The New American Class Structure

The most insightful and accessible model of American social classes I have yet encountered is that of Paul Fussell, who in his Class laid out the following structure:

Å      Top Out-of-Sights, who live entirely on inherited wealth.

Å      Upper Class, who live on inherited wealth but still participate in the workforce.

Å      Upper Middle Class, who are as rich as the upper class, but earned their own money.  This is the only class to which one can actually aspire.

Å      Middle Class, who earn a living in non-physical labor.  This is the most insecure class.

Å      High Proles, who are skilled workers and are at the top of the working class hierarchy.

Å      Middle Proles, who are semiskilled and form the middle rung of the working class.

Å      Low Proles, who are unskilled laborers, easily replaceable and insecure.

Å      Bottom Out-of-Sights, who are almost all either vagrants or institutionalized.

Obviously, this list is now dated, as Fussell wrote when the American economy was still geared more towards industry than service.  Also, a number of social changes have occurred that make it obsolete.  I propose a different model, one which I think more reflects the country’s current social structure.

Å      The First Estate, which is made up of clergy.  As the dominant culture worships the state, the clergy are the high level government administrators and the media and academic elites who function as their curia.  They control nearly half the wealth in the country.  Their role is to minister to the poor, whom they define in practice as anyone who has less money than anyone else.  Their work consists entirely of giving the other people's money to the poor and advocating giving them more.  

Å      The Second Estate, which is made up of the aristocracy, which should be understood as plutocracy.  Like all aristocracies, its tendencies are internationalist in loyalty, socialistic economically, and progressive politically.  Being a plutocracy, however, it lacks the corresponding virtues of an aristocracy, honor, courage, and self-sacrifice.  The Second Estate is made up of the heads of corporations and financiers, who control close to ninety percent of the wealth not consumed by the goverment.

These first two classes constitute around ten percent of the population, and replace the previous categories of top out-of-sight, upper class, and upper middle class.

Å      The Third Estate, which consists of everyone who would previously been in the categories of middle class or prole, but who is not underclass.  This class exists to fund and protect the first two.  Both the middle and prole classes are shrinking in wealth and power, the former due to outsourcing, the latter due to immigration, both of which are necessary to further concentrate wealth among the First and Second Estates. (The article does not mention the causes).

Å      The underclass, which consists of those cast off at some point in the past from the Third Estate, and their descendants.  The underclass is characterized economically by sporadic legitimate employment, socially by haphazard family structure, intellectually by poor educational attainment, politically by near total dependence on social services, psychologically by an inability to learn from experience or plan for the future, and legally by a propensity for petty crime and often felonies, which necessitate constant attention from law enforcement and frequent incarceration.  While there is some social mobility between the previous three Estates, almost no one leaves the underclass, and it has more the character of a caste than a social class.  .  They are the primary focus of the ministrations of the First Estate, and due to the progressive dumbing down of national life in the interest of the first two estates making money, which Fussell characterized as “prole drift,” the mores of the underclass are creeping upward into the Third Estate, and those elements of the First and Second that create the media that is consumed by them.  Thus, to my mind, the underclass is really the leading indicator of future cultural trends in the West, and for that reason, the most interesting of the classes.  By far the best writing on the subject is that of Theodore Dalrymple, and because his experience is mainly with the underclass of England, reading his work is useful in gaining a broader perspective on a major trend in the Western world .

This is the new American class system as I see it.