The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (ILR Press Book) [Paperback]

Michael Zweig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2001 | Series: ILR Press Book

...looks at a number of important contemporary social problems: the growing inequality of income & wealth, welfare reform, globalization, the role of government, and the family values debate

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Dow is high, unemployment is low, so what could be wrong? In this pungent critique of class and economics in the United StatesApart economic theory, part political lecture and part reportage of working-class lifeAZweig offers an insightful, radical analysis that will make many readers rethink commonly held but unexamined beliefs. Arguing that class is less about annual income than "about the power that some people have over the lives of others, and the powerlessness most people experience as a result," Zweig reassesses class in terms of who has power in the workplace and concludes that the majority of America's employed are working class. Because the U.S.'s economic structure, job organization and social arrangements all denigrate blue-collar mannerisms, identity and culture, most people (even those with very low incomes) are encouraged to view themselves as middle class. Yet those among the true middle-class in income and workplace power are only 36% of the work forceAless than half of the working class. According to Zweig, the dream of a classless (or mostly middle-class) America has simply become a myth that's supported "when we focus on the one who makes it and not the many who do not." Zweig supports his arguments with statistics, facts and personal stories and argues with a forcefulness and conviction backed up by a deeply moral sense of the dignity that is due to each person in their work and workplace.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Today, the majority of working Americans labor longer hours and have less earning power and fewer job protections than they did 25 years ago. Zweig (economics, SUNY at Stony Brook) argues that "the long decline of working-class living standards coincides with the gradual and now almost total disappearance of the working class as a subject of discussion." The author rejects the comforting notion that most Americans earn middle incomes and are middle class. Instead, he defines the working-class majority as the 60 percent of working people who have little power over their working conditions and who do not boss others. Even in post-Cold War America, this working class has very different economic interests from capitalists and the professional class. Zweig believes that workers must understand this idea in order to unite across race and gender divisions to define and solve their economic plight. This book is convincingly argued, well documented with economic statistics and personal interviews, and upbeat in its conclusion. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.
-Duncan Stewart, State Historical Society of Iowa Lib., Iowa City
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 198 pages
• Publisher: Ilr Pr (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801487277
• ISBN-13: 978-0801487279
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #158,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Working Class Majority: America's Best-Kept Secret, July 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (ILR Press books) (Hardcover)

This book is a 5-star read for anyone interested in the interrelationships between class and political power in the U.S. today. Zweig has the ability (unlike most professional economists) to penetrate mounds of statistical data and present their key elements to the reader in clear, jargon-free prose. He is particularly effective at showing how terms like "working class", "middle class" and "underclass" have often been distorted, sometimes by those with a vested interest in making us misunderstand the relationship between our working lives and our class status.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Economics for the rest of us!, July 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (ILR Press books) (Hardcover)

This is a well-written book about the economic system of the United States. The author examines the U.S. class structure and explains why ordinary people should care about it. The obvious audience for this book will be working class activists, union members, and others interested in challenging big-business domination. Zwieg's book would also be a good read for students of economics, political science, or sociology. "The Working Class Majority" deserves your attention.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To Working Class: You are not Middle Class, November 4, 2001

By 

J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (ILR Press Book) (Paperback)

Class-talk is mostly nonexistent in the U.S. We as a rule hear that most of us are in a vast middle class and share similar experiences, expectations, and opportunities. The author of this book punctures that notion and counters with the reality that capitalistic society is very much defined by distinct classes: an elite and small capitalistic class, a large working class, and a middle class of professionals, entrepreneurs, and managers that reside between the other two. His key point is that it is not income that defines the classes: it is the exercise of power. An elite capitalistic class dominates and controls our society culturally, politically, and most basically in workplaces and corporations. It is that exercise of power that sets capitalists apart. The working class is essentially powerless by comparison with the author's middle class exercising varying degrees of power depending on actual position held.

The author identifies several approaches that obscure the existence of classes. One is that we gain our identity primarily as consumers. As consumers we are told we are "sovereign," that is, empowered. Of course, the systematic manipulation by advertisers is an agenda of disempowerment of consumers adding to the domination already occurring in workplaces. Another myth is that people freely change positions (upward mobility) within a vast middle class. In other words, class does not largely determine life's chances and successes even though there is substantial evidence to the contrary. To further deny the reality of classes in American, talk of class is discredited by elites as foreign to America, or at least as an ideology of the past. While this book is not about media domination of American culture, the author does attribute to the media a role in obscuring talk about class from mainstream American culture. That point should have received greater emphasis.

The author contends that the recovery of the lexicon of class is essential for the working class to understand and to deal with the forces at work in society. It is the power of capitalists to control the economy that has seen working class wages decline and stagnant over the last twenty-five years while income and wealth has been redistributed upwards. It is not the mythical "invisible hand." The folding of capitalists into the "rich" obscures the exercise of power. Entertainers are often rich but seldom wield any power. In addition, in a sociology devoid of the exercise of power, the poor are construed as lacking moral fiber and not as less fortunate members of the working class. The poor are a convenient target for the anger of working class communities or families who have suffered various dislocations or dysfunctions. Power wielding economic elites remain hidden and free of blame.

The larger purpose of this book is to not only educate the working class about power dynamics but to inspire a revitalization of working class political activity. Any realistic assessment of the working class' ability to form independent organizations to counter the think tanks, political parties, trade associations, university support, and the corporate media, all directed by the capitalistic class, is simply lacking. The absence of class-talk is not a recent phenomenon. Even traditional working class organizations like labor unions have been content with sacrificing worker power for material benefits. It is most difficult to fathom the working class overcoming the efforts of educational institutions, the media, and other elitist directed bodies in their quest to obscure the dynamics of American society. Nonetheless this book is another wakeup call for the working class. Hopefully it will make its way into the hands of those for whom it was written.