Bourgeoisie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie

The bourgeoisie (/ˌbʊərʒ.wɑːˈziː/; French: [buʁʒwazi] (listen)) is a sociologically defined social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their relative affluence, and their cultural and financial capital. They are sometimes divided into a petty (petite), middle (moyenne), grand (grande), upper (haute), and ancient (ancienne) bourgeoisie (which are collectively designated "the bourgeoisie").

The bourgeoisie in its original sense is intimately linked to the existence of cities, recognized as such by their urban charters (e.g., municipal charters, town privileges, German town law), so there was no bourgeoisie apart from the citizenry of the cities. Rural peasants came under a different legal system.

In Marxist philosophy, the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society.

Joseph Schumpeter saw the incorporation of new elements into an expanding bourgeoisie, particularly entrepreneurs who took risks to bring innovation to industries and the economy through the process of creative destruction, as the driving force behind the capitalist engine.

Etymology

The Modern French word bourgeois (French: [buʁʒwa]; English: /ˈbʊərʒ.wɑː, ˌbʊərˈʒwɑː/) derived from the Old French burgeis (walled city), which derived from bourg (market town), from the Old Frankish burg (town); in other European languages, the etymologic derivations include the Middle English burgeis, the Middle Dutch burgher, the German Bürger, the Modern English burgess, the Spanish burgués, the Portuguese burguês, and the Polish burżuazja, which occasionally is synonymous with the "intelligentsia". In its literal sense, bourgeois in Old French (burgeis, borjois) means "town dweller".

In the 18th century, before the French Revolution (1789–99), in the French Ancien Régime, the masculine and feminine terms bourgeois and bourgeoise identified the relatively rich men and women who were members of the urban and rural Third Estate – the common people of the French realm, who violently deposed the absolute monarchy of the Bourbon King Louis XVI (r. 1774–91), his clergy, and his aristocrats in the French Revolution of 1789–1799. Hence, since the 19th century, the term "bourgeoisie" usually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper class of a capitalist society. In English, the word "bourgeoisie", as a term referring to French history, refers to a social class oriented to economic materialism and hedonism, and to upholding the political and economic interests of the capitalist ruling-class.

Historically, the medieval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and others, who constituted "the bourgeoisie". They were the socio-economic class between the peasants and the landlords, between the workers and the owners of the means of production. As the economic managers of the (raw) materials, the goods, and the services, and thus the capital (money) produced by the feudal economy, the term "bourgeoisie" evolved to also denote the middle class – the businessmen and businesswomen who accumulated, administered, and controlled the capital that made possible the development of the bourgs into cities.

Contemporarily, the terms "bourgeoisie" and "bourgeois" (noun) identify the ruling class in capitalist societies, as a social stratum; while "bourgeois" (adjective / noun modifier) describes the Weltanschauung (worldview) of men and women whose way of thinking is socially and culturally determined by their economic materialism and philistinism, a social identity famously mocked in Molière's comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), which satirizes buying the trappings of a noble-birth identity as the means of climbing the social ladder. The 18th century saw a partial rehabilitation of bourgeois values in genres such as the drame bourgeois (bourgeois drama) and "bourgeois tragedy".

In the late 20th century, the shortened term "bougie" or "boujee" (an intentional misspelling) became slang, particularly among African-Americans. The term refers to a person of lower or middle class doing pretentious activities (eating avocado toast) or virtue signalling (driving a Prius) as an affectation of the upper-class.

History

Origins and rise

Further information: History of capitalism § Origins of capitalism, and Trade § History

The 16th-century German banker Jakob Fugger and his principal accountant, M. Schwarz, registering an entry to a ledger. The background shows a file cabinet indicating the European cities where the Fugger Bank conducts business. (1517)

The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to commerce. This urban expansion was possible thanks to economic concentration due to the appearance of protective self-organisation into guilds. Guilds arose when individual businessmen (such as craftsmen, artisans and merchants) conflicted with their rent-seeking feudal landlords who demanded greater rents than previously agreed.

In the event, by the end of the Middle Ages (c. AD 1500), under régimes of the early national monarchies of Western Europe, the bourgeoisie acted in self-interest, and politically supported the king or queen against legal and financial disorder caused by the greed of the feudal lords. In the late-16th and early 17th centuries, the bourgeoisies of England and the Netherlands had become the financial – thus political – forces that deposed the feudal order; economic power had vanquished military power in the realm of politics.

From progress to reaction (Marxist view)

According to the Marxist view of history, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the bourgeoisie were the politically progressive social class who supported the principles of constitutional government and of natural right, against the Law of Privilege and the claims of rule by divine right that the nobles and prelates had autonomously exercised during the feudal order.

The English Civil War (1642–51), the American War of Independence (1775–83), and French Revolution (1789–99) were partly motivated by the desire of the bourgeoisie to rid themselves of the feudal and royal encroachments on their personal liberty, commercial prospects, and the ownership of property. In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism, and gained political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties for themselves and the lower social classes; thus the bourgeoisie was a progressive philosophic and political force in Western societies.

After the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850), by the mid-19th century the great expansion of the bourgeoisie social class caused its stratification – by business activity and by economic function – into the haute bourgeoisie (bankers and industrialists) and the petite bourgeoisie (tradesmen and white-collar workers). Moreover, by the end of the 19th century, the capitalists (the original bourgeoisie) had ascended to the upper class, while the developments of technology and technical occupations allowed the rise of working-class men and women to the lower strata of the bourgeoisie; yet the social progress was incidental.

Denotations

Marxist theory

Karl Marx

According to Karl Marx, the bourgeois during the Middle Ages usually was a self-employed businessman – such as a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur – whose economic role in society was being the financial intermediary to the feudal landlord and the peasant who worked the fief, the land of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850) and of industrial capitalism, the bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling class who owned the means of production (capital and land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed forces and legal system, police forces and prison system).

In such a society, the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production allowed them to employ and exploit the wage-earning working class (urban and rural), people whose only economic means is labour; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the sociopolitical challenges by the lower classes, and so preserved the economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained employers.

In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist: (i) the functional capitalists, who are business administrators of the means of production; and (ii) rentier capitalists whose livelihoods derive either from the rent of property or from the interest-income produced by finance capital, or both. In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle, where the capitalists exploit the workers, while the workers resist their economic exploitation, which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to earn a living, seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer, who sells them for a price.

Besides describing the social class who owns the means of production, the Marxist use of the term "bourgeois" also describes the consumerist style of life derived from the ownership of capital and real property. Marx acknowledged the bourgeois industriousness that created wealth, but criticised the moral hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie when they ignored the alleged origins of their wealth: the exploitation of the proletariat, the urban and rural workers. Further sense denotations of "bourgeois" describe ideological concepts such as "bourgeois freedom", which is thought to be opposed to substantive forms of freedom; "bourgeois independence"; "bourgeois personal individuality"; the "bourgeois family"; et cetera, all derived from owning capital and property (see The Communist Manifesto, 1848).

France and French-speaking countries

In English, the term bourgeoisie is often used to denote the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses both the upper and middle classes, a misunderstanding which has occurred in other languages as well. The bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking countries consists of five evolving social layers: petite bourgeoisie, moyenne bourgeoisie, grande bourgeoisie, haute bourgeoisie and ancienne bourgeoisie.

Petite bourgeoisie

Main article: Petite bourgeoisie

The petite bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the modern-day middle class, or refers to "a social class between the middle class and the lower class: the lower middle class".

Moyenne bourgeoisie

The moyenne bourgeoisie or middle bourgeoisie contains people who have solid incomes and assets, but not the aura of those who have become established at a higher level. They tend to belong to a family that has been bourgeois for three or more generations. Some members of this class may have relatives from similar backgrounds, or may even have aristocratic connections. The moyenne bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the British and American upper-middle classes.

Grande bourgeoisie

The grande bourgeoisie are families that have been bourgeois since the 19th century, or for at least four or five generations. Members of these families tend to marry with the aristocracy or make other advantageous marriages. This bourgeois family has acquired an established historical and cultural heritage over the decades. The names of these families are generally known in the city where they reside, and their ancestors have often contributed to the region's history. These families are respected and revered. They belong to the upper class, and in the British class system are considered part of the gentry. In the French-speaking countries, they are sometimes referred la petite haute bourgeoisie.

Haute bourgeoisie

The haute bourgeoisie is a social rank in the bourgeoisie that can only be acquired through time. In France, it is composed of bourgeois families that have existed since the French Revolution. They hold only honourable professions and have experienced many illustrious marriages in their family's history. They have rich cultural and historical heritages, and their financial means are more than secure.

These families exude an aura of nobility, which prevents them from certain marriages or occupations. They differ from nobility only in that because of circumstances, the lack of opportunity, and/or political regime, they have not been ennobled. These people nevertheless live lavishly, enjoying the company of the great artists of the time. In France, the families of the haute bourgeoisie are also referred to as les 200 familles, a term coined in the first half of the 20th century. Michel Pinçon and Monique Pinçon-Charlot studied the lifestyle of the French bourgeoisie, and how they boldly guard their world from the nouveau riche, or newly rich.

In the French language, the term bourgeoisie almost designates a caste by itself, even though social mobility into this socio-economic group is possible. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie is differentiated from la classe moyenne, or the middle class, which consists mostly of white-collar employees, by holding a profession referred to as a profession libérale, which la classe moyenne, in its definition does not hold. Yet, in English the definition of a white-collar job encompasses the profession libérale.

Ancienne bourgeoisie

The ancienne bourgeoisie is a relatively recent sociological term coined by René Rémond and an additional subcategory in the French language to the “bourgeoisie” caste.

In Rémond’s preface of “L’ancienne bourgeoisie en France : émergence et permanence d'un groupe social du xvie siècle au xxe siècle“ published by Xavier de Montclos in 2013, he defines l’ancienne bourgeoisie as follows:

“An intermediary social group between the aristocracy and what we would call the middle classes (“les classes moyennes” in French, which does not have the same sociological implications as in English) and which was established between 15th and 16th centuries…These families are for the most part provincial dynasties whose social ascension was accomplished in their region of origin and to which they generally remain attached to, and in which their descendants are still present…These families are deeply rooted in the “Ancien Régime”…They have insured the transmission of their material legacy, as well their convictions and set of values for over 400 and 500 years.” (René Rémond, 2013)

Xavier de Montclos goes further by saying that these families acquired their status during the “Ancien Régime”, and that they belonged to the town’s elite and the upper-crust of the “bourgeoisie” caste.

They usually acquired high and important administrative and judicial functions, and distinguished themselves through their success, particularly in business and industry. It was through this distinction that some of these families were ennobled and became part of the aristocracy.

Nazism

Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of internationalist class struggle, but supported the "class struggle between nations", and sought to resolve internal class struggle in the nation while it identified Germany as a proletariat nation fighting against plutocratic nations.

The Nazi Party had many working-class supporters and members, and a strong appeal to the middle class. The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism. In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their social policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless—who were later recruited into the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (SA – Storm Detachments).

Hitler was impressed by the populist antisemitism and the anti-liberal bourgeois agitation of Karl Lueger, who as the mayor of Vienna during Hitler's time in the city, used a rabble-rousing style of oratory that appealed to the wider masses. When asked whether he supported the "bourgeois right-wing", Adolf Hitler claimed that Nazism was not exclusively for any class, and he also indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps", stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism".

Hitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk.

Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews". Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that capitalism had "run its course". Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them." Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, who he referred to as "cowardly shits".

Modern history in Italy

Because of their ascribed cultural excellence as a social class, the Italian fascist régime (1922–45) of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini regarded the bourgeoisie as an obstacle to Modernism. Nonetheless, the Fascist State ideologically exploited the Italian bourgeoisie and their materialistic, middle-class spirit, for the more efficient cultural manipulation of the upper (aristocratic) and the lower (working) classes of Italy.

In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini gave a speech wherein he established a clear ideological distinction between capitalism (the social function of the bourgeoisie) and the bourgeoisie (as a social class), whom he dehumanised by reducing them into high-level abstractions: a moral category and a state of mind. Culturally and philosophically, Mussolini isolated the bourgeoisie from Italian society by portraying them as social parasites upon the fascist Italian state and "The People"; as a social class who drained the human potential of Italian society, in general, and of the working class, in particular; as exploiters who victimised the Italian nation with an approach to life characterised by hedonism and materialism. Nevertheless, despite the slogan The Fascist Man Disdains the ″Comfortable″ Life, which epitomised the anti-bourgeois principle, in its final years of power, for mutual benefit and profit, the Mussolini fascist régime transcended ideology to merge the political and financial interests of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini with the political and financial interests of the bourgeoisie, the Catholic social circles who constituted the ruling class of Italy.

Philosophically, as a materialist creature, the bourgeois man was stereotyped as irreligious; thus, to establish an existential distinction between the supernatural faith of the Roman Catholic Church and the materialist faith of temporal religion; in The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s, the priest Giuseppe Marino said that:

Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.

Culturally, the bourgeois man may be considered effeminate, infantile, or acting in a pretentious manner; describing his philistinism in Bonifica antiborghese (1939), Roberto Paravese comments on the:

Middle class, middle man, incapable of great virtue or great vice: and there would be nothing wrong with that, if only he would be willing to remain as such; but, when his child-like or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of grandeur, honours, and thus riches, which he cannot achieve honestly with his own "second-rate" powers, then the average man compensates with cunning, schemes, and mischief; he kicks out ethics, and becomes a bourgeois. The bourgeois is the average man who does not accept to remain such, and who, lacking the strength sufficient for the conquest of essential values—those of the spirit—opts for material ones, for appearances.

The economic security, financial freedom, and social mobility of the bourgeoisie threatened the philosophic integrity of Italian fascism, the ideological monolith that was the régime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Any assumption of legitimate political power (government and rule) by the bourgeoisie represented a fascist loss of totalitarian state power for social control through political unity—one people, one nation, and one leader. Sociologically, to the fascist man, to become a bourgeois was a character flaw inherent to the masculine mystique; therefore, the ideology of Italian fascism scornfully defined the bourgeois man as "spiritually castrated".

Bourgeois culture

Cultural hegemony

Karl Marx said that the culture of a society is dominated by the mores of the ruling-class, wherein their superimposed value system is abided by each social class (the upper, the middle, the lower) regardless of the socio-economic results it yields to them. In that sense, contemporary societies are bourgeois to the degree that they practice the mores of the small-business "shop culture" of early modern France; which the writer Émile Zola (1840–1902) naturalistically presented, analysed, and ridiculed in the twenty-two-novel series (1871–1893) about Les Rougon-Macquart family; the thematic thrust is the necessity for social progress, by subordinating the economic sphere to the social sphere of life.

Conspicuous consumption

Clothing worn by ladies belonging to the bourgeoisie of Żywiec, Poland, 19th century (collection of the Żywiec City Museum)

The critical analyses of the bourgeois mentality by the German intellectual Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) indicated that the shop culture of the petite bourgeoisie established the sitting room as the centre of personal and family life; as such, the English bourgeois culture is, he alleges, a sitting-room culture of prestige through conspicuous consumption. The material culture of the bourgeoisie concentrated on mass-produced luxury goods of high quality; between generations, the only variance was the materials with which the goods were manufactured.

In the early part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house contained a home that first was stocked and decorated with hand-painted porcelain, machine-printed cotton fabrics, machine-printed wallpaper, and Sheffield steel (crucible and stainless). The utility of these things was inherent in their practical functions. By the latter part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house contained a home that had been remodelled by conspicuous consumption. Here, Benjamin argues, the goods were bought to display wealth (discretionary income), rather than for their practical utility. The bourgeoisie had transposed the wares of the shop window to the sitting room, where the clutter of display signalled bourgeois success.

Two spatial constructs manifest the bourgeois mentality: (i) the shop-window display, and (ii) the sitting room. In English, the term "sitting-room culture" is synonymous for "bourgeois mentality", a "philistine" cultural perspective from the Victorian Era (1837–1901), especially characterised by the repression of emotion and of sexual desire; and by the construction of a regulated social-space where "propriety" is the key personality trait desired in men and women.

Nonetheless, from such a psychologically constricted worldview, regarding the rearing of children, contemporary sociologists claim to have identified "progressive" middle-class values, such as respect for non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy, gender equality and the encouragement of innovation; as in the Victorian Era, the transposition to the US of the bourgeois system of social values has been identified as a requisite for employment success in the professions.

The prototypical bourgeois, Monsieur Jourdain, the protagonist in Molière's play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670)

Bourgeois values are dependent on rationalism, which began with the economic sphere and moves into every sphere of life which is formulated by Max Weber. The beginning of rationalism is commonly called the Age of Reason. Much like the Marxist critics of that period, Weber was concerned with the growing ability of large corporations and nations to increase their power and reach throughout the world.

Satire and criticism in art

Beyond the intellectual realms of political economy, history, and political science that discuss, describe, and analyse the bourgeoisie as a social class, the colloquial usage of the sociological terms bourgeois and bourgeoise describe the social stereotypes of the old money and of the nouveau riche, who is a politically timid conformist satisfied with a wealthy, consumerist style of life characterised by conspicuous consumption and the continual striving for prestige. This being the case, the cultures of the world describe the philistinism of the middle-class personality, produced by the excessively rich life of the bourgeoisie, is examined and analysed in comedic and dramatic plays, novels, and films. (See: Authenticity.)

The 17th-century French playwright Molière (1622–73) catalogued the social-climbing essence of the bourgeoisie in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670)

The term bourgeoisie has been used as a pejorative and a term of abuse since the 19th century, particularly by intellectuals and artists.

Theatre

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman, 1670) by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), is a comedy-ballet that satirises Monsieur Jourdain, the prototypical nouveau riche man who buys his way up the social-class scale, to realise his aspirations of becoming a gentleman, to which end he studies dancing, fencing, and philosophy, the trappings and accomplishments of a gentleman, to be able to pose as a man of noble birth, someone who, in 17th-century France, was a man to the manor born; Jourdain's self-transformation also requires managing the private life of his daughter, so that her marriage can also assist his social ascent.

Literature

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) portrayed the moral, intellectual, and physical decadence of the German upper bourgeoisie in the novel Buddenbrooks (1926)

Buddenbrooks (1901), by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), chronicles the moral, intellectual, and physical decay of a rich family through its declines, material and spiritual, in the course of four generations, beginning with the patriarch Johann Buddenbrook Sr. and his son, Johann Buddenbrook Jr., who are typically successful German businessmen; each is a reasonable man of solid character.

Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materially comfortable style of life provided by the dedication to solid, middle-class values elicits decadence: The fickle daughter, Toni, lacks and does not seek a purpose in life; son Christian is honestly decadent, and lives the life of a ne'er-do-well; and the businessman son, Thomas, who assumes command of the Buddenbrook family fortune, occasionally falters from middle-class solidity by being interested in art and philosophy, the impractical life of the mind, which, to the bourgeoisie, is the epitome of social, moral, and material decadence.

Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), satirizes the American bourgeois George Follansbee Babbitt, a middle-aged realtor, booster, and joiner in the Midwestern city of Zenith, who – despite being unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly conformist and middle-class – is aware that there must be more to life than money and the consumption of the best things that money can buy. Nevertheless, he fears being excluded from the mainstream of society more than he does living for himself, by being true to himself – his heart-felt flirtations with independence (dabbling in liberal politics and a love affair with a pretty widow) come to naught because he is existentially afraid.

The Spanish cinéast Luis Buñuel (1900–83) depicted the tortuous mentality and self-destructive hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie

Yet, George F. Babbitt sublimates his desire for self-respect, and encourages his son to rebel against the conformity that results from bourgeois prosperity, by recommending that he be true to himself:

Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been.

Films

Many of the satirical films by the Spanish film director Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) examine the mental and moral effects of the bourgeois mentality, its culture, and the stylish way of life it provides for its practitioners.

• L'Âge d'or (The Golden Age, 1930) illustrates the madness and self-destructive hypocrisy of bourgeois society.
• Belle de Jour (Beauty of the day, 1967) tells the story of a bourgeois wife who is bored with her marriage and decides to prostitute herself.
• Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972) explores the timidity instilled by middle-class values.
• Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977) illuminates the practical self-deceptions required for buying love as marriage.

Proletariat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat

The proletariat (/ˌproʊlɪˈtɛəriət/; from Latin proletarius 'producing offspring') is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philosophy considers the proletariat to be exploited under capitalism, forced to accept meager wages in return for operating the means of production, which belong to the class of business owners, the bourgeoisie.

Marx argued that this oppression gives the proletariat common economic and political interests that transcend national boundaries, impelling them to unite and take over power from the capitalist class, and eventually to create a communist society free from class distinctions.

Roman Republic and Empire

Further information: Constitution of the Roman Republic

The proletarii constituted a social class of Roman citizens who owned little or no property. The name presumably originated with the census, which Roman authorities conducted every five years to produce a register of citizens and their property, which determined their military duties and voting privileges. Those who owned 11,000 assēs or less fell below the lowest category for military service, and their children—prōlēs (offspring)—were listed instead of property; hence the name proletarius (producer of offspring). Roman citizen-soldiers paid for their own horses and arms, and fought without payment for the commonwealth, but the only military contribution of a proletarius was his children, the future Roman citizens who could colonize conquered territories. Officially, propertyless citizens were called capite censi because they were "persons registered not as to their property...but simply as to their existence as living individuals, primarily as heads (caput) of a family."

Seccessio plebis, a form of protest in Ancient Rome where the proletarii would leave the city, causing the economy to collapse

Although included in the Comitia Centuriata (Centuriate Assembly), proletarii were the lowest class, largely deprived of voting rights. Late Roman historians such as Livy vaguely described the Comitia Centuriata as a popular assembly of early Rome composed of centuriae, voting units representing classes of citizens according to wealth. This assembly, which usually met on the Campus Martius to discuss public policy, designated the military duties of Roman citizens. One of the reconstructions of the Comitia Centuriata features 18 centuriae of cavalry, and 170 centuriae of infantry divided into five classes by wealth, plus 5 centuriae of support personnel called adsidui, one of which represented the proletarii. In battle, the cavalry brought their horses and arms, the top infantry class full arms and armor, the next two classes less, the fourth class only spears, the fifth slings, while the assisting adsidui held no weapons. In voting, the cavalry and top infantry class were enough to decide an issue; as voting started at the top, issues were usually decided before the lower classes voted.

After the Second Punic War in 201 BC, the Jugurthine War and various conflicts in Macedonia and Asia reduced the number of Roman family farmers, and the Republic experienced a shortage of propertied citizen soldiers. The Marian reforms of 107 BC extended military eligibility to the urban poor, and henceforth the proletarii, as paid soldiers, became the backbone of the army, which later served as the decisive force in the fall of the Republic and the establishment of the Empire.

Modern use

Jean-François Millet - The man with the hoe

In the early 19th century, many Western European liberal scholars — who dealt with social sciences and economics — pointed out the socio-economic similarities of the modern rapidly growing industrial worker class and the classic proletarians. One of the earliest analogies can be found in the 1807 paper of French philosopher and political scientist Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais. Later it was translated to English with the title "Modern Slavery".

Swiss liberal economist and historian Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi was the first to apply the proletariat term to the working class created under capitalism, and whose writings were frequently cited by Karl Marx. Marx most likely encountered the term while studying the works of Sismondi.

Marxist theory

Marx, who studied Roman law at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, used the term proletariat in his socio-political theory (Marxism) to describe a progressive working class untainted by private property and capable of revolutionary action to topple capitalism and abolish social classes, leading society to ever higher levels of prosperity and justice.

Adolph Menzel - Iron rolling mill (1872-1875)

Marx defined the proletariat as the social class having no significant ownership of the means of production (factories, machines, land, mines, buildings, vehicles) and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labor power for a wage or salary. Proletarians are wage-workers, while some (though not Marx himself) distinguish salaried workers as the salariat.

Marxist theory only vaguely defines the borders between the proletariat and adjacent social classes. In the socially superior, less progressive direction are the lower petty bourgeoisie, such as small shopkeepers, who rely primarily on self-employment at an income comparable to an ordinary wage. Intermediate positions are possible, where wage-labor for an employer combines with self-employment. In another direction, the lumpenproletariat or "rag-proletariat", which Marx considers a retrograde class, live in the informal economy outside of legal employment: the poorest outcasts of society such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes. Socialist parties have often argued over whether they should organize and represent all the lower classes, or only the wage-earning proletariat.

A 1911 Industrial Worker publication advocating industrial unionism based on a critique of capitalism. The proletariat "work for all" and "feed all".

According to Marxism, capitalism is based on the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie: the workers, who own no means of production, must use the property of others to produce goods and services and to earn their living. Workers cannot rent the means of production (e.g. a factory or department store) to produce on their own account; rather, capitalists hire workers, and the goods or services produced become the property of the capitalist, who sells them at market.

Part of the net selling price pays the workers' wages (variable costs); a second part renews the means of production (constant costs, capital investment); while the third part is consumed by the capitalist class, split between the capitalist's personal profit and fees to other owners (rents, taxes, interest on loans, etc.). The struggle over the first part (wage rates) puts the proletariat and bourgeoisie into irreconcilable conflict, as market competition pushes wages inexorably to the minimum necessary for the workers to survive and continue working. The second part, called capitalized surplus value, is used to renew or increase the means of production (capital), either in quantity or quality.^[17] The second and third parts are known as surplus value, the difference between the wealth the proletariat produce and the wealth they consume^[18]

Marxists argue that new wealth is created through labor applied to natural resources.^[19] The commodities that proletarians produce and capitalists sell are valued not for their usefulness, but for the amount of labor embodied in them: for example, air is essential but requires no labor to produce, and is therefore free; while a diamond is much less useful, but requires hundreds of hours of mining and cutting, and is therefore expensive. The same goes for the workers' labor power: it is valued not for the amount of wealth it produces, but for the amount of labor necessary to keep the workers fed, housed, sufficiently trained, and able to raise children as new workers. On the other hand, capitalists earn their wealth not as a function of their personal labor, which may even be null, but by the juridical relation of their property to the means of production (e.g. owning a factory or farmland).

Soviet propaganda in Moscow, 1984

Marx argues that history is made by man and not destiny. The instruments of production and the working class that use the tools in order to produce are referred to as the moving forces of society. Overtime, this developed into the levels of social class where the owners of resources joined to squeeze productivity out of the individuals who depended on their labor power. Marx argues that these relations between the exploiters and exploited results in different modes of production and the successive stages in history. These modes of production in which mankind gains power over nature is distinguished into 5 different systems: the Primitive Community, Slave State, Feudal State, Capitalist System, and finally the Socialist Society. The transition between these systems were all due to an increase in civil unrest among those who felt oppressed by a higher social class.^[20]

The contention with feudalism began once the merchants and guild artisans grew in numbers and power. Once they organized themselves, they began opposing the fees imposed on them by the nobles and clergy. This development led to new ideas and eventually established the Bourgeoisie class which Marx opposes. Commerce began to change the form of production and markets began to shift in order to support larger production and profits. This change led to a series of revolutions by the bourgeois which resulted in capitalism. Marx argues that this same model can and should be applied to the fight for the proletariat. Forming unions similar to how the merchants and artisans did will establish enough power to enact change. Ultimately, Marx’s theory of the proletarians struggle would eventually lead to the fall of capitalism and the emergence of a new mode of production, socialism.^[20]

Marx argued that the proletariat would inevitably displace the capitalist system with the dictatorship of the proletariat, abolishing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a communist society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all".^[21]

Proletarian culture

Marx argued that each social class had its characteristic culture and politics. The socialist states stemming from the Russian Revolution championed an official version of proletarian culture.

This was quite different from the working-class culture of capitalist countries, which tend to experience "prole drift" (proletarian drift), in which everything inexorably becomes commonplace and commodified by means of mass production, mass selling, mass communication and mass education. Examples include best-seller lists, films, and music made to appeal to the masses, and shopping malls.^[22]

 

Underclass

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclass 

The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class.

The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences (for example, lumpenproletariat). However, the specific term, underclass, was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty, and then by American journalists.

The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists. Definitions and explanations of the underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the underclass problem have been highly debated.

The term underclass is employed by sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert to describe the most disadvantaged socio-economic demographic with the least access to scarce resources. In this chart constructed by Gilbert, the American underclass is estimated to constitute roughly 12% of U.S. households.

History

Gunnar Myrdal is generally credited as the first proponent of the term underclass. Writing in the early 1960s on economic inequality in the U.S., Myrdal's underclass refers to a "class of unemployed, unemployables, and underemployed, who are more and more hopelessly set apart from the nation at large, and do not share in its life, its ambitions, and its achievements". However, this general conception of a class or category of people below the core of the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences, such as through the work of Henry Mayhew, whose London Labour and the London Poor sought to describe the hitherto invisible world of casual workers, prostitutes, and street-people.

The specific concept of an underclass in the U.S. underwent several transformations during the decades following Myrdal's introduction of the term. According to sociologist Herbert Gans, while Myrdal's structural conceptualization of the underclass remained relatively intact through the writings of William Julius Wilson and others, in several respects the structural definition was abandoned by many journalists and academics, and replaced with a behavioral conception of the underclass, which fuses Myrdal's term with Oscar Lewis's and others' conception of a "culture of poverty".

Definitions

Various definitions of the underclass have been set forth since the term's initial conception; however, all of these definitions are basically different ways of imagining a category of people beneath the working class. The definitions vary by which particular dimensions of this group are highlighted. A few popular descriptions of the underclass are considered as follows.

Focus on economics

Marxian sociologist Erik Olin Wright sees the underclass as a "category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system". The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder. According to Wright, the underclass are oppressed. He believes this is because they are generally denied access to the labor market, and thus they cannot rise above their status easily but also thus are "not consistently exploited" because the opportunity for their economic exploitation is minimal for the classes above.

Unlike the working class, which he believes is routinely exploited for their labor power by higher classes, the underclass in Wright's view, do not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. Wright argues his highly doctrinaire opinion of class malevolence that:

The material interests of the wealthy and privileged segments of American society would be better served if these people simply disappeared…The alternative, then, is to build prisons, to cordon off the zones of cities in which the underclass live. In such a situation the main potential power of the underclass against their oppressors comes from their capacity to disrupt the sphere of consumption, especially through crime and other forms of violence, not their capacity to disrupt production through their control over labor.

This quote partly concerns the spaces and locations for the underclass and reflects the leftist view of the other classes as acting against the underclass in unison, as opposed to other sociological views seeing class actors behaving as individuals reacting to individual incentives within society.

Focus on space and place

The underclass generally occupies specific zones in the city. Thus, the notion of an underclass is popular in Urban Sociology, and particularly in accounts of urban poverty. The term, underclass, and the phrase, urban underclass, are, for the most part, used interchangeably. Studies concerning the post-civil rights African American ghetto often include a discussion of the urban underclass. Many writings concerning the underclass, particularly in the U.S., are urban-focused.

William Julius Wilson's books, The Declining Significance of Race (1978) and The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), are popular accounts of the black urban underclass. Wilson defines the underclass as "a massive population at the very bottom of the social ladder plagued by poor education and low-paying jobs." He generally limits his discussion to those trapped in the post-civil-rights ghetto in the American rust belt (see "Potential Causes and Proposed Solutions" section of this entry for a more detailed summary of Wilson on the underclass).

Elijah Anderson's, Streetwise (1990), employs ethnographic methods to study a gentrifying neighborhood, "The Village" (pseudonym), bordering a black ghetto, "Northton" (pseudonym), in an American city. Anderson provides the following description of the underclass in this ghetto:

The underclass of Northton is made up of people who have failed to keep up with their brethren, both in employment and sociability. Essentially they can be seen as victims of the economic and social system. They make up the unemployed, the underskilled, and the poorly educated, even though some hold high-school diplomas. Many are intelligent, but they are demoralized by racism and the wall of social resistance facing them. In this context they lose perspective and lack an outlook and sensibility that would allow them to negotiate the wider system of employment and society in general.

Focus on behavior

Lawrence M. Mead defines the underclass as a group that is poor and behaviorally deficient. He describes the underclass as dysfunctional. He provides the following definition in his 1986 book, Beyond Entitlement,

The underclass is most visible in urban slum settings and is about 70 percent nonwhite, but it includes many rural and white people as well, especially in Appalachia and the South. Much of the urban underclass is made up of street hustlers, welfare families, drug addicts, and former mental patients. There are, of course, people who function well – the so-called 'deserving' or 'working poor' – and better-off people who function poorly, but in general low income and serious behavioral difficulties go together. The underclass is not large as a share of population, perhaps 9 million people, but it accounts for the lion's share of the most serious disorders in American life, especially in the cities.

Ken Auletta, often credited as the primary journalist who brought the underclass term to the forefront of the American consciousness, describes the American underclass as non-assimilated Americans, and he suggests that the underclass may be subcategorized into four distinct groups:

(1) the passive poor, usually long-term welfare recipients; (2) the hostile street criminals who terrorize most cities, and who are often school dropouts and drug addicts; (3) the hustlers, who, like street criminals, may not be poor and who earn their livelihood in an underground economy, but rarely commit violent crimes; (4) the traumatized drunks, drifters, homeless shopping-bag ladies, and released mental patients who frequently roam or collapse on city streets.

Controversies amongst definitions

Each of the above definitions are said to conceptualize the same general group – the American underclass – but they provide somewhat competing imagery. While Wright, Wilson, and Anderson each position the underclass in reference to the labor market, Auletta's definition is simply "non-assimilation" and his examples, along with Mead's definition, highlight underclass members' participation in deviant behavior and their adoption of an antisocial outlook on life. These controversies are elaborated further in the next section ("Characteristics of the Underclass").

As evident with Mead and Auletta's framing, some definitions of the underclass significantly diverge from the initial notion of an economic group beneath the working class. A few writings on the underclass distinguish between various types of underclass, such as the social underclass, the impoverished underclass, the reproductive underclass, the educational underclass, the violent underclass, and the criminal underclass, with some expected horizontal mobility between these groups. Even more divergent from the initial notion of an underclass are the recent journalistic accounts of a so-called "genetic underclass", referring to a genetic inheritance of a predisposition to addiction and other personality traits traditionally associated with behavioral definitions of the underclass. However, such distinctions between criminal, social, impoverished, and other specified underclass terms still refer to the same general group—those beneath the working class. And, despite recent journalistic accounts of a "genetic underclass", the underclass concept is primarily, and has traditionally been, a social science term.

Characteristics

The underclass is located by a collection of identifying characteristics, such as high levels of joblessness, out-of-wedlock births, female-headed households, crime, violence, substance abuse, and high school dropout rates. The underclass harbors these traits to a greater degree than the general population, and other classes more specifically.

Joel Rogers and James Wright identify four general themes by which these characteristics are organized within academic and journalistic accounts of the underclass: economic, social-psychological, behavioral, and ecological (spatial concentration).

Economic characteristics

The economic dimension is the most basic and least contested theme of the underclass – the underclass is overwhelmingly poor. The underclass experiences high levels of joblessness, and what little employment its members hold in the formal economy is best described as precarious labor. However, it is important to note that simply being poor is not synonymous with being part of the underclass. The underclass is persistently poor and, for most definitions, the underclass live in areas of concentrated poverty. Some scholars, such as Ricketts and Sawhill, argue that being poor is not a requirement for underclass membership, and thus there are individuals who are non-poor members of the underclass because they live in "underclass areas" and embody other characteristics of the underclass, such as being violent, criminal, and anti-social (e.g., gang leaders).

Social-psychological characteristics

Many writers often highlight the social-psychological dimensions of the underclass. The underclass is often framed as holding beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and desires that are inconsistent with those held by society at large. The underclass is frequently described as a "discouraged" group with members who feel "cut off" from mainstream society. Linked to this discussion of the underclass being psychologically deviant, the underclass is also said to have low levels of cognition and literacy. Thus, the underclass is often seen as being mentally disconnected from the rest of society. Consider the following:

The underclass rejects many of the norms and values of the larger society. Among underclass youth, achievement motivation is low, education is undervalued, and conventional means of success and upward mobility are scorned. There is widespread alienation from society and its institutions, estrangement, social isolation, and hopelessness, the sense that a better life is simply not attainable through legitimate means.

Behavioral characteristics

Not only is the underclass frequently said to think differently, they are also said to behave differently. Some believe that the underclass concept was meant to capture the coincidence of a number of social ills including poverty, joblessness, crime, welfare dependence, fatherless families, and low levels of education or work related skills. These behavioral characteristics, coupled with arguments that the underclass is psychologically disconnected from mainstream society, are occasionally highlighted as evidence that the underclass live in a subculture of poverty. From this point of view, members of the underclass embody a distinct set of thoughts, perceptions, and actions – a "style of life" - that are transmitted across generations. However, just as the conceptualization of a "culture of poverty" in general is debated, so too are the attempts to frame the underclass as members of such a culture.

Ecological (spatial) characteristics

The ecological dimension, a fourth theme in the literature on the underclass, is often used as both a description and an explanation for the underclass. The underclass is concentrated in specific areas. Although there are some writings on the "rural underclass", in general the underclass is framed as an urban phenomenon and the phrases "ghetto poverty" and "inner-city poverty" are often used synonymously with the underclass term. However, many scholars are careful not to equate concentrated poverty with the underclass. Living in areas of concentrated poverty is more or less framed as a common (and often necessary) condition of the underclass, but it is generally not considered a sufficient condition since many conceptualizations of the underclass highlight behavioral and psychological deviancy that may not necessarily persist in high-poverty areas. In Wilson's writings on the underclass – a term he eventually replaces with "ghetto poverty" (see section titled "Critiques of the Underclass Concept")– the underclass is described as a population that is physically and socially isolated from individuals and institutions of mainstream society, and this isolation is one of a collection of causes to concentrated poverty and why the "social dislocations" (e.g., crime, school dropouts, out of wed-lock pregnancy, etc.) of the underclass emerge.

Thus, the underclass is defined and identified by multiple characteristics. Members are persistently poor and experience high levels of joblessness. However, these trends are generally not seen as sufficient identifiers of the underclass, because, for many, the underclass concept also captures dimensions of psychological and behavioral deviancy. Furthermore, the underclass is generally identified as an urban phenomenon with its members typically living in areas of concentrated poverty.

Potential causes and proposed solutions

Similar to issues of defining and identifying the underclass, the outlining of potential causes and proposed solutions for the "underclass problem" have also been points of contestation. Debates concerning the diagnosis of, and prescription for, the underclass often mirror debates concerning first world poverty more generally. However, in many writings on the specific notion of the underclass, some particular causes and solutions have been set forth.

A few of these propositions are outlined below, including those developed by William Julius Wilson, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, Lawrence M. Mead, and Ken Auletta. The work by these authors' certainly do not compile an exhaustive list of suggested causes or solutions for the underclass, but they are arguably the most read proposals among social scientists. The contrasting causes and solutions highlighted by Wilson and Mead in particular have been popular points for debate. However, because prescription is dependent on diagnosis, much of the debates between Wilson and Mead have been on the causes and conditions of the underclass. Wilson highlights social isolation and the disappearance of quality work (for example, via deindustrialization and offshore labor outsourcing) for ghetto residents, while Mead highlights an overgenerous and permissive welfare state. Massey and Denton link the creation of the underclass to racial residential segregation and advocate for policies encouraging desegregation. Auletta provides a different policy framework discussion by highlighting two extreme positions (the wholesale option and the laissez-faire option) and one middle-of-the-road position (the retail option), but these are more discussions concerning the amount of public resources that should be dedicated to fixing, or attempting to fix, the underclass problem, rather than specific strategies. Auletta seems to support the retail option, which would provide aid to underclass members deserving and hopeful and withhold aid to members undeserving and hopeless.

Wilson's diagnosis and prescription

For Wilson, the cause of the underclass is structural. In The Truly Disadvantaged, Wilson highlights a conglomerate of factors in the last half of the twentieth century leading to a growing urban underclass. The factors listed include but are not limited to the shift from a goods-producing economy to a service-producing economy (including deindustrialization) and the offshore outsourcing of labor not only in the industrial sector but also in substantial portions of the remaining service sector. These factors are aggravated by the exodus of the middle and upper classes from the inner city (first the well-known "white flight" but later the less-studied departure of the black middle class), which creates a "spatial mismatch" between where low-income people live (inner-city neighborhoods) and where low-skill service-sector jobs are available (the suburbs). The result is the transformation of the post-civil-rights-era inner city into a "ghetto" whose residents are isolated from mainstream institutions.

Wilson proposes a comprehensive social and economic program that is primarily universal, but nevertheless includes targeted efforts to improve the life chances of the ghetto underclass and other disadvantaged groups. Wilson lists multiple examples of what this universal program would include, such as public funding of training, retraining, and transitional employment benefits that would be available to all members of society. With respect to the diagnosis of concentration and isolation, Wilson suggests the promotion of social mobility, through programs that will increase employment prospects for the underclass, will lead to geographic mobility. Wilson describes his proposed program as having a "hidden agenda" for policy makers "to improve the life chances of truly disadvantaged groups such as the ghetto underclass by emphasizing programs to which the more advantaged groups of all races and class backgrounds can positively relate". Universal programs are more easily accepted within the US' political climate than targeted programs, yet the underclass would likely experience the most benefit from universal programs. Wilson notes that some means-tested programs are still necessary, but recommends that they be framed as secondary to universal programming efforts. The following quote summarizes his policy call:

[T]he problems of the ghetto underclass can be most meaningfully addressed by a comprehensive program that combines employment policies with social welfare policies and that features universal as opposed to race- or group-specific strategies. On the one hand, this program highlights macroeconomic policy to generate a tight labor market and economic growth; fiscal and monetary policy not only to stimulate noninflationary growth, but also to increase the competitiveness of American goods on both the domestic and international market; and a national labor market strategy to make the labor force more adequate to changing economic opportunities. On the other hand, this program highlights a child support assurance program, a family allowance program, and a child care strategy.

Massey and Denton's diagnosis and prescription

In their 1993 book, American Apartheid, sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton concur with much of Wilson's suggested causes and proposed solutions, but introduce racial residential segregation (as an outcome of both institutionalized and individual-level discrimination) as an explanatory factor. Massey and Denton argue that racial residential segregation is primarily an outcome of institutionalized racism in real estate and banking, coupled with, and significantly motivated by, individual-level prejudice and discrimination. They provide the following summary,

Thus, although we share William Julius Wilson's view that the structural transformation of the economy played a crucial role in creating the urban underclass during the 1970's, we argue that what made it disproportionately a black underclass was racial segregation. The decline of manufacturing and the rise of a two-tiered service economy harmed many racial and ethnic groups, but only black Americans were highly segregated, so only among them was the resulting income loss confined to a small set of spatially contiguous and racially homogenous neighborhoods.

Given the prominent role of segregation in the construction and maintenance of the urban underclass, Massey and Denton call for policies that promote desegregation. They provide a detailed list of policy suggestions in the closing of their book. They argue that policies aimed at desegregation need to target the private housing market, where an overwhelming majority of housing is allocated. In doing this, the authors call upon the federal government to dedicate more resources to the upholding of the Fair Housing Act, including speedy judicial action against violators (to strengthen deterrent effects of the legislation).

Mead's diagnosis and prescription

Mead argues that the core cause of the underclass problem (or at least the perpetuation of the underclass problem) is welfare. Mead argues that most welfare programs encourage social dysfunctions, including welfare dependency, illegitimate births, joblessness, and crime. For Mead, welfare is too permissive and provides benefits to the underclass without requirements for its members to change their behavior and lifestyle.

Mead's diagnosis that permissive welfare is a primary cause of the underclass problem is followed by a prescription for a more authoritative welfare program that combines benefits with requirements. This proposal is often called "workfare", which requires welfare recipients to work in order to receive aid. For Mead, such a program design would evoke behavioral change since permissiveness is replaced with authority. Mead summarizes his call to replace permissive welfare with authoritative welfare:

The progressive tradition of extending new benefits and opportunities to the worst-off has made it next to impossible to address the behavioral difficulties at the bottom of society in their own terms. For to do that, authority, or the making of demands on people, would have to be seen as the tool, and not the butt, of policy.

Auletta's three typologies of solutions

Ken Auletta closes his book, The Underclass (1982), by highlighting three typologies of solutions: "the wholesale option", "the laissez-faire option", and "the retail option".

The "wholesale option" includes both conservatives and liberals who are optimistic that government action can solve the underclass problem. According to Auletta, left-wing wholesale proponents call for increased public aid while right-wing wholesale proponents call for government to reduce taxes to increase jobs (inspired by trickle-down economic theory) and charge the government to "get tough" on underclass crime and welfare dependency.

The "laissez-faire option" is pessimistic and its proponents are extremely wary of proposed solutions to a problem they see as unsolvable. Proponents of this perspective call for a drastic withdrawal of public aid for the underclass and are concerned with "quarantining the patient" instead of hunting for what they believe is an imaginary cure. In other words, the laissez-faire option assumes that the underclass is generally hopeless, and thus the only public effort given to them should be the bare minimum.

The "retail option" includes those in between optimism and pessimism, what Auletta calls "skeptics". The retail option advocates for targeted efforts, recognizing the limits of government intervention, but is also aware of the positive impact social policy can have on efforts to fix specific problems of the underclass. This middle ground perspective requests that aid be given to members of the underclass considered to be deserving of aid, but withheld from members considered to be undeserving. However, proponents of the retail option often disagree on which members of the underclass are considered deserving and which are not. This appears to be the approach embraced by Auletta as he closes his book with reflections on some of the people he interviews throughout preceding pages. He says, "I have no difficulty giving up on violent criminals like the Bolden brothers or street hustlers like Henry Rivera. But knowing how a government helping hand made it possible for Pearl Dawson and William Mason to succeed, would you be willing to write them off?"

Journalism

Social scientists often point to journalism as a primary institution conceptualizing the underclass for a mass audience. Many suggest that the underclass terminology employed by American journalists in the last quarter of the twentieth-century were partial to behavioral and cultural—as opposed to a structural—definitions of the underclass.

While journalists' use of the underclass term is vast, a few popular sources are frequently cited in the academic literature on the underclass and journalism. Ken Auletta employed the underclass term in three articles published in The New Yorker in 1981, and in book form a year later. Auletta is arguably the most read journalist of the underclass and many of his ideas, including his definition of the underclass, are included in this Wikipedia entry.

Another notable journalist is Nicholas Lemann who published a handful of articles on the underclass in the Atlantic Monthly during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His 1986 writings on "The Origins of the Underclass" argue that the underclass was created by two migrations, the great migration of Southern blacks to the North and West during the early to mid twentieth century and the exodus of middle class blacks out of the ghetto during the 1970s through the early 90s. In 1991 Lemann also published an article titled "The Other Underclass", which details Puerto Ricans, and particularly Puerto Ricans residing in South Bronx, as members of the urban underclass in the US.

Critiques of the concept

Following the popularization of the underclass concept in both academic and journalistic writings, some academics began to overtly criticize underclass terminology. Those in opposition to the underclass concept generally argue that, on the one hand, "underclass" is a homogenizing term that simplifies a heterogeneous group, and on the other hand, the term is derogatory and demonizes the urban poor.

Derogatory and demonizing language

Many who refute the underclass concept suggest that the underclass term has been transformed into a codeword to refer to poor inner-city blacks. For example, Hilary Silver highlights a moment when David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, campaigned for Louisiana Governor by complaining about the "welfare underclass". The underclass concept has been politicized, with those from the political left arguing that joblessness and insufficient welfare provided are causes of underclass conditions while the political right employ the underclass term to refer to welfare dependency and moral decline. Many sociologists suggest that this latter rhetoric – the right-wing perspective – became dominant in mainstream accounts of the underclass during the later decades of the twentieth-century.

Herbert Gans is one of the most vocal critics of the underclass concept. Gans suggests that American journalists, inspired partly by academic writings on the "culture of poverty", reframed underclass from a structural term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to conditions of social/economic/political structure) to a behavioral term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to rational choice and/or in reference to a subculture of poverty). Gans suggests that the word "underclass" has become synonymous with impoverished blacks that behave in criminal, deviant, or "just non-middle-class ways".

Loïc Wacquant deploys a relatively similar critique by arguing that underclass has become a blanket term that frames urban blacks as behaviorally and culturally deviant. Wacquant notes that underclass status is imposed on urban blacks from outside and above them (e.g., by journalists, politicians, and academics), stating that "underclass" is a derogatory and "negative label that nobody claims or invokes except to pin it on to others". And, although the underclass concepts is homogenizing, Wacquant argues that underclass imagery differentiates on gender lines, with the underclass male being depicted as a violent "gang banger", a physical threat to public safety, and the underclass female being generalized as "welfare mother" (also see welfare queen), a "moral assault on American values".

Homogenizing a heterogeneous group

The concept of 'the ghetto' and 'underclass' has also faced criticism empirically. Research has shown significant differences in resources for neighborhoods with similar populations both across cities and over time. This includes differences in the resources of neighborhoods with predominantly low income and/or racial minority populations. The cause of these differences in resources across similar neighborhoods has more to do with dynamics outside of the neighborhood. To a large extent the problem with the 'ghetto' and 'underclass' concepts stem from the reliance on case studies (in particular case studies from Chicago), which confine social scientist understandings of socially disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Proposed replacement terms

The charges against underclass terminology have motivated replacement terms. For example, William Julius Wilson, sympathetic to criticisms brought against underclass terminology (particularly those criticisms posited by Gans), begins to replace his use of the term underclass with "ghetto poor" during the early 1990s. For Wilson, this replacement terminology is simply an attempt to revamp the framing of inner-city poverty as being structurally rooted. He states, "I will substitute the term 'ghetto poor' for the term 'underclass' and hope that I will not lose any of the subtle theoretical meaning that the latter term has had in my writings."