INTRODUCTION To anyone setting out in search of the working class or ask­ing whether class society still exists great thinkers such as Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu or Max Weber inevitably spring to mind. But it is not the aim of the present study to test theoretical frameworks or to develop them further. Rather we want to capture the attitudes and utterances of working people and their views on work, society and poli­tics. Many political parties are currently claiming that their policies are aimed at the»hard working middle«. But who does that refer to? What characterises the working popula­tion? Is there still a working class? Where is it positioned in society? And what are its political demands? »I would say the middle layer, the working class, so re­ally the class that makes up most of society.« That is how one young man from Bochum who graduated from school at 16 and now works in a hardware store replied to the question of where he sees himself in society. Indeed, many others replied in a similar way and thus it presents the dif­ferentiation of working society pretty accurately. People working in the service sector count themselves as part of the working class and at the same time as part of the mid­dle stratum of majority society. No difference or contradic­tion is seen between working class and middle stratum. They are regarded as pretty much the same thing. A sales assistant in a butcher’s shop from Leipzig confirmed this, putting himself in the working class, which for him be­longs to the»normal middle[part of society], neither rich nor poor«. We categorise working people from the manu­facturing and service sectors as belonging to the»new working class«, and in some cases even office workers, small business owners(or small traders) and the solo self-employed. Another novelty is the need to recognise the proportion of women in this new class, given that they predominate among service workers and office clerks. Even we were surprised by some of the survey findings. Half of respondents feel they belong to the working class, but at the same time the large majority of occupational groups from manufacturing and services put themselves in the middle of society. Jena sociologist Klaus Dörre identi­fies the reason for this crowding of the working class into the middle part of society as»a potent self-conception of society’s middle that almost obliterates class issues«(Dörre 2019: 26). The desire for social recognition, to belong to the middle stratum, is very pronounced. People work to be part of the middle. Belonging to the middle connotes the promise of prosperity, equal opportunities and being a re­spectable member of society. This view that one is part of the majority of society was also put forward by a hairdresser from Leipzig:»You aren’t alone. There’s a lot of us.« On this basis the working class are the people»who keep the show on the road«, as a pro­duction worker(manufacture of switch cabinets) from Thuringia put it. But even though our survey respondents regard themselves as making up the social majority it doesn’t manifest itself in any kind of collective strength because»solidarity doesn’t really exist any more«, as an energy system installer from Bochum expressed it. Anoth­er reason for the lack of(societal) strength is the absence of a sense of»self-efficacy«, or in the words of a produc­tion worker in the pharmaceutical industry from Berlin »someone from the working class has less of a feeling … that they can change things«. Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser point out in their book Trigger Points that groups further down the»social hierarchy« tend to»feel less competence or au­thority to talk about politics« and indeed tend to have a less coherent sense of their social position(Mau et al. 2023: 391). We were unable to discern any kind of collec­tive identity as a working class characterised by a strong sense of belonging together, not to mention common polit­ical aims, in contrast to an everyday sense of belonging. Or to put it another way, we found a class in itself rather than a class for itself. What members of this class have in common is that they are people»who really have to work for their money and don’t have much left over«, according to a senior in­dustrial electrician from Hamburg. Many of those we spoke to say they are doing well, but they often worry about falling down the social ladder. A warehouse worker from Cologne was clear that he knew what it would mean to fall off the edge:»I know where it is.« Such self-descrip­tions are often linked to statements about a lack of recog­nition or appreciation as pillars of society. To that extent these self-attributions tally with chronicler of inequality Julia Friedrichs’ observations:»the working class looks dif­ferent from a hundred years ago, but they are still people who work to earn the money they need to live on«(Frie­4 WORKING CLASS IN THE MIDDLE?  NOVEMBER  2024  FES diskurs