also, I think you’ll find that Zweig would say exactly the same thing about your example as you.

Imagine two neighbourhoods in the new Ireland, A and B. Group A are the traditional middle class, docs, solicitor, accountant, etc. Group B are the ‘new’ middle class - small business owner spawned in Celtic Tiger, plumber doing well, supervisor in SW shop, etc. The income difference betweent the two groups might not be huge. But the power of group A would be overwhelmingly greater. If the authorities decided to place a landfil near A, the residence could call upon a far greater depth of resources to stop it - from contacts in the legal to political and perhaps media worlds. Group B far less so.

My point is that, whether an idividual in group B moves from say doer to supervisor will not make all that much difference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society

The other thing is that this is not a re-branding of working class. it’s an analysis of a late 20th/early 21st century capitalist economy. As such, Zweig is not interested in questions of image, or selling the analysis. It’s how things are. It’s division of labour. It’s how a capitalist economy works.

One thing, though. The meaning that “working class” has today is the meaning that’s out of step. In fact, the change in public perception can be traced - in America at least - from the period after the second world war.

The thing about Zweig is that he’s a social democrat, and I don’t think we’re used to hearing terms like “working class” used in a social democratic analysis. Most use of “working class” in Irish left-wing circles is in terms of the revolutionary power of the working classes, not in terms of reform. Zweig, I’m sure, is hated by the Irish far-left, because his argument is one of reform, that blasted social democracy that Lenin calls the enemy of the working class.

The other thing is that Zweig is writing about the American class system. I’m the one who’s saying his analysis can throw light on the Irish capitalist economy as well. So. not all of what Zweig says, I think, applies to Ireland, but what does I’ll put up on the blog.

Zweig is the director of the center for working class life, based out of New York univeristy. The site address is below.

http://www.sunysb.edu/workingclass/

I think the method of categorisation Zweig uses is actually pretty useful but (and without having read the book so I’m depending on your summary) I would really question a) the labels he then uses and b) the conclusions he comes to about power in society.

Regarding labels, I find it disingenuous for Zweig to redefine a term (’working class’) so it is at odds with how most people commonly understand it and then castigate the media (read: society) for not using it in this new way. For better or worse the term ‘working class’ has come to mean (or rather stayed meaning) people with a certain lifestyle, income range and type of occupation. The world that gave birth to the term has moved on, the meaning did not. Trying to rebrand the term in people’s minds is really difficult. Why not start with fresh, unused terms (without being all David McWilliams about it)? Informing people that - hey, according to my definition - actually you are working class and you should really be acting and voting like it, ain’t going to garner many converts.

Regarding power in society, does Zweig explain how not having power or control over one’s work translate into not having due influence in society? Is Zweig saying it is just correlation or is there direct cause and effect? What are the mechanisms by which this happens? I can see how wealth can certainly have undue influence - political donations etc. - but being a middle manager? Or a shop owner?. How do they exercise undue power by dint of their positions, rather than by economic clout?