My frustration is that the “class” in “middle class” as they are using the phrase is not even a member of the same set of classes as the “working” and “capital class” you are describing. It is a member of the set that includes “lower” and “upper class” that describe social status, and doesn’t say anything about control of the means of production. It reflects a social pecking order and pretends there is no real underlying hard power dynamic. Their “middle class” has none of the political implications of Marxist theory. American mythology says these classes are fluid and people move between them through effort or lack of sufficient character, and doesn’t have anything insightful to say about the nature of capital.
It’s frustrating because whether intentional or not, it serves to confound understanding and discussion of social dynamics in terms of capital and labour.
Fair point. It also highlights why I consistently will use any other words than upper and lower (though I don’t think I’ve consciously acknowledged or analyzed that before). I never really had a reaction to middle because it is largely defined in terms of relationship to those between which it sits anyway. But upper and lower carry so little information about the power dynamic as to be deliberately vague.
And while I don’t think “class” as a designation of social status is really meant to imply no hierarchy of power, it certainly does downplay and obscure the underlying mechanism. I think the reason I like keeping it is that it ties the social hierarchies people recognize (and with “capital” the economic system they at least acknowledge) to the actual mechanisms giving one control over the other.
I don’t think it is very meaningful to speak of a middle class between labour and capital. These are people who control what you might call a subsistence level of their own means of production. They can be wiped out at the whim of the ruling class. It’s a useful lie for the ruling class, and since no one likes to think of themselves as being in the “bottom class,” labour are eager to repeat the lie to themselves that they are above that.
My frustration is that the “class” in “middle class” as they are using the phrase is not even a member of the same set of classes as the “working” and “capital class” you are describing. It is a member of the set that includes “lower” and “upper class” that describe social status, and doesn’t say anything about control of the means of production. It reflects a social pecking order and pretends there is no real underlying hard power dynamic. Their “middle class” has none of the political implications of Marxist theory. American mythology says these classes are fluid and people move between them through effort or lack of sufficient character, and doesn’t have anything insightful to say about the nature of capital.
It’s frustrating because whether intentional or not, it serves to confound understanding and discussion of social dynamics in terms of capital and labour.
Fair point. It also highlights why I consistently will use any other words than upper and lower (though I don’t think I’ve consciously acknowledged or analyzed that before). I never really had a reaction to middle because it is largely defined in terms of relationship to those between which it sits anyway. But upper and lower carry so little information about the power dynamic as to be deliberately vague.
And while I don’t think “class” as a designation of social status is really meant to imply no hierarchy of power, it certainly does downplay and obscure the underlying mechanism. I think the reason I like keeping it is that it ties the social hierarchies people recognize (and with “capital” the economic system they at least acknowledge) to the actual mechanisms giving one control over the other.
I don’t think it is very meaningful to speak of a middle class between labour and capital. These are people who control what you might call a subsistence level of their own means of production. They can be wiped out at the whim of the ruling class. It’s a useful lie for the ruling class, and since no one likes to think of themselves as being in the “bottom class,” labour are eager to repeat the lie to themselves that they are above that.