"Work hard, save your money, and you can become wealthy - or, at least, "independent!" This is the motto of old-fashioned, "." It expresses the idea that everybody in a capitalist society can participate and compete on the same terms with similar chances of success. It implies that the working class is just a collection of individuals who have not yet established their independence (worked their way up) through "individual initiative," rather than a being permanent class. In the early 19th Century, most Americans (including Abraham Lincoln, f ....