SOCIOLOGIST IN THE HOUSE
297
Marxian emphasis upon
class
to the current American emphasis
upon
status
. . .
A 'status' orientation and vocabulary can easily
avoid the unwanted innuendoes ... that Marx attached so firmly
to the idea of 'class' ..." Indeed it can, and Mr. Reissman con–
sequently is at some pains to demonstrate that it is possible to
speak about "class" without being subversive. This clearly is not
easy in an environment where such talk has acquired alarming
connotations. It seems that the only respectable class is the middle
class, at least to the organizers of opinion polls. On the other
hand, of course, though everyone (or almost everyone) belongs
to that divinely favored group, there are really no classes at all!
Reissman gives an amusing example of how such surprising statis–
tical results are achieved by those whose business it is to instruct
the public about the facts of life:
The immediate reaction as late as the 1940's was that "there
were no social classes in the United States." When pressed, how–
ever, as they were in a Gallup poll in 1939, 88 percent of those
asked: "To what social class do you belong?" answered "middle
class"; the remaining 12 percent divided equally between "upper"
and "lower" class. There is really not much contradiction between
the initial reaction of "no classes exist" and the answer of "middle
class" given by most Americans. Both responses are part of the
same configuration of a belief in social equality. The psychological
emphasis is upon the word "middle" and not upon the word
"class" . . .
But the pollsters also had something to do with it. This came
out when a somewhat differently worded questionnaire was framed
ten years later:
For example, in 1949 Centers asked a national sample of
adults to what class they belonged, and found that 52 percent
said that they were "working class," 36 percent said "middle
class" and the rest signified "lower" or "upper class." Part of
the differences in identification shown between this poll and the
one by Gallup ten years earlier . . . was due to the fact that
Centers had included the category of "working class" to over–
come the negative connotations of "lower class," with which few
persons could identify ... (Reissman, op. cit., pp. 12-13)
So the earlier result was obtained by not mentioning the
