The Middle-Class

[Autodidakt]

I've posted below a piece that I wrote for my blog here, but it seems that not so many people actually read the blogs. Now, I wrote this piece a while ago and some of my views of it have already changed a little. I would actually like to hear what all of you think of the middle-class. Do you think it actually exists or is it actually the working-class? Or, perhaps something else. The piece was written to be persuasive, but more than anything else, it should spur some discussion; I hope to learn a lot about our movement from it. I'm still trying to find myself in the spectrum of the Rev.Left-wing, so be nice. :rolleyes:


Comrades, I see an urgent danger to our cause. We as socialists have always prided ourselves with being 'in touch' with the needs of the people we wish to serve, to empower and embolden. It is this belief that has, in the past, led us to victories in so many places, destroying feudalism across the world. Now with capitalism showing once more its failings, we must look at ourselves and determine who we are willing to make our enemies. With this determination comes our greatest danger: ignoring the rise of the middle class.

When communist and socialist movements became mainstream and became succesful in the recruitment of workers, there were but two classes, fighting each other: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the ruling-class and the working-class. There was a small middle-class at the time, usually doctors and university professors, but most of them had come from the ruling class and remained in that class. It was indeed a minor aspect of early 19th century society.

Today we face, in so called developed nations, the challenge of gaining the middle-class as comrades in our goal of achieving socialism. The middle-class was born from the working-class in the industrial revolution; they were the poor people who managed to lie and cheat their way into becoming the foremen in or even the owners of factories in the United States. They were the people who lived decent lives and defied the rules of class before they were bought out by the ruling class with money and rewards.

Since the 1950s, in the US, Canada and Europe, the middle class became something new. From the last truly industrial decade of the 1940s, came the middle class, who with more money from saving and bonds from the Second World War could buy more from the mass-produced items the countries then had the ability to make. They were no longer the workers in the factories. With the GI Bill allowing US soldiers to go to college after the war, people were more educated and universities became havens for this new class of people who could perform more high-task jobs for lower pay. Engineers, doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, government workers and adminstrators, even some members of the House of Representatives formed the middle-class we have today.

With the switch from production economies to service economies, the 'developed world' has become dominated by the middle class, what many leftists might call petty-bourgeoisie. In short, society has changed. This is why I find myself almost cringing when I hear leftists speak about organising the workers in America and Europe. It is not because I despise or look down upon workers--I don't. My family, until my father and mother, were members of the working class. I almost cringe because America's and Europe's working class is either non-existent or they've been bought out by social-democrats so much that they no longer desire major changes, becoming entrenched in the conventionalism of today's politics as usual, a feeling that has become so common. ("It's always been this way and it'll always be that way. I don't wanna change it.")

Some comes my major point. We socialists have always believed we were in touch with the wants and needs of the people we wished to support and give determination to. That worked until we ran into the middle-class. The largest problem with the middle class is that they feel they are close to being rich and they believe that they wouldn't want higher taxes if they were rich and they wouldn't want to pay for someone else's care if they were rich.

Because the middle-class feels that way, leftists are inclined to ignore them and even in some cases brand them as an enemy. This is dangerous, comrades. We face a majority who believes they will be rich some day and we have a ruling minority who is willing to exploit that belief. The classes have changed and the conflict is still there, but this time it's the ruling-class trying send the middle-class, who broke the rules by beginning to live like real people, back down to the bottom.

So, I bid you, comrades, do not make enemies of these people. The middle-class has defied the ruling-class by existing. We cannot afford to alienate them and we don't need to if we want to overthrow the ruling-class. If every occupation were middle-class occupation, the workers and democrats will have triumphed. In America and Europe, socialism will come with a revolution of the middle-class.

When I refer to socialism, I am simply using it as an all encompassing term for our belief systems from anarchism to Stalinism. It's easier than listing all the different names. Now that I think of it I probably should have used 'leftism'. Oh, well. enjoy.

-Autodidakt

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The vast majority of what Capitalist sociological models call the 'middle class' are indeed a definite part of the working class. A minority are petty bourgeoisie, and an even smaller minority are part of the ruling class.

The term 'middle class' is simply an invention of Capitalist sociologists, steeped in this culture of 'aspiration' that seems to have taken over the minds of people, having been put out there by Capitalist propaganda.

[Daz]

I would actually like to hear what all of you think of the middle-class. Do you think it actually exists or is it actually the working-class? Or, perhaps something else.
I don't really believe in class and don't find it very useful for catergorizing people. The so called middle class are under the same pressure of making a living as people with less money.

[Sleeper]

I agree with Daz and DemSoc, though I give you credit, Autodidakt, on a well-thought out and immaculately constructed essay.

Where the petty-bourgeoisie and the ruling class are concerned, they could just quit doing everything, right now, and be set for the rest of their lives' financially. Of course, that is more of a case-by-case with the petty-bourgeoisie but it is definitely true of the ruling class. Because, really, what does the ruling class do anyway beisdes rule?

The middle-class and the working class are not diametrically opposed to one another and are, in fact, largely the same thing. In either case the result of, "Just quitting," would be economic devastation and destitution for both themselves and for their families.

Don't be alarmed, this is good news because it means the majority can still have a common goal as they did with all Leftist Revolutions.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Thanks for posting this here for the discussion and second what Daz said about your essay - yeah the blogs generally don't seem to generate much back and forth.

First, I agree with the comrade that most of what people call "middle class" is really working class. Like I say in my Jeff-Foxworthy-esque (but radical) stand-up comedy routine: If you have to sell your labor to make your living... then you are most likely a proletariat. Beyond that even people who are actually part of the petty bourgeois, can be convinced that working class rule will be better than capitalist rule. This is how many intellectuals or academics are convinced: do you want to live in a society that produces massive crime and violence, war, poverty, lets disease spread rather than provide health care for everyone? Would you like to be a doctor or teacher in capitalism who is not given the time (too many students/too many patients) or tools (restrictions on costly preventative care/not enough supplies and textbooks) to do a quality job or one in a society that actually teats these things as a primary priority?


When communist and socialist movements became mainstream and became succesful in the recruitment of workers, there were but two classes, fighting each other: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the ruling-class and the working-class.Actually I'd say that when Marx was writing through to WWII, the working class was smaller than it is today and there were many places (like in Russia) where the peasantry was still a major class. Now much of the world has been incorporated into capitalism in and widespread but uneven way - this means that places like India, Brazil, have huge working classes, not just places in Western Europe and the US.

in the communist manifesto Marx talked about there being two main contending classes (capital and labor) but that there were many shades of gray and other classes in the mix but that the tendency was that people were pulled to one or the other "pole" of bourgeois or proletariat.


Some comes my major point. We socialists have always believed we were in touch with the wants and needs of the people we wished to support and give determination to. That worked until we ran into the middle-class. The largest problem with the middle class is that they feel they are close to being rich and they believe that they wouldn't want higher taxes if they were rich and they wouldn't want to pay for someone else's care if they were rich. I think we need to separate "perceptions" from the materialist class interests. Even in 1935 there were factory workers with ruling class ideas or reactionary ideas not too different from what you are describing above. Why wouldn't most people have these ideas when they live in a society where the schools, universities, media, churches, and politicians 99% of the time are reflecting ruling class ideas and values? What's remarkable is that because of material realities for the working class, people actually (and frequently) break from these ideas. All the media and politicians and other figures of authority can tell workers that the Iraq war is good, but after a while when people see the realities, they break from what they were told. Unfortunately because the organized left is small and weak, people break from some ruling class ideas only to adapt other ones usually. So people stop believing the media because the press keeps saying that the recession is over and the economy is good again... rather than going from that to a socialist consciousness, people fill in the gaps with conspiracy theories or reactionary scapegoating or wishful thinking or just get depressed and become cynical about everything.

[Daz]

Where the petty-bourgeoisie and the ruling class are concerned, they could just quit doing everything, right now, and be set for the rest of their lives' financially. Of course, that is more of a case-by-case with the petty-bourgeoisie but it is definitely true of the ruling class. Because, really, what does the ruling class do anyway beisdes rule?

The middle-class and the working class are not diametrically opposed to one another and are, in fact, largely the same thing. In either case the result of, "Just quitting," would be economic devastation and destitution for both themselves and for their families.
That is the real dividing line. Those who are free not to participate in the workforce and remain comfortable and those whose only real choices are work, dependence or destitution.

[Floyce White]

It's admirable of you to admit that you are from petty-bourgeois family. You prove my point for me. Here's an excerpt from my March 1, 2002 article "No Compromise With Capitalism":

What role do capitalists have in the self-organization of the working class? None. How can it be the self-organization of the working class if capitalists are involved? It cannot be. This simple logic has no apparent flaws and is confronted by roundabout contortions. Some argue that communism does not come from the self-organization of the working class. In this series of articles, I show that the movement of the poor is undermined by the intervention of the rich. Without self-organization, capitalist-led dual-class alliances use liberalism to divide and conquer working-class activists. Capitalist-led workers’ revolts help small capitalists replace big capitalists as the ruling exploiters. Any compromise on the principle of workers’ self-organization condemns humanity to another generation of class warfare.

Another way to attack the self-organization of the working class is to define classes as something other than property classes. In this way, capitalists can pretend to be working-class people and can continue to infiltrate workers’ groups and prevent self-organization. For example, classes could be defined by occupation. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker–all are forms of work, so all doers of work are supposedly working class. Managers, executives, and “the bosses” are seen as “real” capitalists. If the butcher also owns a rent house, we are told to ignore it. Of course, the butcher’s tenants are still exploited. They continue to rent according to the conditions dictated by property owners. The tenants pay off the mortgage and the landlord gets the deed. The landlord then takes out another mortgage and uses it to buy yet another rent house. The family of the butcher inherits the property and continues the cycle of capital circulation and accumulation. The tenants are exploited in exactly the same way regardless of whether the rent house is sold to a bank, a management company, a government agency, a co-op, or a family. The relation of landlord to tenant is a social relation of violence. It is a form of capitalist rule. To tell tenants that some landlords are their friends and allies is to betray the struggles of hundreds of millions of working-class families who have small landlords, small employers, or buy from small merchants. The kicker is that this method also looks at ownership to determine whether a “real” (big) capitalist is “really” exploiting tenants. Defining classes by occupation has such glaring flaws as to be a way of disguising capitalist relations rather than exposing them. As long as the landlord, employer, merchant, or investor can successfully hide the extent of his family’s business activity, he can use definition of classes by what-little-you-know-about-his-occupation to suppress your struggle against his capitalism.

. . . . Petty capitalists don’t want you to recognize them as capitalists. They say whatever is needed to advance their property interests. To you it is dishonesty–to them it is “Marxism” or some other dogma of “absolute truth.” They ask you to compromise on the principle of self-organization. They ask you to compromise on the definition of classes. Previous generations of working-class activists compromised and compromised until there were no principles left to concede. Then workers slaughtered each other in world wars and wars for the “liberation” of local small capitalists. To avoid the inevitable consequences of compromise, we must compromise no more. Big or small, all capitalists are the enemy.

http://web.archive.org/web/20071005064847/http://www.geocities.com/antiproperty/index.html

[Autodidakt]

Thanks for all the comments. It turns out, I haven't read the Manifesto recently, and because of that I went through it yesterday. I think you always get more from it each time you read it. It turns out, Marx already answered the question of the middle-class, placing the vast majority of its members in the proletariat, thereby making the entirety of my essay pretty much nothing. It was also written outside of my normal style because sometimes I feel that my writing can sound pretentious. Thus, I used the terms working-class and ruling-class instead of bourgeois and proletariat. With all the confusion that comes from such over-used terms, I think I'm going to use the traditional names in the future.

I've also realised, through my reading yesterday, that I do not fall under the category of petty-bourgeois. I do however respect those who are Socialists and will admit it, just as Floyce White said above. I'm not sure if it is petty-bourgeois if somone is an intellectual. Marx wrote that the bourgeoisie had stripped itself of any honourable profession such as doctors, lawyers, writers, priests and philosophers. So it seems to me, since I plan on going to university next year and further structured education after that, though with plenty of my own self-led studies as well, I would not be a member of the petty-bourgeoisie. So, is the definition of petty-bourgeoisie more about how people believe, rather than what part they play in economy. For example, is a person who works as a secretary in a law-firm who is struggling with debt and realestate problems, but believes that businesses should be allowed to expand and have more control over economy a member of the petty-bourgeoisie or simply a brainwashed member of the proletariat?

Aside from other minor things I'm dealing with between the different currents of socialist theory, i.e. Marxism, Trotskyism, etc., I have found ti hard to understand what Socialists' view of the world today is, mostly because bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie and proletariat are not well defined. Perhaps, it would be better if I wrote an essay about the defnitions of the 'two camps.'

[Bitter Ashes]

When the middle class learn to be militant then I'll consider them comrades. While they stab each other in the back to make a quick buck then I do my best to pretend they're not there, out of lack of knowing any other response.

[Floyce White]

The upper class claims to own things used by others.

The lower class does not.

[Winter]

Cool blog. Have you considered looking into Maoism, it specifically deals with the middle-class "dilemna".

[syndicat]

How do you understand class? The key thing is to look at class as a relation of domination that arises in social production. The dominating classes are the bosses, the people who dominate those who do not boss or control other workers.

The problem with the conception of "class" often propagated in the media is that it confuses class with income or lifestyle, what possessions you own. But class is about power over others. Exploitation of workers can take place only because of the relatively powerless position of the working class in relation to the employers. We're forced to work for them, and thus work on terms they set, under managers they appoint.

But there are different bases of this power to dominate workers. Marxism traditionally focused on ownership of productive property, that is, means of production and assets that can be used to acquire means of production. Capitalism is a system distinguished by the fact that there is a small minority who have a relative monopoly of ownership over the non-human means of production. These are the capitalists. And there is a large mass of people who don't own productive property of their own through which to make a living, and must seek employment from firms or the state.

In the 19th century there were still large numbers of relatively autonomous producers who owned their own means of production, and maybe hired small numbers of workers...shopkeepers, artisans, farmers, independent professionals like lawyers and doctors. This latter group was called the "petit bourgeosie" by Marxists (and some anarchists also). This label is somewhat misleading, tho. Marx says, rightly, that capital is a social relationship...between capital owners and those hired by them. Hence to be a capitalist you have to have employees. A self-employed artisan who has no employees is therefore not a capitalist. Much of the early working class were former artisans and farmers who had lost their means of production.

But there is a second structure of power over workers in social production, which has become more important in the last century, apart from ownership of means of proudction. When the companies became so big they could no longer be directly managed by the investor entrempreneurs, they began to develop elaborate hierarchies of managers and experts tied to management. Taylorist re-org of work, begun in early 1900s, became standard practice, de-skilling workers and concentrating expertise in particular "professions" that advise management, such as engineers, HR experts, lawyers.

So there emerged another class, the bureaucratic or techno-managerial or coordinator class (it's been called these various things). Some call this the "new middle class" to distinguish it from the small property owning petit bourgeoisie. During the 20th century the petit beorgoisie has shrunk (maybe 6 percent of population now in USA), as Marx predicted, but the techno-managerial class has grown. Managers are now 15% of economically active population in USA. This class doesn't include just managers but also high end professionals who directly advise them, like accountants and engineers. Engineers design products but also equipment and work methods, and do so in ways to control and de-skill workers, thus serving the purposes of management of the firm.

Although "professionals" are sometimes called "middle class" and often think of themselves that way, only part of the professionals are in the bureaucratic or techno-managerial class...mainly lawyers, engineers, architects, doctors. But school teachers, nurses, librarians, your average newspaper reporter, dental hygenists, physical therapists do not manage or control the work of other workers, or participate in management power, but are themselves subject to management. These "professionals" are thus a part of the skilled section of the working class, along with electricians, plumbers, aircraft mechanics.

So there are two classes with intermediate social power between the big business elite (the plutocrats) and the working class, the small business owners and the bureaucratic control class or techno-managerial class.

[Omi]

I consider myself from a middle class background, mainly because my father is a university professor, which means (at least in Holland) that our family can live a rather privileged lifestyle, living in a neighbourhood just out of town, own our own house, almost no crime around the community. And the fact that I am a white, heterosexual male means I do not get the amount of oppression a lot of social groups face.

But my family never employed anyone, and we do not own nor manage any means of production.
That would by the definition people gave here mean we are proletarian, but I would never identify myself with the level of repression and exploitation immigrants and other social groups, let alone third world workers, receive by identifying as a proletarian.
That's a dilemma a lot of us face I think in the ''first world'', and one that has not yet been clarified by Marxist analysis, at least that I am aware of.

Maybe we need a new definition of the social classes as we know them in the first world, which is not surprising since there was almost no change in terminology in revolutionary circles that I am aware of since WWII, although a lot has changed since then.

[syndicat]

In USA professors at the top universities are supervisors over their support staff, research and teaching assistants, control access to journals and often do consulting with companies. It is this degree of control over work of others that puts them in the techno-managerial class.

But if you go down the educational hierarchy, to, for example, community colleges (2 year colleges), the level of say teachers have here is rather like in high school. There is virtually a class difference here. And there is also in the students. Students at the elite universities in USA are mostly from the elite classes. At 4 year state colleges and community colleges, you have mainly working class students.

In USA, despite huge third world immigration, it is still true that a majority of poor people are native-born whites. Many of them of British or Northern European ancestry. However, immigrants without papers are treated the worst. And employers can simply call up the immigration police and have them deported if they try to organize unions...which nowadays they often do.

In USA there is a major split between the more skilled working class, on the one hand, who do the shrinking number of better paid jobs, and the lower working class, who are very poorly paid, have insecure or temporary positions, often have no access to medical insurance, and even suffer having their pay stolen by the bosses.