ABSTRACT
Some of radical persuasion will hold that the working class is counterrevolutionary, and in communist nations it may be held that the working class is not properly appreciative of what the leaders of society have accomplished for them. The increases in income experienced by the working class and the investment of these increases in a wide range of mass-market products have also led from time to time to premature celebration of the "middle classification" of the working class. The central life goal of the stable working class is the creation of a comfortable and secure place for oneself and one's family. The life-style of the working class, then, is constructed to ward off such negative but realistic possibilities. The currently fashionable diagnosis of working-class conditions, however, addresses itself not to these traditional economic issues but rather to a mood of social alienation and a rightward swing that some argue is characterizing middle America.
