Middle class

History and evolution of the term

The term "middle class" has a long history and has had many, sometimes contradictory, meanings. It was once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry of Europe. While the nobility owned the countryside, and the peasantry worked the countryside, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city. This had the result that the middle class were often the wealthiest stratum of society (whereas today many take the term to refer by definition to the only-moderately wealthy). In France, the middle classes helped drive the French Revolution^{[citation needed]}

Current usage

In early industrial capitalism, the middle class was defined primarily as white-collar workers—those who worked for wages, but did so in conditions that were comfortable and safe compared to the conditions for blue-collar workers of the "working class." The expansion of the phrase "middle class" in the United States appears to have been predicated in the 1970s by the decline of labour unions in the U.S. and the entrance of formerly domestic women into the public workforce. A great number of pink-collar jobs arose, where people could avoid the dangerous conditions of blue-collar work and therefore claim to be "middle class" even if they were making far less money than a unionised blue-collar worker.

In the United States by the end of the twentieth century, more people identified themselves as middle class than as lower or "working" class, with insignificant numbers identifying themselves as upper class. In contrast, in the United Kingdom, in recent surveys up to two-thirds of Britons identify themselves as working class. This can reasonably be attributed to the wish to avoid the pejorative connotation described above. Nonetheless the British Labour Party, which grew out of the organized labour movement and originally drew almost all of its support from the working class, reinvented itself under Tony Blair in the 1990s as "New Labour," a party competing with the Conservative Party for the votes of the middle class as well as the working class.

The size of the middle class depends on how it is defined, whether by education, wealth, environment of upbringing, genetic relationships, social network, manners or values, etc. These are all related, though far from deterministically dependent. The following factors are often ascribed in modern usage to a "middle class":

Achievement of tertiary education.
Holding professional qualifications, including academics, lawyers, engineers, doctors, and clergymen regardless of their leisure or wealth.
Belief in bourgeois values, such as high rates of house or long-term lease ownership and jobs which are perceived to be "secure."
Lifestyle. In the United Kingdom, social status has historically been linked less directly to wealth than in the United States, and has also been judged by pointers such as accent, manners, place of education, occupation and the class of a person's family, circle of friends and acquaintances.
Cultural identification. Often in the United States, the middle class are the most eager participants in pop culture. The second generation of new immigrants will often enthusiastically forsake their traditional folk culture as a sign of having arrived in the middle class.

Marxism and the middle class

Marxism does not necessarily see the groups described above as the middle class. The middle class is not a fixed category within Marxism, and debate continues as to the content of this social group.

Marxism defines social classes not according to the wealth or prestige of their members, but according to their relationship with the means of production: a noble owns land; a capitalist owns capital; a worker has the ability to work and must seek employment in order to make a living. However, between the rulers and the ruled there is most often a group of people, often called a middle class, which lacks a specific relationship. Historically, during feudalism, the bourgeoisie were that middle class. People often describe the contemporary bourgeoisie as the "middle class from a Marxist point of view", but this is incorrect.^{[citation needed]} Marxism states that the bourgeoisie are the ruling class (or upper class) in a capitalist society.

Marxists vigorously debate the exact composition of the middle class under capitalism. Some describe a "co-ordinating class" which implements capitalism on behalf of the capitalists, composed of the petit bourgeoisie, professionals and managers. Others dispute this, freely using the term "middle class" to refer to affluent white-collar workers as described above (even though, in Marxist terms, they are part of the proletariat—the working class). Still others (for example, Council communists and advocates of [[Participatory Economics|Participatory Economics) allege that there is a class comprising intellectuals, technocrats and managers which seeks power in its own right. This last group of communists allege that such technocratic middle classes seized power and government for themselves in Soviet-style societies (see co-ordinatorism).

References

Brian W. Cashell: Who Are the “Middle Class”?, CRS Report for the Congress, March 20, 2007

NOW on PBS: Middle Class Insecurity Are politicians listening to middle-class families on the edge of economic collapse?

History and evolution of the term

Current usage

Marxism and the middle class

See also

References