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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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The middle class historically was the loyal servants of the upper class, whose expertise was needed to maintain the system. While they worked for wages they were allowed income sufficient to accumulate surpluses, property, and a facsimile of financial security.
In the 20th century it seemed possible for labor organizing to grant the privileges of the middle class to everyone in society. People who were definitely working-class were able to live like the middle class.
In the 21st century the rich seem to be starting to operate on the idea that, not only can labor be broken and the working class cast back down into hand-to-mouth poverty, but that vast numbers of people in the professions have been misclassified as essential loyal servants and they, too, can be cast down into poverty. I think the end state is that the middle class is squeezed down to the size it was during the gilded age and return to being an afterthought rather than the central focus of our politics.
You are literally just describing how the "middle class" is artificial and manufactured, not an actual thing. High earning working class people are still working class people. Making you think otherwise serves the owning class by dividing the working class and pitting us against each other, and providing a fictional carrot (becoming part of the owning class) and the motivation to step over others to try and get it (but you never will, unless you win a lottery, which is a similar carrot) (E: and no, owning one rental, while still problematic because the essence of landlordism is, doesn't quite make someone part of the owning class, but it will make them much more likely to vote for owning class interests because they've been made to believe they're one of them, or will be soon).
The middle class is real and was originally identified by Engels.
The important distinction for Engels is that the middle class's interest are aligned with the upper class. Importantly: they don't think their interest s are aligned. Their interests really are aligned with the upper class. If you're a solicitor or, say, hat-maker to the king in 18th century England, you owe your social position to upper class largess.
In the 20th century the idea developed that with organizing, the middle class lifestyle is attainable for everyone. This began the era of the "broad middle class" or what Piketty called the "patrimonial middle class." Engel's original middle class in this society was the PMC.
In the late 20th and early 21st century the upper class started a class war, first targeting organized labor. But with that deed done they are now focusing on the ranks of the PMC, which they see as bloated, and they're going through and evicting as many people as they can from it.
If you really think some doctor who owns a nice house 2 cars and maybe a rental property has more interests in common with an oil baron (E: or even just their local property mogul) than with the person who bags their groceries, I honestly don't know what to tell you except that you've bought in to one of the many lies (or structures, or systems) manufactured to divide the working class and keep the owning and ruling class in power and assets.
Yes he does and what's more, he knows it! He's not loyal to the baron because he's an idiot. He's doing so because he knows how his bread is buttered.
Yelling at him that he has "nothing to lose but his chains" won't work because he has a lot to lose besides his chains. In fact he probably suspects (rightly) that his rental property, his medical practice and his fancy car will all be torched in the revolution long before anything happens to the baron.
Yes because that doctor is allowed in the door of the ownership class.
They will have accumulated enough capital over their lives that their children will have a huge head start. If their children repeat their parents success, the grandchildren will be ownership class.
Being more privileged members of the working class still doesn't make them part of the owning class.
As long as they aren't stupid, the grandchildren will not need to work. They will be ownership class.
I know a doctor couple with one child and they are nearing retirement. They have about $5m in savings. In 50 years, including inflation losses, that will be $200 million.
I can tell you the doctors I know think that. They think taxes on the high end are to high and I can't convince them the issue is the tax brackets don't go any higher once it gets to around their compensation level (well and its not collected on investment income and such)
Thinking a thing doesn't make it reality, especially when someone (or society at large) is made to think a certain way by and in service of a construct and the people who implement and enforce it for their own benefit.
This so much. Middle class is just working poor.