Reading the American Past: Printed Page 234
DOCUMENT 27–2
Vance Packard Analyzes the Age of Affluence
Material abundance and mass consumption undermined class differences and created equality, many commentators declared in the 1950s. In his book The Status Seekers, sociologist Vance Packard argued instead that seeking status through consumption masked persistent and increasingly rigid stratification in American society. He raised questions about the social and political consequences of the postwar culture of abundance and striving celebrated during the 1950s.
The Status Seekers, 1959
What happens to class distinctions among people when most of them are enjoying a long period of material abundance?
Suppose for example that most of the people are able to travel about in their own gleaming, sculptured coaches longer than the average living room and powered by the equivalent of several hundred horses. Suppose that they are able to wear a variety of gay-colored apparel made of miraculous fibers. Suppose they can dine on mass-merchandised vichyssoise and watch the wonders of the world through electronic eyes in their own air-conditioned living rooms.
In such a climate, do the barriers and humiliating distinctions of social class evaporate? Do anxieties about status — and strivings for evidences of superior status — ease up notably? And do opportunities for leadership roles become more available to all who have natural talent?
The recent experience of the people of the United States is instructive. In the early 1940s an era of abundance began which by 1959 had reached proportions fantastic by any past standards. Nearly a half-trillion dollars' worth of goods and services — including television, miracle fibers, and vichyssoise — were being produced.
Before this era of fabled plenty began, it was widely assumed that prosperity would eliminate, or greatly reduce, class differences. If everybody could enjoy the good things of life — as defined by mass merchandisers — the meanness of class distinctions would disappear.
Such a view seemed reasonable to most of us in those pinched pre-plenty days of the thirties because, then, differences in status were all too plainly visible. You could tell who was who — except for a few genteel poor — by the way people dressed, ate, traveled, and — if they were lucky — by the way they worked. The phrase “poor people” then had an intensely vivid meaning. A banker would never be mistaken for one of his clerks even at one hundred feet.
What, actually, has happened to social class in the United States during the recent era of abundance?
A number of influential voices have been advising us that whatever social classes we ever had are now indeed withering away. We are being told that the people of our country have achieved unparalleled equality. Listen to some of the voices.
Some months ago, a national periodical proclaimed the fact that the United States had recently achieved the “most truly classless society in history.” A few weeks later, a publisher hailed the disappearance of the class system in America as “the biggest news of our era.” Still later, the director of a market-research organization announced his discovery that America was becoming “one vast middle class.” Meanwhile, a corporation in paid advertisements was assuring us that “there are more opportunities in this country than ever before.” Whatever else we are, we certainly are the world's most self-proclaimed equalitarian people.
The rank-and-file citizens of the nation have generally accepted this view of progress toward equality because it fits with what we would like to believe about ourselves. It coincides with the American Creed and the American Dream, and is deeply imbedded in our folklore.
Such a notion unfortunately rests upon a notable lack of perception of the true situation that is developing. Class lines in several areas of our national life appear to be hardening. And status straining has intensified. ...
Webster defines status as the “position; rank; standing” of a person. (The word can be pronounced either “stay-tus” or “stat-us.”) Although present-day Americans in this era of material abundance are not supposed to put differential labels of social status on fellow citizens, many millions of them do it every day. And their search for appropriate evidences of status for themselves appears to be mounting each year. There is some evidence that wives, generally speaking, tend to be more status conscious than their husbands.
The majority of Americans rate acquaintances and are themselves being rated in return. They believe that some people rate somewhere above them, that some others rate somewhere below them, and that still others seem to rate close enough to their own level to permit them to explore the possibility of getting to know them socially without fear of being snubbed or appearing to downgrade themselves.
When any of us moves into a new neighborhood — and 33,000,000 Americans now do this every year — we are quickly and critically appraised by our new neighbors and business acquaintances before being accepted or rejected for their group. We, in turn, are appraising them and in many cases attempt not to commit what some regard as the horrid error of getting in with the wrong crowd.
Furthermore, most of us surround ourselves, wittingly or unwittingly, with status symbols we hope will influence the raters appraising us, and which we hope will help establish some social distance between ourselves and those we consider below us. The vigorous merchandising of goods as status symbols by advertisers is playing a major role in intensifying status consciousness. Emotionally insecure people are most vulnerable. Others of us, less expert in the nuances of status symbols or more indifferent to them, persist in modes of behavior and in displays of taste that themselves serve as barriers in separating us from the group to which we may secretly aspire. They can keep us in our place. If we aspire to rise in the world but fail to take on the coloration of the group we aspire to — by failing to discard our old status symbols, friends, club memberships, values, behavior patterns, and acquiring new ones esteemed by the higher group — our chances of success are diminished. ...
Many people are badly distressed, and scared, by the anxieties, inferiority feelings, and straining generated by this unending process of rating and status striving. The status seekers, as I use the term, are people who are continually straining to surround themselves with visible evidence of the superior rank they are claiming. The preoccupation of millions of Americans with status is intensifying social stratification in the United States. ...
[W]hy is it that so many opinion molders have been announcing their conclusion that classes are disappearing?
The discrepancy arises partly as a result of a generalized desire on the part of United States adults — particularly businessmen — to support the American Dream. Also it arises from the widespread assumption that the recent general rise in available spending money in this country is making everybody equal. Class, in fact, has several faces and income is just one of them. With the general diffusion of wealth, there has been a crumbling of visible class lines now that such one-time upper-class symbols as limousines, power boats, and mink coats are available to a variety of people. Coincidentally, there has been a scrambling to find new ways to draw lines that will separate the elect from the non-elect.
A working-class man, however, does not move up into another social class just by being able to buy a limousine, either by cash or installment, and he knows it. In terms of his productive role in our society — in contrast to his consuming role — class lines in America are becoming more rigid, rather than withering away.
In truth, America, under its gloss of prosperity, is undergoing a significant hardening of the arteries of its social system at some critical points.
As I perceive it, two quite sharply divided major groupings of social classes are emerging, with the old middle class being split into two distinct classes in the process. At the places where most Americans work ... we are seeing a new emphasis on class lines and a closing-in of the opportunities available to make more than a minor advance. In modern big business, it is becoming more and more difficult to start at the bottom and reach the top. Any leaping aspiration a non-college person has after beginning his career in big business in a modest capacity is becoming less and less realistic.
Furthermore, stratification (formalized inequality of rank) is becoming built-in as our increasingly bureaucratized society moves at almost every hand toward bigness: Big Business, Big Government, Big Labor, Big Education. Bigness is one of the really major factors altering our class system. ... In the hierarchy of the big corporation, stratification is being carried to exquisite extremes. Employees are usually expected to comfort themselves in conformity with their rank, and generally do so. Industrialists are noting that the military experience millions of our younger generation have had has made them more accepting of rank. ... Employees in big offices, as well as big plants, are finding their work roles fragmentized and impersonalized. There has been, perhaps unwittingly, a sealing-off of contact between big and little people on the job. And there has been a startling rise in the number of people who are bored with their work and feel no pride of initiative or creativity. They must find their satisfactions outside their work. Many do it by using their paychecks to consume flamboyantly. ...
In brief, the American Dream is losing some of its luster for a good many citizens who would like to believe in it. ... It is my impression that status lines are more carefully observed in the East and South than in most of the other parts of the country. Californians, with their yeasty social climate, seem the least status-conscious people I've encountered in the nation. ...
A society that encourages status striving produces, in contrast, a good deal of bruising, disappointment, and ugly feelings. If a society promotes the idea that success is associated with upward mobility, those who can't seem to get anywhere are likely to be afflicted with the feeling that they are personal failures, even though the actual situation may be pretty much beyond their control or capacity to change. ... [An] educational psychologist ... has asked ... this blunt question: “How much should the school urge children to be ambitious and mobile, in a society where most of them will find jobs calling for little skill?” And one of America's leading ministers ... has in sermons admonished his listeners to be realistic about ambition. It is an admirable quality, he said, but added that we are not all equal in native capacity. “Most of us,” he said, “are modestly endowed and we shall not achieve effectiveness or happiness until we recognize it.”
The person standing still in a culture that glorifies upward progress often suffers hurts. The greater menace to society, however, is the person moving downward. Any society that has a good deal of upward circulation is bound to have some downward circulation too. We can't all stay at the high level our elders or we ourselves achieve. The person being declassed is, as previously indicated, almost invariably in an ugly mood. He is seething with humiliation and apprehension. If society has not developed a mechanism for quickly and gently helping him find a new, more humble niche, then he becomes a bigot, a searcher for scapegoats, and an eager recruit for almost any demagogue who promises to set up a completely new social order. ...
We confront in America a historical situation that cries out for a society of achieved status. We are badly maladjusted to our environment and are becoming more maladjusted every month. ... [W]e need to draw upon all the talent and intelligence we can muster. We need to encourage by every means possible the discovery and advancement of people of unusual potential. ... In a rigidly stratified society, such people are not even considered.
The challenge to us is to recognize the realities of our current class situation. The main reality is our tendency toward greater rigidity in our stratification while pretending that precisely the opposite is occurring. We are consigning tens of millions of our people to fixed roles in life where aspiration is futile, and yet we keep telling them that those who have the stuff will rise to the top. We don't even allow them the satisfaction of feeling secure, dignified, and creative in their low status. And, socially, we look down upon them.
From Vance Packard, The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behavior in America and the Hidden Barriers That Affect You, Your Community, and Your Future (New York: D. McKay Co., 1959).
Questions for Reading and Discussion