The ultimate issue that has always been at the base of the progressive vision is genuine democracy, the rule of the people in all aspects of society, political, social, and economic. It is, in a way, the crimination of the job one does, or the income one receives, as a criterion of power or merit. It is the democratic vision in its fullest from.

Levison strikes down many of the misconceptions taken so seriously by a lot of radicals: that the American labor movement is a totally integrated, quiescent partner of the ruling class (it isn't: except for the Vietnam War, labor has consistently pushed for socially liberal legislation, and only two types of unions--the leadership of the Teamsters and the building trades--have really taken the side of capitalism): that workers are more militarist and racist than other Americans (they aren't, but they are angry when upper class students support a foreign army that is attempting to kill their own children: or when upper class liberals take it upon themselves to devise busing and housing schemes that will leave urban workers and their communities to deal with integration: while wealthier people--who supposedly support black people's struggles--remain safely out of reach in the suburbs.)

Levison also creditably debunks the recent nonsense we have been hearing, from both "Left" and "Right," about the post-industrial character of the modern work force: of how blue-collar work is declining in magnitude and importance, and service and technical-professional work is replacing it. Levison shows how shoe-shine workers, street sweepers, janitors, mailmen, milkmen, cleaning women, typists, and department store clerks are all placed in the "clerical and sales" or "service" categories of the census, and when both occupational and standard of living factors are taken into account, "working class people" across for all least 60 per cent of all those employed--a very far cry from an economy oriented around a "technostructure" or a "post-industrial" society.

Levison further discredits the "affluent worker" thesis--the idea of the working class having been bought off of radicalism by wage rises--by a simple glance at statistics:

The affluent worker, who until recently was supposed to be typical, constitutes 12 to 15 per cent of the working class, white and black. Eighty five per cent are not 'typical.' The average worker earned $9.500 in 1970, much closer to poverty than to affluence.

LEVISON PROVIDES an education for middle-class radicals and liberals: he simply describes the working day of an industrial or blue-collar worker. A worker is forced to submit to military authoritarianism while on the job: he or she must do what the foreman demands. Most factories have rules--despite "job enrichment" programs--which prohibit "cat calls, horseplay, making preparation to leave before the whistle sounds, littering, wasting time, and loitering in the toilets." In addition, some companies have the right to discipline workers for "using abusive language" and 'distracting the attention of other employees." Levison sums up the much-written about boredom of blue-collar work well:

...(A) professor would begin to understand how a factory workers feels if he had to type the same paragraph from 9:00 to 5:00 every day of the week. Instead of setting the pace himself, the professor's typewriter carriage should begin to move at 9:00 and continue at a steady pace until 5:00. The professor's job would be at stake if his typing did not keep up the pace.

These are the strong points of Levison's book: a mass of detail and understanding of working class life, and the upholding of the essentially "progressive" character of the American worker. But there are discrepancies that Levison cannot account for, and he conveniently leaves them out of his book. For example, American workers probably are more patriotic and religious than the middle and ruling class. This goes along with their preindustrial dreams, which still have ideological power. Workers in America seem to oppose capitalism in two ways, and Levison only clearly sees one side of their opposition, and ignores the more complicated side. They oppose it out of a modern sense of injustice--a sense of having an unequal and unfair deal in life (this Levison understands and documents well); and they also oppose the entire disciplined, unfree factory and forced-industrial system, and replace it with the desire for a liberated, complete society (this Levison does not see clearly, but only intuits at various times.) Out of the first characteristic can come reformism and perhaps even a type of democratic socialism: but out of the second comes the most interesting feature of the American working class--its revolutionary opposition to capitalism reflected in a culture that hallows a distant and mythical past existing prior to capitalism, a Jeffersonian past.

Levison sees the part of the working class nature which engenders social change, but he is hard pressed to see the total revolutionary opposition to the system--appearing at times as reactionary--contained in working class consciousness. Considering working class traditionalism--what some would call almost puritanism--and working class liberal reformism one sees that only the former is really opposed to modern, bureaucratic capitalism. American workers may have, up until now, viewed their salvation in the past rather than the future, but the reality of opposition has remained constant: a vote for George Wallace is certainly a vote against the way things are presently done in America.

SINCE WORLD WAR II trends have worked against the continued presence of the American myth--there is no longer much social mobility, no longer a frontier to escape to, no longer the comforting thought that one advances up the social system on his or her own (our lives are too obviously interdependent now for that). But the opposition to the factory system--to being treated like a machine, not a human being--continues. Salvation in the past lives on in working class culture: in music, often in religion, in emotional patriotism, in values, and even in faith in "America." Still, social events are gradually undermining belief in the myth, and workers cannot respond to its possible decline with mere liberalism.

In this country, to this point in history, the worker has opposed capitalism in his dreams--dreams of returning to a better, pastoral, life. Those dreams--made even more unreachable by the worsening economic crisis--will not vanish. The present always is too terrible--the worker must believe in either the past or the future. There are two possibilities: the American dream will stubbornly live on unimpeded in the face of social reality, in which case the existing system will somehow maintain itself; or the dream will recognize its fulfillment in the potential of the present, which will lead to a mass workers' movement. Which possibility will be acted on is uncertain: it is only sure that Levison is entirely right when he implies it is alone the working class's decision to make.