III. Class Structure

1.

In our economy of abundance it is still subject to discussion whether or not there is as much poverty as there was in the Thirties when “one-third of a nation was ill housed, ill clothed, ill fed.” Some say 20 per cent are poverty-stricken, some as many as 40 per cent. Census, 1958: 31 per cent.

(But it is hard to determine a criterion of poverty. E.g., a Negro family in the rich county of Westchester, New York, might have an income of $4000, yet have to pay so much rent for substandard housing that it can’t make both ends meet. In New York City novice Puerto Ricans are fleeced four times as much for a quarter of the space that experienced citizens manage to find in the same neighborhood.)

Nevertheless, all students would agree on two propositions: (1) The composition of the poor has changed immensely; it now consists mainly of racial and cultural minorities, including migrant farm labor. (2) And the economic relation of the poor to the system has importantly changed: simply, the earlier minorities, Irish, Jews, Italians, Slavs, poured into an expanding economy that needed people; the new come into an expanding economy that does not need people. I would add another important difference: (3) The relation of the other classes to the poor has changed. For instance, many readers are no doubt surprised that there are so many poor and, reading about it, feel that it is a mere lag, a matter of mopping up, in our general productive advance. Everything looks pretty streamlined.

The income pyramid has changed in shape. It used to be that the most were the poor at the bottom and then, evenly, fewer and fewer at each level up to a few at the top. But the meaning of the economy of abundance is that there are now very many, perhaps even a bulge, at the lower-middle-income level. These are the people with semiprofessional and service jobs, the occupational category that has grown the most, and who get status salaries; the skilled and semiskilled in semimonopoly factory jobs, strongly unionized; the families in which, in our artificially maintained nearly full employment, the man has two jobs or the woman also has a job; and families in newly industrialized areas in the South and Middle West. But conversely, the poorly paying unskilled jobs have diminished. It is here that simple automation (e.g., sweeping the floor in a factory) is allowed full development. Many categories are not unionized. Sometimes even the minimum wage does not apply. Migratory farm labor, mostly Negro, is not covered by social insurance. By the connivance of union and management, Negroes and the new Spanish minorities are often rejected for apprenticeship. These poor groups, behindhand to begin with, get less schooling.

That is, the economy of abundance, the bulge in the pyramid, means also that those at the bottom tend to fall out of “society” altogether.

Consider it. There is a higher standard of living, more to conform to in order to be “decent”; it is more expensive to be decently poor. Yet there is a tighter organization above that is harder to belong to, so that the standard is increasingly unattainable for the underprivileged. So far as economic and vocational causes, poverty and job uselessness, are factors—and they are mighty important factors when they add up to being “out” of society—this is a sufficient explanation for juvenile delinquency. One need go no further. For in such hopeless conditions, any grounds, of family hostility, unusual childhood frustration, or a gang on the street, will tip the balance. The question is whether or not this structure is organic in our present system.

(Let me say at this point, however, that many of the humble jobs of the poor are precisely not useless, morally. Farm labor, janitoring, messenger, serving and dish washing—these jobs resist remarkably well the imputation of uselessness made against the productive society as a whole. In the potency-ideology of teen-age delinquents, of course, such jobs are contemptible and emasculating. But we shall see that they are important for the poverty-mystique of the more thoughtful of the Beat Generation.)

2.

Recently I attended a conference (Student League for Industrial Democracy) where poverty was the theme. Eminent and earnest labor leaders spoke. As the day wore on I became eerily disturbed at the difference in tone from such discussions in the Thirties. At last I hit it: they were talking not political economy but philanthropy. Partly, maybe, this tone crept in because they were talking about our poor black and brown brothers. Mostly, however, it was because their attitude toward poverty is no longer part of their fighting economic theory. As labor economists, they do not have solidarity with these poor.

When poverty used to be discussed by socialists—these same men younger—the theory was that in the capitalist system labor as a whole must be at the bottom and must become poorer, because of the falling return on investment and its pressure on wages, because of the concentration of ownership and control and the increase of inequality, and the periodic crises and unemployment. Therefore the fight against poverty was solidary; it was the fight to improve the whole system in order to improve the position of labor. But now the rate of interest does not fall; the system cushions its crises; there is high employment (with significant exceptions) or insurance. There is certainly a concentration of monopolistic control, but either inequality is less (that is debatable) or, certainly, workers on a fairly high standard don’t much bother who has millions. Thus, nostalgic solidarity with poverty turns into philanthropy—and even into exclusion, on issues where the poor are unassimilable into the abundant system.

One of the speakers, a portly labor leader, was asked whether the new income pyramid did not resemble a middle-aged gentleman with a bulge beneath the middle.

I did not once hear the word “proletariat,” and that made sense. For the word had been used, bitterly and nobly, in a different theory: “producers of offspring” paid by the iron law of wages just enough to reproduce labor. Our present poor are more like the ancient Roman proletariat, producers of offspring kept on the dole for political reasons. It was clear, too, why the word “do-gooder” has fallen into mild disrepute. It used to refer, like “muck-raking,” to quixotic attempts to reform the system; now it is diminishing suffering, accepting the system. (Muck-raking, in turn, has become the protest of Angry Young Men. My own tone in this book sounds like an Angry Middle-Aged Man, disappointed but not resigned.)

3.

For those excluded from the high standard and its organization, it is becoming harder to maintain any American standard at all. It is characteristic of systems geared to high pay that it is hard to work for low pay. There are fewer such jobs; those there are are subject to grueling exploitation without benefit of union. Low pay generally means harder work under worse conditions. Prices are, of course, geared to the high standard; and the use of any commodity tends to be increasingly tied up with the use of many other commodities and services that cost money.

For instance, it is very grim to be poor and run a jalopy. The insurance costs three times as much as the car. The old car, which is safe at 50 m.p.h., is effectually barred from parkways made for cars at 65 m.p.h. The price of gasoline pays for the parkways. The price of repairs is geared to the new cars.

It costs money to have any job at all, but transportation and lunches, presentable clothes and laundry, are priced for good wages.

Unless he is capable of a different, inventive or community culture altogether, a poor person can afford little recreation. The popular culture is high priced and he gets the dregs of it. His poverty tends to degenerate into stupidity. He cannot afford presentable shoes for the kids to go to school; they are ashamed and won’t go. Thus, in Péguy’s phrase, poverty becomes misery, and the poor belong to society less and less.

4.

There is little agreement in the sociology of delinquency. (As I shall discuss later, this is because the concept itself is confused and so leads to confusing statistics.) But one correlation that is generally agreed on is that: Juvenile delinquency, unlike adult crime, is more frequent in years of economic prosperity than in years of depression. Now, this would seem to contradict the other, and rather prima facie, theory of poverty as the important condition. The paradox is softened by pointing out that in prosperity there is more employment of women, more divorce, more money to buy liquor and drugs. These factors make sense, but let me raise some further considerations.

First, there is the possibility that the prosperous well-paying jobs do not filter down evenly to the poorest groups, who tend much more to be unemployable. This certainly seems to be our situation today. Second, in a high-standard economy, there is a vast difference between having a little extra money and being accustomed to the well-paid standard. As our Manchester forefathers used to say, you do a disservice to the undeserving poor by giving them money, because they will get into trouble. Consider the concrete situation: Even if the parents are suddenly getting better pay, the young are getting merely a little extra spending money, and this, in a society in which there is suddenly a lot of money, must work out as follows: (1) The underprivileged kids get around more and are exposed to the expensive glamour, but (2) this is precisely not attainable by them unless they take short cuts. (3) Meantime, those who have the new money are more careless with it: they leave their cars unlocked, buy sex, drink too much. And (4) the spiteful feeling is increased, that those who are better off are squares, enemies, and fair victims of the gang. In boom time, that is, there is effectually more exclusion than ordinarily.

During depression, contrariwise, there is more community because many others are in the same boat. The street is occupied by kids used to other mores, to whom the gang values are pointless. This leads to friction, but also to other friendships and other “things to do.” But above all, as everybody knows who was unemployed during the Great Depression, it is easier to be decently poor when prices are low and the pressure to maintain appearances is diminished. Things get nearer to a human scale and life makes more sense. Likewise, at such times political activity is more common, an education that increases self-esteem in a worth-while way.

This whole picture would be quite different if the underprivileged and somewhat unemployable families had a pretty good secure income over a long period. They would then be members of society at least as consumers, and would eventually become as employable as the average. Such a condition would at once diminish certain kinds of underprivileged delinquency, e.g., thefts, malicious mischief, certain spiteful assaults, and maybe truancy. Simply to subsidize the poor might be the cheapest way of coping with their juvenile delinquency. To reestablish in general what he calls the social balance, J. K. Galbraith proposes such a high long-time subsidy for all unemployed. He assures us that this would not be inflationary, and as the one-time director of price controls for the OPA he should know.

The popular bright idea to diminish delinquency is to penalize the parents; and perhaps the effective method would be, rather, to give them money to spend, a kind of prize!

5.

At present, however, our society is settling for the first time in its history into a rigid class system. (Somewhere we missed out on equality, and this is now threatening our flexibility and stability.) It is not that individuals may not move from grade to grade—there is perhaps even more individual mobility than ever. But the statuses themselves are more rigid; there is less easy gradation, and there is less opportunity to make one’s unique “classless” place. One is more definitely in or out, and in a more definite rank.

At the bottom are the poor, “outside” of society. Next are those groups who are in the organized system of production: (1) Those who are “in” but couldn’t care less about the production and distribution, like the factory operatives mentioned in the first chapter. These are paid the lower-middle-income wages, say $4,000 to $6,000. They buy on credit and have to keep on the job to make both ends meet. If the work week is shortened to thirty hours, without a commensurate loss of income, there is evidence that they get other, part-time, jobs to buy still more refrigerators. (2) The next status who are “in” are the Organization Men proper, whose hours, thoughts, families, play, and peace of mind are dedicated to maintaining their positions in their particular firms and pushing upward there or in some other firms. Salary $7,500 to $20,000. It is this group—the junior executives, for instance—that we have compared to the juvenile delinquents for their safe conformity and competitive individuality. We shall see that another important trait in common is having no real activity, but living by role playing.

(W. H. Whyte, Jr., the Hesiod of this tribe, pleads for individuality to offset the conformity of organization life. He, rather cynically, fails to see that such polar “individuality” is the conformity by which a man advances; it is one-upping. The only offset to the organization is nature or worth-while objects; but the necessary, useful, and pleasant, and the good, true, and beautiful are not much mentioned in his book.) (3) At the top, finally, are the nine hundred managers—figure from Fortune magazine— whose task is to minimize risk and maximize production and sales. Also the fifty governors, the federal staff, heads of foundations, etc.

It will be seen that these three statuses in the organized system (which includes bigger business, organized labor, entertainment, government, bigger education, etc.) are engaged primarily in keeping the system itself running and slowly expanding. The most self-aware of its members are the middle-status intellectuals, among the advertising men, salesmen, and junior executives; and they describe the system as the Rat Race. So W. H. Whyte, Jr. J. K. Galbraith, however, describes it differently: “Among the many models of the good society, no one has urged the squirrel wheel.” It is interesting to contrast the different species of imagined rodents between those who are running the race and the scholar who is contemplating it with wonder.

But there is another large class: those who do not properly belong to the system and are not yet submerged into the poor “outside” of society: this is the vast herd of the old-fashioned, the eccentric, the criminal, the gifted, the serious, the men and women, the rentiers, the freelances, the infants, and so forth. This motley collection has, of course, no style or culture, unlike the organization that has our familiar American style and popular culture. Its fragmented members hover about the organization in multifarious ways—running specialty shops, trying to teach or to give other professional services, robbing banks, landscape gardening, and so forth—but they find it hard to get along, for they do not know the approved techniques of promoting, getting foundation grants, protecting themselves by official unions, legally embezzling, and not blurting out the truth or weeping or laughing out of turn. They have no style at all, and it is understandable that neither they nor their usually rather irrelevant enterprises make much headway in the market, the universities, entertainment, politics, or labor. Besides, they often speak a minority language, English.

This is roughly the class structure of America in the middle of the twentieth century. It seems most functional to speak of three classes, the Poor, the Organization, and the Independents; and of three statuses within the dominant class, the Organization. Viz.:

I. Organized System:

1. Workers

2. Organization Men

3. Managers

II. Poor

III. Independents

6.

Let us return now to our alert young man of average to good attainments and imagine him growing up in and into this arena. Most likely he will go to work for an Organization, in a factory or service job, manual or clerical, with the corresponding job attitude and way of life. But if he has been to college, he will likely be in the second status of the organized system, in business management, communications, sales or technology, with its job attitude and way of life.

After a few years, many such young men will perceive that they are in a Rat Race. The young workers will perceive it as the work speeds up, when they get married, as their installment payments fall due. The Organization Man will perceive it as competition, company pressure to conform, etc. Of these, most will race on, but a few will balk and stop running. Now what becomes of these few?

They are not likely to choose the other, motley, alternative of trying to remain in society independent of the organization. For their experience has been disillusioning. They have become hip. (We shall see later that this is a profoundly organizational attitude.) They know that the independent unorganized are up against it; for they have learned techniques of promotion and they don’t think much, or much think, of other methods and kinds of results. But to be hip and cynical are not attitudes that prompt one to make a go on one’s own. It is not surprising then that many of those who balk in the Rat Race will voluntarily choose the other remaining possibility, poverty “outside” society (whether they choose it, or fall into it, comes to the same thing). These, not boys, but early disillusioned, hip, and resigned young men, are the Beat Generation. The organization they have quit may be the armed forces or a university that they cannot compound with; these tend to be more naïve. Those who have had experience of working for a firm and making a pretty good living tend to be more cynical.

Naturally this cataclysmic transition, between being in and being “outside” society, does not occur without strong accompanying emotional moments: betrayals in love, binges, blowups at the boss, addiction to forbidden haunts and vices. But at this point let us stick to the social structure of it.

7.

It is relevant to introduce the Beat Generation in this context of present-day poverty because the present-day composition of the poor in America—Negroes, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, migrant farm labor, with large urban juvenile delinquency—has been fateful for the particular culture of these young folks. Let us try to analyze the accidental and essential influences, as an interesting example of acculturation.

Artists and bohemians have always gravitated to the bottom of the income pyramid. It is cheaper there. There is less timetable. Life is simpler and more factual. These factors operate somewhat today too, but less so, because in some ways it now costs more to be poor than modestly lower-middle; and in many of their tastes, e.g., clothes, cars, recreation, and even food, the poor are even more idiotic than the average. So let us see what is particular in the cultural effect of present-day poverty on present-day bohemians.

(1) The Afro-Negro and Spanish, and a part of the migrant and delinquent, influence on Beat culture is inevitable but accidental. Resigning, the Beats have chosen to be outside, and the present poor happen to be those who, as unorganized minorities, are outside when they arrive. The poor might have been Chinese; the narcotics might have been different, or there might have been some kick other than narcotics; the music might have been something other than Negro jazz; the jargon might not have had a Negro base; and perhaps there might be less going on the road—though this ants-in-the-pants moving about is pervasive in American society. (See Appendix E.) What I am saying here will be defined by the Beats themselves, for to them every aspect of their scene is equally relevant and precious. But if these aspects of their culture were not accidental, such bright and inventive fellows would by now have made more out of them. As they practice them, the bongo drums and jazz are childish, in the light of their knowledge and abilities. The jazz-and-poetry is feeble compared even to the TV commercial jingles that they have turned away from. The jive language embarrasses their poetry. The style of the particular drugs remains crude and experimental. Much of the delinquency rouses in them guilt and fear, instead of defiant approval or calm righteousness (contrast the style and depth of Jean Genet with similar material).

(2) On the other hand, the structural characteristics of present-day poor society—those that did not especially belong to the poor of older bohemias—are essential in the culture of those who gravitate to these poor, for they too do not “belong.” These include: Outcastness and being objects of prejudice. Giving up trying to explain to those who, often literally, do not speak the same language. Protective exclusiveness and in-group loyalty. Fear of the cops. Economic and job uselessness. Courageously taking up, or remaining with, substitutes for community, rather than sinking in mere resignation (but this courage is common to many kinds of poor). Exotic, or at least not-standard-American, arts and folkways.

These structural characteristics of the present-day poor are essential in Beat culture. As, contrariwise, are the organizational characteristics of being hip and convinced that society is a Rat Race. This combination, we shall see, mesmerizes them into behaving as though they were trapped in a Closed Room and must live on their own guts, without available environment.

(3) But finally, there are essential traits of Beat culture that go counter to the social traits of the poor whom they have chosen. These comprise the essential morality, and morals are acculturated least. One striking trait is nonconformism and tolerance in sexual and racial questions and behavior. The poor Negroes or Puerto Ricans may be estranged from the standard customs and prejudices, but they are all the more narrow about their own. In the case of the delinquents, of course, this narrow conformity is so extravagant as to be dangerous: they cannot inwardly tolerate anything that hints that their own image of perfection is questionable. It is hard to be sure, but my impression is that the poor of other times, at the bottom but in society, were among the most tolerant. Hard knocks had taught them to live and let live; and they did not need to protect their repressions so much as the outcast poor. In this respect the Beats are more like the old-fashioned poor, and this of course makes it easier and more profitable for them to be poor.

This brings us to another striking difference. Despite having minority traditions of their own, our present poor are absolute sheep and suckers for the popular culture which they cannot afford, the movies, sharp clothes, and up to Cadillacs. Indeed, it is likely that the popular culture is aimed somewhat at them, as the lowest common denominator. I do not mean that this is not a reasonable compensation, like the Englishman’s liquor and the Irishman’s betting on the horses. Everybody has got to have something, and so poor people show off and feel big by means of the standard of living. But in these circumstances it is immensely admirable that the Beat Generation has contrived a pattern of culture that, turning against the standard culture, costs very little and gives livelier satisfaction. It is a culture communally shared, in small groups. Much of it is handmade, not canned. Some of it is communally improvised. We shall speak later about the limitations of this procedure and the weakness of its products; but the fact of it, of a culture that is communal and tending toward the creative, is so capital that it must have a future, and it is worth while to study its grounding and economy.

8.

Beat economics underline human difficulties peculiar to the modern-American-standard economy. The Beats have a mystique of Voluntary Poverty. But how to get along at all in a high-standard economy if one has dropped “outside” and has no incentive to work and “make good”?

In our times, the distinction between Case Poverty, due to illness, accidents, or personality defects, and Class Poverty, due to social underprivilege, doesn’t amount to much. Personal and social play into each other. For it could be asked: Why wasn’t the accident insured? What social conditions formed such a careless personality? Or, conversely, Doesn’t the poor class have, economically, a personality defect? (Just as in the Protestant Ethic the poor had a theological defect; but of course it is also persistently true that “only the poor are saved.”) Likewise, the old monastic concept of voluntary poverty is no longer much distinguishable from either case poverty or class poverty, for it happens that a person cannot continue the Rat Race, it makes him sick; and he chooses out, to survive. Another man would like to be rich and famous and he works hard; but he cannot work otherwise than the work demands, but such work might not be marketable; so he could be said to “choose” poverty. In an organized system, all poor tend to be the same poor. (The same blurring of distinctions has occurred between “political” and “common” criminals. As society becomes more close-knit and total, a criminal act may well be a dumb political gesture, and political protest is certainly taken as criminal. So the anarchist philosopher refused to distinguish between these and said, “As long as one of these is in jail, I am not free.”)

It makes little difference, then, whether a young fellow chooses his lot or is cast among the poor; especially if, being there, he soon takes on habits which make it difficult for him, or unattractive to him, to belong to the system.

Suppose, then, that with pretty good awareness our scarred young man is now confirmed poor. He must still face the problem of vocation and money. On these points the writers on the Beat Generation are confused. For one thing, they have a false notion that the kind of artistic activity that proliferates among the Beats is art, and gives the justification of art as a vocation. It is not art but something else, and they do not behave as if they were justified by it. (We shall return to this later at length.)

The problem of money, again, seems simple, but is not. In voluntary poverty the problem is to get enough to subsist. (Money is called “bread.”) But how? In his book The Holy Barbarians, Lawrence Lipton gives a considerable list of jobs that Beats take, generally temporarily. The principle is that anything will do. A fellow might work in the organized system, e.g., dressing a window at Macy’s; but, it is argued, he would not thereby be in the Rat Race, because he just wants “bread” and will quit. Naturally Macy’s didn’t know this when they hired him, so he’s using them, not they him. This might come to pretending to conform rather elaborately, for the system is total; e.g., a fellow will get the job if he shaves off his beard. Work is no different from shoplifting. One plays roles and is hip. (Money is now called “loot.”)

What is not understood in this form of reasoning is that playing roles and being hip in this way is very nearly the same as being an Organization Man, for he doesn’t mean it either. Obviously the Holy Barbarian is here on shaky ground. Getting his “loot,” he is an exploiter of labor, but only a little bit. (The integral aim of useful man’s-work is not mentioned by Lipton.)

Let me make a close analogy—so close that it is probably an identity—between the job in voluntary poverty and the service in wartime that a pacifist can agree to perform. Nearly any civilian job that a man does advances the war. If he picks beans he replaces a farmer for the war factory. Pacifists have commonly accepted such a job as attendant in a hospital, which is understaffed anyway. This is not a petty problem, for when the evil, as they see it, is general and close-knit, it is necessary to preserve one’s personal integrity if only to influence the future when the emergency is past. Anyone who does not understand this and the hairsplitting involved, will not understand ingenuous youth. During the last great war many a young fellow went to a conscientious-objector’s camp in order to avoid war work, and then left the camp in disgust and went to jail because the camp work was boondoggling.

Among some of the Beats, such a principle of integrity is clearly operating in the choice of job. To recapitulate an earlier paragraph in this chapter: Many of the humble jobs of the poor are precisely not useless (or exploiting). Farm labor, hauling boxes, janitoring, serving and dish washing, messenger—these jobs resist the imputation of uselessness (or exploitation) made against the productive society as a whole. These are preferred Beat jobs. For one thing, in them no questions are asked and no beards have to be shaved. Nor is this an accidental connection. Personal freedom goes with unquestioned moral utility of the job, for at the level of simple physical effort or personal service, the fraudulent conformity of the organized system sometimes does not yet operate; the job speaks for itself.

But on the other hand, such jobs, being hard and useful, are the most miserably exploited. E.g., hospital workers who struck for a union in 1959 in New York City were getting $34 a week—the minimum wage not applying because they were in eleemosynary institutions! Migratory farmers average less than $900 a year and are not welcome in the neighborhood. The big money is in the system. So unorganized wages are low. Yet the price of subsistence at the market is standard high. Taking such a job, a man loses his freedom, he never stops working. He is used and made a fool of by the system, and this is in itself dishonorable. This is the dilemma of voluntary poverty in our society: either to compromise one’s integrity (but then why bother?), or to be abused and made a fool of.

(As one way out, let me recommend Scheme III of Communitas, by my brother and myself. We suggest dividing the economy into two parts: the subsistence economy and the high-standard economy. In the subsistence part, run absolutely for use, everybody will work less than one year in seven and be guaranteed his subsistence for life. The rest of the time he can work in the high-standard economy for high wages, or do nothing at all, as he pleases. This plan would seem exactly to meet the need of voluntary poverty: to work with perfect integrity at the absolutely necessary, and to have the maximum of freedom for noneconomical activity.)

9.

To sum up: In these first chapters our youth is already fairly grown-up (fifteen to twenty-five years old), and confronting the external and definite problems of jobs and money. We have seen what kinds of opportunities are open to him, either in or out of the organized system, and what kind of public attention he can expect if he makes a nuisance of himself.

My emphasis so far has been on underprivileged conditions, because we have been discussing “problematic” cases “outside” of society. In the following chapters, however, when we turn to the earlier and character-molding factors that impede growth, we shall see that they apply even more particularly to “unproblematic” youth, whether growing up in the middle class or the working class. (I do not mention the upper class simply because its numbers are few and it stands for nothing. All ideology and culture in America at present springs from the middle status of the organized system.)

My thought is that the average adjusted boy is, if anything, more humanly wasted than the disaffected. So let us go on to discuss his stupidity, his lack of patriotism, his sexual confusion, and his lack of faith.