Agency, Not Alligators

One of the thorniest controversies in working-class studies is the question of whether the poor constitute a class by themselves or are part of the working class. ¹ The question is not merely one of classification or rhetoric. Rather, scholars who argue that the poor are part of the working class view poverty as a result of structural conditions (job losses, housing prices, medical crises, and the like) that impact on working-class people. As Michael Zweig says, the poor are working-class people “who don’t make very much money either because they aren’t working or they make low wages” (78). He furthers his argument by stating that most of the poor are not from generations of poverty; rather, people cycle in and out of poverty, depending on fluctuations in employment, family makeup, health, and the like; and that in a ten-year period more than half of working-class people will experience poverty. Finally, he argues that placing the poor in a class by themselves ignores the economic causes of poverty and encourages the too-common problem of blaming the poor for their poverty.