The "Middle Class" Reconsidered: A Reply to Professor Cobban

Abstract

There appears to be considerable agreement between Mr. Cobban and myself as to the facts, but much less as to their interpretation. We agree that there was a dominant class in early nineteenth-century France, that this class was made up of men who earned a living in various ways and had varied sources of income, and that they were united in support of their own privileges as against the propertyless. Basic disagreement centers on the weight that should be attached to source of income as opposed to occupation. Mr. Cobban classifies anyone who drew income from land as a landowner, apparently attaching little importance to the fact that such a man might at the same time draw income from sources other than land and might be engaged in a number of occupations other than exploitation of the land. He seems also to find it without significance that a man might hold land for a number of different reasons: as a secure investment, as the means to gain political rights, and as a source of social prestige. In short, Mr. Cobban sees a class of landowners who were only incidentally other things, while I see not only landowners but also businessmen, professional men, and officials who were only incidentally I would find Mr. Cobban's characterization more satisfactory if I could accept his claim that the dominant class was united by the of landowners. What precisely were these values? The French dominant class can hardly be said to have held values similar to those of the landowners of Eastern Europe, nor do their values seem to have been identical with those of the landowning class of the eighteenth century. Mr. Cobban says that the class of landowners in early nineteenth-century France was united against those with little or no prop-