Levels of Aspiration and Social Class

W OVEN throughout much of the material on social class is the implication that different levels of aspiration are held by individuals in different social classes. Mills, for example, holds that for the white-collar class, Success in America has been a widespread fact, an engaging image, a driving motive, and a way of life. I Warner states that those in the upper-lower class of Yankee City are thought of as 'pushy and ambitious, and implies that the same is true for those in the lower-upper class.2 Marx maintains that the proletariat can have no aspirations under capitalism, but instead must come identify with their own class and aspire an entirely different system of values.3 Knupfer, in summarizing a variety of information, concludes that lower status individuals hold low levels of aspiration to make life tolerable; a fact which in some cases is a sign of apathy and ingrained acceptance of defeat rather than of adjustment reality. .. . 4 Finally, the mistrustful commonsense view often implies that the middle class contains the