Who actually counts as working class?
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) claim to fight for a government “by, for, and of the working class.” It’s a powerful slogan. It draws a clear line in the sand.
But look at who is actually running and voting.
As of 2021, an internal DSA survey revealed that 80 percent of members over age 25 held college degrees. Nearly 30 percent earned more than $100 a year. That places them squarely in the top 15 of the US income distribution.
Among their prominent faces: an Ivy League graduate student. A corporate lawyer. A politician who is the son of a Hollywood director.
This demographic reality has triggered a backlash. Critics argue the DSA has no connection to the actual working class.
Thomas Edsall in The New York Times said most DSA supporters are “in no way working class.” Commentators from the right (like Robby Soave) and the liberal left (like Noah Smith) agree.
The tension is real. The DSA wants to represent workers. But its membership looks like a Silicon Valley networking event.
So how do socialists respond to this charge?
There are two main paths. One argues that an organization doesn’t need to be working class to fight for their interests. The other claims the critics are just wrong about the definition.
The DSA’s preferred answer is simpler and more provocative.
The critics are mistaken because the term “working class” includes almost everyone who sells their labor to survive. This includes the lawyer. And it includes the line cook.
The Two-Class Model: A 19th Century Map
This definition isn’t new. It has deep roots in orthodox socialism.
Ben Burgis, writing for Jacobin, explains the logic. Orthodox socialists subscribe to a “two-class system.”
Under this view, there are only two groups:
- Capitalists: Those who own the means of production (factories, farms, offices).
- Workers: Everyone else, who must work for the owners to live.
Many modern socialists find this binary too simple. But the rhetoric persists. It is widely held among anti-capitalists that lawyers and day laborers belong to the same fundamental class.
Why does this idea survive?
Because there is truth to it. Educated professionals and manual laborers do share some interests. They both suffer if unemployment benefits are cut. They both benefit from a robust safety net in ways that Elon Musk does not.
For the most part, however, this 19th-century map is broken. It obscures the massive economic divisions in modern America rather than illuminating them.
Marx’s Failed Predictions
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels laid the groundwork in the Communist Manifesto of 1848.
They predicted that industrialization would obliterate distinctions between workers. Technology would drive wages down to a “low level” for everyone. The middle class—small manufacturers, shopkeepers—would disappear.
Society would split into two hostile camps.
Under those specific conditions, a binary model made sense. If everyone was becoming poor and powerless, arguing over subtle differences was pointless. If all business owners were part of a shrinking elite, you could group them all together.
But we don’t live in that future.
Capitalism didn’t melt workers into a uniform mass. It created a diverse labor force segmented by pay and prestige. Industrial development brought unprecedented prosperity to millions, aided by socialistic reforms like unions and welfare.
Why the Binary Doesn’t Work Today
Old-school socialists use the two-class model to navigate modern capitalism. It doesn’t work.
Consider income.
In the US, some convenience store owners earn around $70,000. Many surgeons earn upward of $600.000.
Orthodox socialism suggests these two people belong to different fundamental classes. The store owner is a capitalist (owning the shop). The surgeon is a worker (selling labor).
This feels wrong. The minimart owner and the billionaire CEO do not share similar material interests. Nor do the impoverished farmworker and the high-earning neurosurgeon. Yet the binary model forces them into separate camps.
Class is not binary. It is a multidimensional continuum.
The Blurring Line Between Labor and Capital
The border between worker and owner is fuzzier today than in Marx’s time.
Most Americans own a home. Many have 401(k)s filled with stocks. Many billionaires choose to work.
Socialists define class by dependence on labor. A typical white-collar worker owns some stock but not enough to quit and live on dividends. They must work to survive. A billionaire CEO does not have that same constraint.
This distinction is sound. But it doesn’t solve the problem of where the line is drawn.
In an advanced economy, needing to work is partly subjective.
Millions of Americans survive on less than $2.00 a day. If upper-middle-class families accepted an austere living standard, they could likely live off investments.
Americans shouldn’t have to live in poverty. But defining what constitutes a life worth living is hard.
In Marx’s day, a “good” life meant food, shelter, and some leisure. Today, it includes high-quality education, advanced medical care, modern appliances, internet access, and a car.
These are treated as necessities.
So where is the cutoff?
Socialist writer Matt Bruenig proposed a threshold of $1.4 million in assets. Once you have that much, selling your labor becomes optional. You are no longer working-class.
Is this precise? No.
It is arbitrary. Ask an American with $1.4 million if they need to work. They will likely say yes. Because they cannot maintain their desired lifestyle without a paycheck.
If you raise the threshold to $1.6 million or $800, an individual’s class status is determined by household income, net worth, market value of skills, familial wealth, and even eligibility for welfare.
The only way to define the upper boundary of “working class” without making arbitrary judgments about lifestyle is to move it extremely high up the hierarchy. Once you include multimillionaires, the term loses all plausibility.
Who Benefits from Vague Definitions?
Even if the two-class map is flawed, it might be politically useful.
Perhaps when affluent professionals identify with the working poor, they fight for their interests.
The DSA advocates for policies that benefit America’s most disadvantaged, despite its white-collar membership. After Occupy Wall Street, many educated millennials identified with the “99 percent.” This cohort has pushed the Democratic Party toward ambitious anti-poverty policies, like guaranteed income.
The main fiscal barrier to American social democracy remains tax policy. The American middle class, especially the upper middle, pays much lower taxes than their Western European peers.
However, this expansive definition can also be used dubiously.
It allows well-off professionals to disguise their specific interests as the interests of all working people.
Take the push to cancel all graduate student debt.
During the Biden administration, the DSA criticized a plan to forgive $10.00 of loans. They wanted all student debt cancelled, including that of elite medical school graduates and MBA holders.
Is this a fight for the working class?
Or is it a fight for professionals who happened to take on debt to advance their status?
A taxonomy with subcategories—the poor, the working class, the middle class, the rich, the superrich—captures more reality than a binary system.
Graham Platner, a former Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, illustrates the confusion. To some, he is working class. He lacked a college degree. He worked long hours farming oysters. He had a gravelly voice.
To others, he was pseudo-proletarian. He went to prep school. He received financial help from his parents.
Under orthodox socialism, he likely doesn’t qualify as working class. He doesn’t need to work to survive thanks to disability benefits. And he owns his own business.
No single point on the scale transforms a person’s class position.
The gap between the “99 percent” and billionaires is huge. But the gap between the top 15 and the working poor is just as critical.
We need rough categories for politics. No one chants “The 30th to 50th percentiles in household income united!”
But if we blur the lines too much, we lose sight of who actually benefits. And we end up with a movement that claims to speak for the worker while looking increasingly like the manager.
