How Important Is Social Class?

The Debate Among American Sociologists

The old question of why there has been no socialism in the United States has often been answered by referring to the racial, ethnic, and religious divisions within the ranks of labor— which are the result of successive waves of overseas immigration and the partial incorporation into the labor force of the rural blacks. Accordingly, the American Left has been impatient with the ethnic loyalties and animosities of American workers, seeing them as fossilized survivals that retard the growth of class consciousness. Radicals have charged the ruling classes with deliberately fomenting racial and religious prejudice as part of a divide-and-rule strategy. Yet liberal pluralists hav...