Social class is usually treated as though it doesn't exist. But for working families struggling without good jobs or adequate pay, who lack health care or decent housing, the systemic economic divisions that determine their life chances and allow a small group of the very wealthy to hold a disproportionate amount of political power is very real. For young people who are forced to choose between dead end jobs, military life, or confronting a violent and racist criminal justice system class is no joke.

Popular media and cultural institutions spend a lot of time and effort hiding class by indoctrinating us to think class is imaginary, that our problems are individual, or that we ourselves are to blame for the struggles we face. But if problems are so individualized, why do so many millions of people experience the same ones?

The Working Class Studies Association (WCSA) is a relatively recent effort within the academic community to answer this and other questions by emphasizing the role of class in social life and to focus particularly on the history, culture and struggles of the working class. The WCSA is an academic organization which provides a home to many scholars and working-class activists who support the effort to make class visible.

'Class has been around for a long time, but it has been largely absent in the academic world and in the popular press and popular media,' said Michael Zweig, secretary treasurer of the WCSA, in a recent interview with Political Affairs. Zweig cited anti-Communism after World War II and the rise of the culture of consumerism as key reasons why 'class has been dismissed from polite company.'

Zweig likened the general idea behind working class studies to that of African American Studies and Women's Studies departments in colleges and universities. 'Working class studies tries to bring a focus of attention on class as something which shapes society and shapes us in our individual lives,' said Zweig.

'Class divisions have become increasingly difficult to miss,' Zweig added. Over the past 10 or 15 years, scholars, especially those who come out of working-class backgrounds and experiences, have made the study of class a serious endeavor. This resurgent academic interest in class has coincided with 'changes in the distribution of income and wealth, with a change in power distribution in the economy, with the reduction in strength of unions, the very great increase in corporate influence and power in the economy, politics and culture.' People are increasingly interested in the causes of these changes and how they are shaping our lives, said Zweig.

The field working class studies, however, is not confined to college campuses, Zweig argued. 'The Working Class Studies Association has pulled together people in the academic world but also in the social movements who are trying to give a more formal and sanctioned and official and organized attention to class.'

Zweig further suggested that the particular focus and method of studying working class life and culture gives the WCSA an activist dimension. 'The subject matter is working life and working-class experience. There is an explicit and deliberate attempt to ground the intellectual work that we do in the actual lived experience of class.' Whether in the social sciences or in cultural studies, 'there is a direct and conscious attempt to link the intellectual work and the creative work that is done in the academy to what is going in the world of working people,' Zweig stated.

This particular feature of the field draws a diverse range of scholars in varied disciplines but also attracts activists from the labor movement, civic organizations, political movements and so on. 'That means,' Zweig added, 'in the conferences that we have and the meetings that we hold and the work that we highlight, all aspects of this community are present.'

While corporate predominance in the academy has sharply increased over the past couple of decades and and consequently academics are increasingly subjected to intensified exploitation, the main reason, Zweig noted, that interest in the field has grown is the larger numbers of scholars who come from working-class backgrounds.

'Mostly the personnel in working class studies are themselves from working-class backgrounds,' Zweig asserted, 'who went school, got degrees, find themselves in academic surroundings and are looking to understand that trajectory and to reach out now to working class college students who are coming into our classrooms and have an academic subject matter and an approach to life that will resonate with what our students bring.'

Zweig described the political orientation of working class studies scholars as diverse and rich. 'It has a much broader base than Marxist social science,' noted Zweig. Marxism plays a big role in working class studies, but the field isn't confined to this outlook and method of study. 'There are many people in working class studies that don't consider themselves Marxist, for many reasons, but who do understand that class is a very significant part of society,' said Zweig, who labels himself as a Marxist social scientist.