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Anyone who does commit the solecism of talking or writing about class in America is assailed at once by a problem of definition. Asking Americans which class they belong to does not get you very far, since almost all Americans are sure that they belong to the middle. The last time the Pew Research Centre asked, in a poll in 2008, 91% of respondents put themselves in the upper-middle, middle or lower-middle class. Confusion about class is compounded by America’s habit of defining the white “working class” not by income or occupation, as in Europe, but by the lack of a college degree. That is a pretty odd approach (Mark Twain observed that cauliflower is cabbage with a college education) given that many workers without a degree earn a decent income and consider themselves part of the middle too.
American talk about class differs from Europe’s in another way. The country does not have a broad political movement on the left. Its trade unions never gave rise to a social-democratic party like Britain’s Labour, for example. This is not to say that America has had no left at all. It has seen radicals galore. But Michael Kazin, co-editor of Dissent and author of a new history (“American Dreamers”), says its left did not focus chiefly on economic issues. From the mid-20th century, after all, America seemed to find a way for manual workers with only a high-school education to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. The New Left of the 1960s and 1970s assumed (times have changed) that growth would take care of economic needs and devoted its energies to racial and sexual equality instead. The left has contributed to terrific success in such areas—from the abolition of slavery to the formal end this week of the ban on gays serving openly in the military. But Mr Kazin concludes that it was far more successful when it sought to expand personal liberty than when it struggled to advance the collective might of workers and the poor.


A. 어휘
commit 떠맡다, 범하다. solecism 破格(파격), 문법위반, 부적당.
assail 猛攻(맹공)하다. definition 定議(정의). Pew 교회의 信徒(신도) 좌석, 의자.
compound 번거롭게 하다, 합성하다. occupation 직업.
odd 奇異(기이)한. given=if it is given ...을 고려해 본다면.
on the left 좌파 쪽에서. trade unions 노동조합. radicals 급진분자, 급진좌파.
galore 풍부하게. Dissent 반대, 反體制(반체제). manual workers 육체노동자.
racial 인종적인. contribute 寄與(기여)하다. terrific 굉장한.
abolition 폐지. formal 공식적인. ban 금지. collective 집단적인.
might 힘.