t like the work.” But that’s not always an option for poor or working class people, who are often focused on “survival” activities so they can get through another day. Future planning looks like a luxury to people who are struggling to survive.

Marx & Conflict Theory

Conflict theorists in the social sciences trace their intellectual roots to Marx in light of his emphasizing that social “conflict” defines the relationship between class factions and is the motive force for social change. Conflict, according to Marx, is inevitable, because the capitalists that control the material resources and wealth in society are they are not likely to ever give up the game of exploiting workers in order to attain more wealth and profit.

More to the point, capitalists keep the deck stacked in their favor by using their influence to shape the key major social institutions in society: the education system, the criminal justice system & laws, the media, and healthcare.

Violence is hard-wired into the System

Violence is, according to Marx, understood to be a hard-wired feature of capitalism. In order to keep people laboring at low levels of compensation (or maybe even working for free, i.e. slavery), capitalists will at some point have to resort to coercion; that is, violence. This refusal by capitalists to acknowledge and compensate workers relative to the important contributions that they make, in Marx’s view, necessitates the violent overthrow of the social system. 

Marx says that the only way to end the cycle of violence is to end to capitalism and reorganize the social order in a more equitable fashion, this way ALL people can profit from the system, not just the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Alienation

Another concern Marx had with regard to capitalism and social inequality is how this also produces alienation. According to him, as capitalism advanced and people were forced to sell their labor to survive, the division of labor was increased; this resulted in them becoming alienated. Marx says workers became alienated on 4 different levels:

• alienated from the objects/products they produce
• alienated from the process of production
• alienated from themselves – their “species-being”
• alienated from other people.

In other words, the experience of selling their labor resulted in a loss of control and power over their life as well as their labor. People became slaves of the objects they produced in the same manner as they became appendages of machines.

The inherent structural disparity between the members of the working class and the owners of capital, Marx believed, contained the seeds for revolution, where the working class would have no choice but to rise up to throw off their capitalist oppressors.

Put another way, he believed that the two social classes must eventually “clash” and that capitalism, as s system of social organization, must be superseded in order for man to recover his alienated self and be free from class domination.

Here’s a little video to explain Marx’s concept of alienation:

Max Weber

Weber was most interested in the formation of the modern state and the rise of modern organizations. He formulated a three component theory of social stratification, which included class, status, and party. Some people describe his intellectual work as the sociology of domination.

He was also committed to understanding the history of “rationality.” To be more specific, we might understand his intellectual project as one dedicated to understanding why modern forms of domination – rational legal authority – developed first in Europe. For Weber, rationalization was a process whereby “ends” and “means” were progressively clarified.

Unlike Marx, Weber thought it was important to think about social positioning in terms that took into account non-economic qualities like honor, prestige, religion, and the political power domain.

Weber does not see class as forming a basis for social action and change. He doesn’t theorize a “working class” in the same manner as does Marx. Weber rather speaks of an upper, middle and lower class within lifestyle groups. Nevertheless, he still considers social class to be important to determine an individual’s “life chances.”

Weber, in this respect, understood there to be a multiplicity of classes in any given society, which contained multiple overlapping dimensions and groups. People were driven to achieve their individual goals/ends by employing different means within these overlapping structures. That’s because for Weber, unlike Marx, it’s not just about economics.

Weber is also known for his seminal work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, wherein he coined the term the “Protestant work ethic” to describe how links made by theologians between religion, work, and capital laid the groundwork for capitalism.

Calvinist theology is heavily invested in the idea of “predestination,” which dictates that only an elect few are predestined for salvation from birth. Confoundingly, the opposite also held true: poverty and abjection were signs you’d been denied God’s grace; that you were not one of the “chosen” people. You don’t have any material success to point to as an outward sign of God’s grace and so you are damned.

This double predestination doctrine, despite being cruel and despotic, has been (and remains) very successful. Historically, protestant societies are always wealthier than Catholic, which are wealthier than Orthodox. The United States represents an example of a wealthy society built on Calvinism. Yet here, even as the “Protestant Ethic” persists, most people have long since forgotten about its religious origins. Yet is is worth noting that when this ethic developed in the U.S., many people in the country weren’t even considered people (i.e. slaves). In this social context, slaves were blamed for their misfortune, subjugation, and torture even as they at the same time had the legitimacy and value of their labor erased (slaves worked hard but weren’t even regarded as human).

Naturally, all of this caused people quite a bit of personal anxiety, and so they were compelled to look for hints or signs that they were members of the elect. Since they were invested in the idea that material success was among the most notable indicators of God’s favor, the spent their life doing the hard work, where they set about to create God’s kingdom on Earth through a secular vocation. Hard work thus was considered the primary pathway to achieve God’s grace.

Again, these feelings and beliefs continue to persist, even though the original religious connection may be no longer recognizable. A strong argument can be made that this kind of religious morality continues to inform how many of us think not only about work but also about people whose ancestors were slaves (African Americans).

Note, if religious Calvinism served as the nasty model for capitalism, by way of contrast, the Nordic model (based on Lutheranism), represents an attempt to clean it up a bit, as it aimed to smooth over capitalism’s rough edges and messy exploitation, while still emphasizing the virtue of working hard. This is why people tend to praise the Nordic model whereas they criticize the U.S./neoliberal model of capitalism.

Race & the Protestant Work Ethic

“The Protestant work ethic that influenced the founding of this country included a belief that the more material wealth you have, the closer you are to God,” said Robin DiAngelo, a professor whose research focuses on how white people are socialized to collude with institutional racism.

“So during slavery, we said, ‘You must do all the work but we will never allow that to pay off.’ Now we don’t give black people access to work. Then and now they have not been allowed to participate in wealth building or granted the morality we attach to wealth” (DiAngelo)

This historical entanglement of property and virtue continues to inform racial views.

“Property among white Americans is seen as something to be treasured and revered,” said Winbush. “Black Americans, for reasons having to do with this history of disenfranchisement, have not viewed themselves as truly owning anything in America” ((DiAngelo).

Put differently, when we think about people within a context where work/labor contributes to building God’s kingdom on Earth in a very physical way, anyone whose labor was not recognized as legitimate was denied access to material wealth, success, and social status – all the things that supposedly were indicators of one’s “chosen” status.

Denying the labor of black Americans thus became an important part of the legitimating ideology of white supremacy – it helped reinforce it.

Ethicist Katie Geneva Cannon has written at length about how the institutional denial of citizenship and freedom to black people essentially precluded the possibility of them ever being seen as virtuous in white society.

“The ‘rightness of whiteness’ counted more than the basic political and civil rights of any Black person…

Eventually, institutional slavery ended, but the virulent and intractable hatred that supported it did not,” Cannon wrote in The Emergence of Black Feminist Consciousness. For it is through both erasure and ignorance that we continue to deny the virtue and legitimacy of black citizenship and labor (Cannon).

Although it has been a long time since the ideas of the Protestant work ethic took hold – and slavery too was a looooong time ago – nonetheless, we are still trapped within the legacy of inequities brought about by these social dynamics and ways of understanding who “works hard” and who is socially worthy. While the religious explanations that underlie the logic no longer seem to be relevant; the economic logic remains, emptied of its religious content.

American industriousness would not have come about without free slave labor. War and Imperialism (“offense” taking other people’s stuff combined with a little bit of “defense”) was also key to industrial progress. That these things are plainly obvious, yet they still manage to escape critical recognition, is a problem – one that gets in the way of achieving real social progress.

Pierre Bourdieu

Bourdieu’s work represents something of an elaboration and synthesis of the work of both Marx and Weber. He proposed a functional theory that linked the “material” elements of class with the symbolic “psychic” dimensions of class (could it be that they’re not really separate at all?). Bourdieu was, in this respect, interested to explore how social class gets internalized; that is, how it not only reflects the material aspects of your life, but how it also affects your habits of mind, including the tastes and preferences that you develop for culture (i.e. hair, clothes, music, art, food, sports, people, body style, and other aesthetics). All of these things, according to Bourdieu, reflect the individual’s relation to the dominant class in society; they distinguish the dominated from the dominant.

In light of this important work, we might consider how the cultural realm continues to constitute an important site of tension, conflict, and expression, as people jockey for position in the status hierarchy and engage in status-seeking behavior in order to claim their position in the social order. Bourdieu’s ideas further illuminate how economic and cultural relations might be merged with relations of subordination, based on class, age, and gender (he didn’t say much about race) and in doing so shows how multiple forms of subordination articulate and may be deeply intertwined.

Wealth Distribution

Presently, in the United States, we have an economic situation similar to what Marx described.

The vast majority of people are resource-poor, relatively speaking, when compared to their well-off brethren, who own upwards of 40% of the country’s wealth. The following video clip offers a powerful illustration of wealth distribution dynamics in the contemporary U.S.:

How to Fix it: Policy Solutions

For a long time, economists, policymakers, and many lawmakers have argued we shouldn’t worry about social and wealth inequality; that the real problem to solve is how to reduce poverty. Many of these same people insisted that high levels of inequality were unimportant because policies that benefit wealth accumulation among high-income earners effectively help everyone. “A rising tide lifts all boats” is how the wisdom goes.

New research by Branko Milanovic and Roy van der Weide takes issue with this kind of thinking. They assert that policies derived from such flawed logic are dead wrong. According to the authors, social inequality doesn’t produce gains for the economy as a whole (and everyone across the earning spectrum); rather, inequality only benefits the very very rich.

Thomas Piketty advances claims that echo Marx, as he argues that social inequality is not an accident or the simple result of individual actors/groups making better or unfortunate bad choices; rather, he says social inequality is a distinguishing feature of capitalism that can only be reversed through state-based policy intervention. Unless capitalism is reformed, he says, the entire democratic social order will be put at risk.

Prior to this research, economists were prone to argue that wealth redistribution slowed down economic growth. These economists maintained that any attempts to reduce economic inequality through the stimulus of policy mechanisms would have the effect of making poverty worse.

If you can follow this contradictory logic, they are essentially saying is that financial incentives/rewards are a good way to incentivize the wealthy to stimulate the economy; but similar financial incentives/rewards provided to poor people don’t work. This logic further suggests that incentivizing poor people with money will only make them lazy and less likely to work hard and achieve. In short, incentives for me but not for thee.

Given the benefit of an expanding literature on the subject, we now know these assumptions aren’t true; that social inequality actually reduces economic growth. That is to say – the assumptions of many leading economists were backward.

The latest research findings indicate that by structuring economic and tax policies to motivate  rich people to invest, thereby increasing social inequality, resulted in even higher levels of social inequality, which prompted poor people to take on more debt as a means to catch up/survive. This has had the effect of destabilizing the economy.

In a consumer driven economy, where there are not enough poor and middle-class families to consume products, businesses are forced to  contend with less revenue and fewer customers. Consequently, instead of providing the poor and middle class with an incentive to better their lives (so they might achieve the American dream), higher levels of social inequality gave rich people an incentive to pull up the economic ladder, leaving everyone’s boat stranded.

The rich, in other words, left the poor and the middle class behind. More than this, they invested their riches in building walls to seclude themselves, out of fear of needing to protect against angry poor people, who they know at some point are going to figure out that they got played. Now you know why people increasingly feel like they need so many guns to protect themselves….and why billionaires are building bunkers in New Zealand.

So now, instead being forced to always work harder, the rich are able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their accumulated wealth (check out HBO’s “The White Lotus”). Research on spending patterns demonstrates that when they’re not spending their wealth on luxury consumables, they often choose to redirect earnings outside the local economy and into off-shore tax havens, through the use of complicated accounting mechanisms and tax deferment schemes.

The poor and middle class, not surprisingly, lose hope and become disenchanted…so much so that they sometimes argue against their own economic interests, where they too will sometimes argue that the rich have every right to become rich by any means necessary (even if it means stepping on the necks of poor and working people)….because that’s just “smart business.” This disenchantment comes from restricted opportunity, a perceived lack of fairness in the system, and the lack of belief that they might help organize the world in a different way, so that poor people didn’t have to be exploited.

The problem with the continued oppression of poor people is that: 1) they will at some point get angry and rise up; and 2) with earnings are depressed and employment not always stable, they will have less money to spend/invest to keep the system chugging along. Bear in mind, one of the consequences of all this is that they probably have less money to invest in their own education to get ahead, as they are increasingly buried in debt and find it nearly impossible to plan for their future.

Social inequality reduces economic growth because it reduces demand at the same time as it curtails upward social and economic mobility.

In light of this, it is important to think about how your different class and status positions might influence how you think and feel about things like social problems. Or are you so privileged to think that social inequality is not a problem at all.

What Does a More Equitable Society Look Like?

A more equal society would mean everyone has shelter, healthcare, education, food, and time to rest and play as well as work. It would mean not discriminating on grounds of identity, sex or skin color.

It would mean having a social system that provides people with access to facilities such as libraries and galleries and parks which could be participated in by everyone.

It would involve foregrounding egalitarian goals and dramatically curbing corporate power and high pay.

It would mean heeding the call for universal public services (i.e. internet, heat, and hot water).

It would mean prioritizing climate change as a social issue that affects everyone.

It would mean prioritizing healthcare as a social issue that affects everyone.

These are structural social problems; they are not “work ethic” problems.

Discussion Questions:

Why is there social inequality? Is it “natural” as many people assume? Is it made by our institutions and social policy? Or is it simply a reflection of the fact that some people don’t work hard?

Is the United States, land of the free, a “classless” society? Or are there defined social classes? If so, what social class do you relate to? Can you identify your class position (as determined by your birth) and relate to how it might impact the way you see social problems as well as opportunities in the world?

Apply concepts and theories related to class conflict, social inequality, and social stratification (i.e. social class, race, gender) explain your own life experiences. 

How might your class position influence how you see people located at both the lower and high end of the wealth scale?

Where have you traditionally believed that most of the wealth is located in our society? Do you think it is held by middle-class people? How might your class position influence the way you think about social problems and policy solutions? 

If you don’t feel particularly “exploited” based on your present-day economic circumstances, does that make it difficult for you to relate to someone else who might feel that way?

Do you find yourself saying things like, “if you don’t like the way you are being treated, get a better job?” (without questioning why exploitation should be a natural part of someone’s work experience). Think, for example, about McDonald’s workers, Walmart workers, and even union workers.

Do you think that the accumulation of assets at the high end is a simple reflection of “hard work” or “smart work” invested by the people who end up there?

Do you think that the people at the bottom of the wealth distribution are there because they are the natural losers, who didn’t work hard/smart; that they simply failed?

How is the notion of “bootstrapping” and/or the philosophy of “individualism” challenged by the video?

Why do you think working class people are often among the loudest complainers with respect to redistributive politics and programs (programs critics call “socialism”). What is the major source of their complaint? Do you think, for example, that maybe they complain because they don’t like or relate to many of the people who comprise the working poor (blacks and Hispanics) or do they simply just not support any form of benefits (i.e. “handouts”) for poor people in general?

Why do these same working class people often not often complain about giving away tax dollars to support tax incentives for wealthy people (i.e. policies that give money/handouts to banks, wall street, etc.)?

The chart clearly indicates that most of the country’s wealth is concentrated among the top 1% of wage earners. When you add to this the fact that most government and social programs are paid for by wage taxes extracted from the middle class (because neither the very poor or the very rich pay a high percentage of their income in taxes), why do you think it is that so many people across the income spectrum are calling for the poor (and not the rich) to pay more taxes? Does this seem logical?

Why do you think that programs that benefit poor people (food stamps/SNAP benefits) are referred to as “welfare,” but programs that benefit the working and middle-class people (home mortgage interest deduction, unemployment compensation, GI bill), wealthy (capital gains taxes), and corporations (tax incentives, subsidies) are not similarly thought of as corporate “welfare?”

Why do you think so many people accept the upside down logic that rich people need financial incentives (high pay or tax cuts) to produce jobs, but providing financial incentives to poor people is bad policy, because giving them money/benefits rewards bad behavior?

Do you think corporations are the true “wealth” generators in society….or might the be the real “Welfare Queens?”

People in general (and especially politicians) love to talk about the American Dream – the idea that competitive individualism and hard work pay off with guaranteed steady progress up the economic ladder. The “dream,” as such, is theoretically attainable for anyone who is willing to chase it. But what if this were not true? Have you ever stopped to think about how you came to believe this?

The American Dream speaks to us all in different ways. Realistically, then, there is not just one dream, but in all likelihood, there are many dreams, even if they are just a variation on a theme: “If I work hard I will be rewarded.”

Why do some people believe in the dream fervently, whereas others do not? How might the extent to which someone embraces the dream (or rejects it) depend on social factors (i.e. circumstances of their upbringing, which includes family status, household wealth, social class, and education)?

Regardless of whether or not one “believes” in the dream, the power of its allure is real. Here is the simple formula that comprises the dream:

“hard work = wealth/success.”

Here again, the beating heart and soul of this type of thinking is an American obsession with competitive rugged individualism and self-reliance. This makes it acceptable to do things like applaud people for giving up vacation, family time, and leisure activities. So much so, that many people work themselves to death to prove themselves worthy of the dream. This formula for success has become so culturally ingrained it almost functions as a social law.

And so it follows, the people who can’t “make it” are those who fail to exert sufficient hard work and effort to achieve success.  When or if they fail, it is assumed that they made a “choice.” To quote Donald Trump, from his book “Crippled America,” people who don’t buy into this vison for America are looked at in terms of  “disgust,” “weakness,” “losing,” and “pathetic” (Lowndes, 2020).

Presently, during a time when nations the world over are struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is curiously only in the United States that we see people calling for, at best, benign neglect, and even worse in some cases, outright death for the elderly and disabled. Don’t want to risk exposure at your minimum wage job at the grocery store or care home? Too bad. Toughen up. Sux that you don’t have a strong immune system. When people are deemed no longer useful for business, many of their fellow Americans are willing to let them perish. All because they are deemed no longer productive members of the work force.

The rhetorical oppositions of work vs. welfare, self-reliance vs. dependence, individuals vs. the state, citizens vs. foreigners are all oppositions that are animated by the social categories of race, gender, and class—they run deep in American political culture. All are reflected in the politics of the pandemic right now, and offer a grim political vision of American freedom (Lowndes, 2020).

The fact that so many people fail and fall through the cracks, as it were, is more indicative of a flawed economic system than it is ant given individual’s work ethic. Failure, defined in economic terms, is not always a simple matter of being lazy.

Alternatively, those who are either wealthy or have good paying jobs are considered the good people, as indicated by their success. And how do we know they are successful? Well, they usually have the “toys” to prove it (i.e. nice cars, nice house) which proves they worked harder than the average person. In short, they “made it” through their own individual efforts. Right?

This logic, unfortunately, only accounts for a limited spectrum of dynamics that may influence a person’s opportunity for success. It fails, for example, to take into consideration that people’s life chances, more often than not, are determined by not only factors associated with their birth, which includes access to family wealth, but also access to institutions and other opportunity structures (check out the voluminous body of social mobility research that proves this) .

Briefly put, one’s attained success in life is not a simple linear formula predicted by the single magic variable of “individual effort.” The reality is more complex than this.

Dreaming But Not Believing

According to a recent annual American Values Survey of 4,500 Americans, nearly half of Americans who once believed in the American dream (defined as working hard to get ahead) now think it no longer exists. Similarly, close to half of all Americans over 18 think their generation is better off financially than their children’s will be (Pathe). That’s pretty bleak.

What symptoms are Americans experiencing that have led to this gloomy outlook? With the results of the survey, the Public Religion Research Institute created an Economic Insecurity Index to try to pinpoint the source of the American economic malaise. They asked their survey participants whether they’d experienced any of six different forms of economic insecurity: Had they reduced meals or cut back on food to save money? Were they unable to pay a monthly bill? Did they put off seeing a doctor for financial reasons? Had they lost a job or had hours reduced? Were they receiving food stamps or unemployment benefits?

The most common reported economic insecurity reveals there may be a less publicized dimension of human suffering compared to layoffs or unemployment: food insecurity, with 36 percent of respondents saying they’d experienced it. Why food? For a lot of Americans, this is the one  budgetary item that they may feel they can manage/control (compared to whether or not they pay a monthly required bill) and so they find it is the easiest expense to cut.

Research demonstrates that blacks, more than Hispanics or whites, have had to cut back on food for economic reasons [note that there are variations among whites based on social class, particularly when education is indicated as having/not having a  college education]. These factors are strong predictors of who will have to make food sacrifices.

Even more sadly, the research documents there is increasing food insecurity among college students. In light of this, colleges are establishing food pantries as a way to help combat the problem.

The PRII study additionally found that most Americans have a decidedly negative self-evaluation of their financial situation. Roughly 4-in-10 Americans say they are currently in excellent (7%) or good (34%) financial shape (down 50% from 4 years ago in 2010) while a majority of the public report being in only fair (37%) or poor financial shape (20%). In 2010, half of Americans indicated they were in excellent (9%) or good (41%) shape financially (Pathe).

Today, only 30% of Americans believe the economy has gotten better over the last two years, while 35% say it has gotten worse, and 33% say it has stayed about the same. Keep in mind, this is occurring at a time when the stock market is performing at an all-time high. That says something about who is benefitting (and who is not) from our economic policies in the United States. More on that later (Pathe) [Note: most stocks in the United States are owned by members of the top 1% of society].

Psychology & the Virtue of Selfishness

Imagine for a moment a person who enjoys great wealth and status. What would happen to them if they discovered that the success and privileges they enjoy are not the result of their own hard work?  In other words, how do they process the fact that the model of hard work = wealth/success doesn’t really explain their particular case? They are forced to confront what is perhaps an uncomfortable contradiction; one that may provoke an existential crisis (something they would rather avoid). Psychologists call this mental disconnect “cognitive dissonance.”

To overcome the disconnect/cognitive dissonance, wealthy people have to create a competing narrative: one that lets them return to a state of mental balance. Otherwise, they might have to ask themselves: Do I truly deserve what I have? Do other people deserve to not have the things that I have? Is it fair that I have things (despite not having worked hard) when other people work hard, can’t claim the success that I was given, and thus enjoy the same things that I enjoy? 

This is why many people who identify as wealthy/financially well-off (and even those who aspire to wealth) put extra effort into rationalizing that they are the “natural” beneficiaries of their own hard work and virtue (I’m genetically smarter, work harder, etc.). I should point out here that this is not to say that they don’t work hard. Many do. But many more do not for reasons that they are the beneficiaries of wealth handed down to them by parents, family, etc. This goes on quite a bit with some middle class people too (think about someone you know who inherited a family business).

Perhaps more than others, they invest a lot of time and effort to stress the hard work = success logic. That’s because they have to continually prove to themselves and everyone else that  1) they too are hard-working people who are worthy (not frauds, lay about heirs/idle rich); and 2) the poor are truly poor because they refuse to adopt a hard-working enterprising lifestyle.

As the economist and social philosopher Max Weber points out here, they can never be satisfied that they have simply been fortunate; they have to continuously work to prove they have a right to their financial rewards/fortune; and they want make extra certain that everyone else is assured that they deserve it (because they themselves can never be assured). They’re gaslighting us all while they gaslight themselves.

Avocado Wars

This leads me to sidestep into one of the more recent meme wars that perfectly illustrate this contradiction – the avocado wars! Millennials, in particular, have taken a bashing, as they are told they spend too much money on luxury food items, including avocado toast and brunch. As the logic goes, they are more or less told “your financial problems are not the result of a broken economy; they’re the result of your self-indulgent food choices.”

So along comes Mr. Moneybags – let’s call him Avocado bruh – a supposed “self-made” millionaire to point out the error of their ways:

But as it turns out, here’s what’s really going on:

There are many examples of this type of thinking in our culture. The fact of the matter is that most people in the United States who are financially well off – not that there are not exceptions to this – probably got that way the old fashioned way – they inherited wealth or were given the money. Imagine what you could do if someone gave you a pile of money?

Looking Out for Number One

When all else fails to sustain the delusion, appeals to the philosophy of Ayn Rand are often trotted out as a means to claim some literary credibility. Rand’s writing, as demonstrated in works like Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness, is often used to justify a moral philosophy that refuses any ethical basis for a social contract (an ethic that recognizes mutual social obligations to others), particularly when those social obligations are thought to be achieved at the expense of curbing individual desire and ambition.

We know from interviews with Rand that she modeled the protagonist (Danny Renahan) of her first novel, Anthem, on the notorious serial killer, William Edward Hickman – a despicable psychopath if there ever was one. This was her first-draft portrayal of what she conceived as her “ideal man” which she would later refine and portray in the Atlas Shrugged character, John Gault. Rand writes in her journal entry:

“[Renahan] is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness — [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people … Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.”

This is the psychopathic model of rugged “individualism” as Rand imagined it; it is a model for behavior that continues to inspire people (and many politicians among them), who fantasize about life free from mutual obligations and “government interference.”

Not only is this thinking deeply depraved, it’s the polar opposite of the altruistic empathy for others that Christian moral philosophy mandates for its adherents. Neither does it constitute an effective basis for governance. One cannot aspire to live in a complex modern “society” governed by rules and cooperation if one imagines they are an unaccountable free-agent.

Boot-strapping Psychology

Where it really gets interesting is when we look at the different ways this type of thinking manifests among people of average means – the “boot-strappers.” These are people, who generally worked to overcome some level of disadvantage, but through their own efforts (and often with help) managed to “bootstrap” their way to success.

As a result of having undergone this experience of working hard, with no perceived help from others, they now feel that everyone, regardless of obstacles that they might encounter, should similarly be able to overcome disadvantage and achieve success. Compared to the wealthy person, who often inherited their privilege, the existential anxiety that this person experiences is bit more complex. So let’s take a closer look at this person.

Not having been blessed with the luck to be born into privilege, the rugged individualist/bootstrapper must contend with at least two significant fears: Fear #1: someone might discover the “secret” of their less privileged/low birth past, thus they work even harder to maintain the veneer of success – success they further equate to evidence of their inherent “goodness” as a person (the very thing that they hope  distinguishes them from the people and social groups they are aiming to stand apart from). Fear #2: That if they stop working, even for a minute, they will fall back to the low place from where they ascended to success and in the process cease to be a good person.

Buying into the American Dream is critically important to the intellectual disposition and psychic make-up of the “bootstrapper.” While they might perceive they derive some limited benefits from the current system, their social relation remains one of subservience to true wealth. But rather than recognize this, this person would rather “shoot the messenger” that dares point out these facts and contradictions. Consequently, they are easily aroused and become upset when anyone dares to unmask the system of exploitation from which they only marginally benefit.

Personal responsibility narratives run a close second to beliefs in rugged individualism, and maintain a powerful hold in compelling conforming behavior among the rich and poor alike. Nevertheless, regardless of how popular or entrenched the thought process might be, one thing is certain: it is a fatal error to assume that people without money are lazy moochers.  People don’t simply “choose” success. Again, success is not a simple calculus of hard work plus the sum total of our individual choices. There’s a lot more going on beneath the surface that explains success.

The same people who lay claim to boot-strapping ideology are likely also to subscribe to the belief that there is no such thing as structural poverty (or structural racism, etc.). In denying this, they put the onus for failure totally on the individual. It’s the secular version of the prosperity gospel that has in the recent era destroyed the social justice mission of many churches.

The idea that individuals alone are responsible for what happens to them is not supported by empirical research and evidence. Notwithstanding, the idea, as such, is highly destructive and corrosive of our collective social well-being.

To this end, we would all be better served if we simply questioned and attempted to understand the root causes when there are so many people not doing well. At the very least, we should be open to considering that  attaining the American Dream for many people is not as simple as many of us so desperately want to imagine.

Sources:

Excerpts from this post were derived from the article by Simone Pathe, “Why half of U.S. Adults No Longer Believe in the American Dream.” Last accessed May 2016.

Public Religion Research Institute, Economic Insecurity Index, by Daniel Cox,  Juhem Navarro-Rivera, and Robert P. Jones

Discussion Questions:

How do the two-car advertisements engage with the idea of the American Dream? What vision of the dream are they each selling?

What kind of language and symbols do they employ to motivate potential car buyers?

How do the ads subtly (and not so subtly) exploit issues of race, class, and gender?

What is George Carlin’s basic argument about the American dream?

How is Carlin’s argument similar to Marx’s argument?

Do you think the American Dream can be attained in today’s society? If so (or not) comment on your own experience trying to “live the dream.” Do you think it is attainable for you?

What do see potentially getting in the way of your success and ability to live this dream?

Artist: David Horsey, LA Times