Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System is a nonfiction book by Paul Fussell originally published in 1983 by Simon & Schuster,^[1][2] and reissued in 1992.^[3]

Class structure[]

Fussell argues that social class in the United States is more complex in structure than simply three (upper, middle, and lower) classes.

Fussell identifies:

• Top out-of-sight
• Upper
• Upper middle

———

• Middle
• High proletarian
• Mid-proletarian
• Low proletarian

———

• Destitute
• Bottom out-of-sight

Category X exist outside of the class system.

Uppers and Upper middles[]

Uppers and Upper middles generally do not socialize with Middles, but Middles hope to find them on cruise ship vacations. Uppers and Upper middles do not engage in a lot of creative work or analytical thinking, instead relying on tradition. Uppers live on inherited wealth, while Upper middles may include those financially successful through their own work, eg movie stars and entrepreneurs.

Middle and proles[]

Fussell argues that the American middle class has experienced "prole drift" dragging it downward and effectively joining it with the prole class. Whereas a university education used to be rarer and a clear class divider separating middles from the high school education of proles (proletarians), Fussell reports that the vast proliferation of hundreds of mediocre "universities" in the U.S. has rendered this an ineffective class symbol. (This trend continued long after the book was published: there were 4,298 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the U.S. in the 2017-2018 school year.)^[4] The elite Ivy league still retains class status though. Unlike the classes above and below, members of this group are insecure in their class status and are in constant fear of slipping down. Fussell notes that a fiberglass Chris-Craft was a common prole and middle class pleasure boat meant to ape the precious wood yachts of the upper class.

Destitutes[]

Destitutes have virtually no capital or income, and include the incarcerated and the institutionalized, who are guarded by proles. Bottom out-of-sight are the homeless.

Category X[]

In the final chapter, The X Way Out, Fussell identifies "category X" people who exist outside of the US class structure. Fussell argues that it is essentially impossible to change one's social class —up or down— but it is possible to extricate oneself from the class system by existing outside the system as a X person. (In the US, Middles and proles are conditioned to believe in meritocracy, despite class mobility being among the lowest in industrialized economies.)^[5] He states that X people do self-directed work without a boss or supervisor; they are writers, artists, musicians and others "creative" types. X people dress comfortably, wearing L. L. Bean, Lands' End, and thrift store purchases. They drink good wine without commenting on it, speak multiple languages, and generally disregard social norms because they have no interest in class status and disdain the Middles who are so concerned with it. Fussell names the Mark Twain character Huckleberry Finn as an archetypal Category X person.

Criticism[]

In a 2009 review for The Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh stated: "The experience of reading (and re-reading) Class is akin to wiping goggles one didn’t know were fogged".^[1]

The chapter on "Category X" people was described as "insufferably self-regarding" by David Brooks in a 2021 article on bourgeois bohemians; Brooks states that Class is "a caustic and extravagantly snobby tour through the class markers prevalent at the time."^[6]

See also[]

• Social class in the United States
• Socioeconomic mobility in the United States
• Myth of meritocracy
• Affluence in the United States
• Poverty in the United States
• Income inequality in the United States
• Social class in American history
• List of highest-income urban neighborhoods in the United States

References[]