Middle Class, Classe Moyenne, Mittelstand: History and Social Sciences in the Atlantic World

Following the Second World War, the consensus school declared a radical otherness of America compared to Europe, attributing to the middle class the progressive footprint of the American national history and the political success of its liberal tradition. The following studies considered middle-class people (not only white collar, but also skilled and unionized blue-collar worker) as the main subject of the American Century. The paper intends to demonstrate how the making of the American middle class as the key figure of the nation and its exceptionalism took root in the transnational networks of political and scientific confrontation developed between the late 1800’s and the period between the two World Wars. By delving into the literature of the English new liberalism and Labour, and French and German sociology, the paper highlights how the American middle class should be considered outlined by historical and conceptual developments that marked the mutating economic, social and political horizon of the Atlantic world: while during the 1800’s the middle classes had been defined in light of the national processes of industrialization and democratization, by the end of the century, the second industrial revolution had imposed a debate on the middle class, debate which would unite the two sides of the ocean. In this way, the paper aims not to present a compared history of the American and European middle classes. Rather, to shed light on the common historical and conceptual dynamics implicated in the rise of the American middle class: a transnational point of view to comprehend the origins of a figure that was essential to the American Century.