A felső középosztály: új arisztokrácia?

Tóth István György; Szelényi Iván

A felső középosztály: új arisztokrácia?

In the June 2018 issue of The Atlantic, Matthew Stewart published an article entitled ‘The birth of a new American aristocracy’ and carrying the subtitle: ‘The 9.9 percent is the new American aristocracy. The class divide is already toxic and is fast becoming unbridgeable.’ Well, The Atlantic is not a major social science journal (certainly not in the same league as the American Journal of Sociology or the American Sociological Review), so perhaps there is no need to pay it much attention… Nevertheless, there is some serious academic writing on the subject, especially by Richard Reeves and Robert Putnam (and some mainstream sociologists/demographers whom we cite later in this chapter), who also express concern over greater social closure (or less ‘fluidity’) at the top of US society; and so the question of a ‘New Aristocracy’ – at least in the US – may deserve some consideration. At the same time, mobility studies report on a decrease in social fluidity in the post-transition countries, which to some extent runs counter to previous expectations about rising meritocracy following the collapse of socialist regimes (including Kolosi et al., 2003; Breen and Luijkx, 2004; Jackson and Evans, 2017). In what follows, we first look at the findings and predictions of the US literature of social closure at the top. Then we review how Hungary fares in international comparison with regard to social mobility developments, especially at certain points in the vertical hierarchy. Then we attempt to identify social processes that point to closure at the broadly understood top of society (the highest quartile or so). While it is impossible to pinpoint the ‘exact’ place of the cleavage border, we argue that it is certainly well below the often targeted ‘top 1 per cent’.