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The Great Middle Class Revolution: Our Long March Toward a Professionalized Society Melvyn L Kennesaw State University DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University KSU Press Legacy Project 1-2006 The Great Middle Class Revolution: Our Long March Toward a Professionalized Society Melvyn L. Fein Kennesaw State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ksupresslegacy Part of the Social Psychology and Interaction Commons, and the Work, Economy and Organizations Commons Recommended Citation Fein, Melvyn L., "The Great Middle Class Revolution: Our Long March Toward a Professionalized Society" (2006). KSU Press Legacy Project. 5. http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ksupresslegacy/5 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in KSU Press Legacy Project by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE GREAT MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION Our Long March Toward A Professionalized Society THE GREAT MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION Our Long March Toward A Professionalized Society Melvyn L. Fein 2005 Copyright © 2005 Kennesaw State University Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without prior written consent of the publisher. Kennesaw State University Press Kennesaw State University Bldg. 27, Ste. 220, MB# 2701 1000 Chastain Road Kennesaw, GA 30144 Betty L. Seigel, President of the University Lendley Black, Vice President for Academic Affairs Laura Dabundo, Editor & Director of the Press Shirley Parker-Cordell, Sr. Administrative Specialist Holly S. Miller, Cover Design Mark Anthony, Editorial & Production Assistant Jeremiah Byars, Michelle Hinson, Margo Lakin-Lapage, and Brenda Wilson, Editorial Assistants Back cover photo by Jim Bolt Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fein, Melvyn L. The great middle-class revolution : our long march toward a professionalized society / Melvyn L. Fein. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-933483-04-7 ISBN-10: 1-933483-04-0 1. Middle class--United States. 2. Professions--United States. I. Title. HT690.U6F45 2006 305.5’50973--dc22 2005033585 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Joel Fein, Who seems to have made it. Preface This book is likely to be misunderstood. With the Culture Wars in full cry, many readers are more apt to be concerned with defending their own beliefs than with reevaluating why they hold them. Nowadays, liberalism is in crisis. Whereas conservatism suf- fered a profound meltdown during the Great Depression, today it is liberals who must confront the disconfirmation of many of their cherished beliefs. Sometimes, it seems as if a few are behav- ing like teenaged rebels, trying to prove that they will not buckle under adult hypocrisies. Yet, despite refusing to conform, they reflexively align themselves with the symbols of their sedition. Festooned with tattoos, body piercings, and spiky green hair- dos, they insist they have arrived at these fashions independent- ly. Liberals similarly take positions without acknowledging that these derive from groupthink. Like the journalists described in Myrna Blyth’s Spin Sisters, they chatter about political issues as vacuously as if they were sitting in a high school cafeteria. Aware that the unspoken price of communal status is an acceptance of the consensus positions on abortion or affirmative action, they comply. Brent Bozell experienced a similar political conformity when he appeared on a television talk show. After its techni- cians inadvertently failed to turn off his earpiece, he was treat- ed to the show’s directors hooting about his conservative views while he was on the air. Much like a pack of fraternity brothers, these erstwhile professionals reveled in making sophomoric jokes about opinions they did not share. Impartially evaluating op- posing views was not part of their intellectual repertoire. The same, I fear, may be in store for the unorthodox observations that follow. Because they are different, they are apt to be dismissed by both sides of the Culture Wars. This is unfortunate, for if I am right, they offer a third path out of the ideological morass into which the Middle-Class Revolution has led us. Secular, but not collectivist, these views offer a decentralized and professionalized solution to the inevitable viii The Great Middle Class Revolution paradoxes of hierarchical power. A century ago, Max Weber worried that modernization would trap humankind in a bureaucratic “iron cage,” but there may be another possibility. Individuals who are both well-informed and emotionally mature may be able to make personal and social decisions that redound to their individual and joint benefit. While not perfect, this is a superior alternative to the socialist Big Brotherism or laissez-faire Social Darwinism that has hitherto been prevalent. Many sociologists have, nevertheless, virtually ignored the middle class. Trapped in a leftwing ideological ghetto, they have been distinctly unsympathetic to the middling orders. More fascinated with the upper and lower reaches of society, they concentrate on exposing the defects of social elites. It is the poor for whom they feel sympathy. Those perceived as weak are identified as their natural allies, and an effort is made to promote an egalitarian utopia deemed beneficial to them. The extent of this allegiance is revealed in how the American Sociology Association reviews professional books. Contemporary Sociology, the organization’s flagship journal for reviews, organizes its entries under a number of headings. The first of these is “Inequalities.” Though the editors might have referred to “social stratification” or “social hierarchies,” they preferred an inherently tendentious classification. Inequality, of course, implies a moral judgment. It suggests that equality is the normal human condition and that anything other is abnormal. This implies Marxist assumptions, but these are not admitted. Nor is the collectivist purpose of including a subheading such as “Social Movements.” Because many sociologists having been reared on the belief that capitalism is unjust, they conceive of their mission as assisting in its demise. As a result, they consider themselves “movement people,” with the movement to which they are dedicated being the impending overthrow of market-based selfishness. Since its inception, sociology has been in rebellion against modernism, which means it also has been in rebellion against middle-class influence. The discipline began as a collectivist reaction to the Industrial Revolution, and to this day most of Preface ix its practitioners believe that evidence of human sociality proves their natural state is a version of socialism. (Indeed, research shows that only four percent of sociologists identify themselves as conservative.) As a consequence, they see no point in objectively studying the nature of social hierarchies or of morality. Wrenching these topics out of context, it is assumed that all that needs to be known about them is already known. The goal is instead to get down to the business of improving the human condition. Even though Marx himself put forward an historical account of the evolution of human society, they see no reason to examine this in further detail. The current circumstance of the middle class is therefore left dangling. Treated as a didactic fable, its emergence is never dissected with scientific rigor. Both on the left and the right, the fashion has become to lament how society has developed. On the right, the primary complaint is that tradition has been violated. Its Cassandras mourn the advent of decadence and a decline in personal responsibility. On the left, the lament is about stymied progress. Here the forces of reaction are said to be selfishly preventing utopian solutions. Both sides, however, share a moralistic point of view. More concerned with making evaluative judgments than with understanding what has been happening, they ignore plainly visible trends. With even social scientists caught in this snare, they don’t ask “why?” but rather “what should we do?” No wonder so little has been written about the millennia long processes that have eventuated in the emergence of a middle- class society. What follows is an attempt at a corrective. The object is to bring a colossal historic spectacle into better focus, to help us understand the social crisis entailed by the middle-class revolution and the potential of professionalization. Premised on the need to apply more “head” than “heart,” it seeks to substitute mature reflection for passionate reaction. Too much of what has been written in the name of progress has been self- indulgent. Rather than exemplify genuine compassion, it has sought to comfort the purportedly afflicted. With the best of intentions, intelligent observers have allowed this to take x The Great Middle Class Revolution precedence over disquieting facts. Sadly, this is self-defeating. The post-modernists notwithstanding, the truth is the truth, and unless it is assessed with an unjaundiced eye, our roadmap to the future is likely to promote many a wrong turn. Although even an accurate understanding of our social situation cannot protect us from every pitfall, it can at least make for a less bumpy ride. Melvyn L. Fein Kennesaw, GA Acknowledgments For the past twenty-five years Betty Siegel has been presi- dent of Kennesaw State University. The first female president of a Georgia state senior college, she has overseen the institution’s growth from a fledgling four-year school to a regional university just about to begin offering doctorate degrees. For all this, she deserves enormous credit, but for the moment I wish to single out her role in launching the KSU Press. Determined to leave behind a first-rate academic tradition, it was she who conceived of the press and she who insisted that it be created. As one of its first authors, I therefore salute her prescience. I must also salute the unflagging efforts of the Press’s founding editor, Laura Dabundo. Presented with an enormous challenge, she has held up particularly well under the stress.
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