The new middle classes

Abstract

This anthology provides a historical sociology of rising new middle classes in Weimar Germany and post-World War II America as well as a suggestive theoretical perspective on salaried white collar workers wherever they become a salient dimension of the global political-economy. As new middle classes ascend and decline with the fluctuations of industrialism, their life styles and politics pose issues which are crucial to an under standing of contemporary society. Focusing on the new middle classes in Weimar Germany and midto late-twentieth century America, this volume of essays, written between 1926 and 1992, contains a needed orientation to the complexities of class and politics in emerging twenty-first century capitalism. In his introduction Arthur Vidich discusses the contributions of Emil Lederer and Jacob Marshack, Hans Gerth, and especially Hans Speier to an understanding of white collar workers and their relationship to the rise of Hitler as well as the theoretical legacy these authors provided for the post-World War II analysis of the American new middle classes represented in this volume. Essays by Lederer and Marshack, Gerth and C. Wright Mills, and Speier, juxtaposed with those on America by Mills, Joseph Bensman and Vidich, Michael W Hughey, and Arthur S. Evans, demon strate an important genealogical connection between the classical German social theory of Marx, Weber, and others, Weimar social science, and the portrait of America rendered by students of Gerth. A carefully crafted and illuminating illustration of the dependence of contemporary social analysis on the Weimar legacy is now available for those in need of guidance con cerning how social theory, in its depiction of the past, can be used to grap ple with the present.