Recognising the Middle Class in Sweden and the US

Social class is a useful concept to understand society, but it’s also pretty vague in the definition of each class. In ideological training courses taught through the Swedish labour movement you may encounter the idea that there are only two classes, employers and employees. My view is I believe more common, viz that class is similar to subculture: goths and jocks etc. In this view both the owner and the employees of a small plumbing firm are working class. Meanwhile a poorly funded environmental research scientist is middle class, even though she makes far less money.

This is because the main distinction between the working and middle + upper classes in Sweden is not economic, but cultural. The main parameter is higher education, which is open to anyone: no term fees, generous study loans. In 2021, 30% of Swedes between the ages of 25 and 64 years had at least a BA degree. (Swedes are often confused by the English term “an academic”, because Sw. en akademiker means “a uni graduate”.)

As for the upper class, Sweden has a hereditary nobility whose last legal privileges were abolished only 200 years ago. Most noble families are still culturally upper class, but have long been joined there by a large number of wealthy non-noble families. Sweden’s upper class can actually usefully be distinguished on the basis of wealth. So a provisional set of descriptions might be:

• Working class: no uni degree, possibly economically comfortable, may own a small plumbing business.*
• Middle class: has uni degree, dominates media and cultural scene, possibly economically comfortable, may be an environmental scientist.
• Upper class: businesspeople, lawyers, doctors, architects; wealthy.

Reading about US politics though, I realise that the class terminology there is quite different. Considerably more Americans than Swedes of working age have at least a BA: 35% in 2018. But in my reading, it seems that education does not really figure into the US definition of the middle class. As Wikipedia puts it, “With the development of capitalist societies and further inclusion of the bourgeoisie into the ruling class, middle class has been more closely identified by Marxist scholars [and mainstream US discourse] with the term petite bourgeoisie.” And the petite bourgeoisie according to Marx is “small shopkeepers and self-employed artisans … they typically work alongside their employees, unlike the haute bourgeoisie.” In the US a plumbing business owner is middle class. (You rarely see the term upper class used at all in US writing.)

The US definition of the middle class, then, has a solid Marxist foundation. But Marx didn’t foresee the rise of a culturally dominant but not particularly affluent class of university graduates. They don’t own a lot of stock and so cannot be said to control the means of production. They are almost entirely employees, not business owners. In their mental and material culture they are sharply distinct both from the comfortable petite bourgeoisie and the wealthy upper class. And in their political leanings, they have increasingly become the supporting pillar of the Swedish Left, as a large proportion of the working class voters has turned to right-wing populism. The small-business-owning petite bourgeoisie has long voted Conservative. Karl Marx would be extremely confused if he took a look at social class in Sweden of 2022.

* Side note: From a gender and class perspective, something pretty strange is happening to the current generation of the Swedish working class. About half of the men have begun to vote far-Right, while the women still largely vote Centre-Left. And nursing school has been extended to become a degree in higher ed. So in many Swedish marriages right now, there is a growing gap across the breakfast table both politically and in terms of class aspiration. Mothers with degrees encourage their children to study.