Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

The third upper middle class group in Lamont’s study was made up of men who described and defined themselves and their kind of people by their financial success. They believed that material success is an indicator of a person’s value; worldly success is admired and achieved for its own sake. People in this group are likely to be first-generation upper middle class. They also valued ambition, hard work, competitiveness, and the drive to achieve, not for their own sake but for their result in visible success. They did not necessarily feel they owed society anything. This group lived in a dog-eat-dog survival-of-the-fittest world, a world of winners and losers. People’s worth was judged by external status: professional prestige, financial standing, power, and visibility in prestigious social clubs, boards of directors, and the like. People who are unsuccessful in material terms are simply “losers.” This form of classism disdains losers.