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The "middle class" never existed. The "middle class" is an invented wedge to split the working class and try to turn segments of itself, against itself. It has no material basis. It is the 'myth of upward mobility under capitalism' distilled into a propaganda phrase to obscure the dualistic and antagonistic class relations in capitalist society between the PROPERTIED and UNPROPERTIED (those who own capital and those who do not), and the contradictions and conflicts therein.
It is false consciousness; personified by and in the 'middle manager' who is PROPERTYLESS (proletarian), but paid more and promised the "opportunity of more to come" to align themselves with the interests of the PROPERTIED, and take on the role of a low-level overseer -- to function as both a compliance enforcer and a mediative focus-dulling pain-sponge standing in the middle of, and soaking up the conflict between, the ONLY REAL TWO CLASSES IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY: The Worker, and the Capitalist.
"Middle class" is liberal sleight-of-hand in its core and conception, and a term to be derided and discarded in all use, except as a magnifying glass to show the ways capitalism distorts and deceives about the real nature of its own properties and relations; and how the ruling class generates and contributes to the development of false consciousness through their reframing of production's own characteristics, in order to reify into political "identities" to be captured and capitalized upon those roles which naturally manifest out of the laws of functional industrial-productive logistics, ie. the need for 'managers' to administrate complex or large-scale productive and distributive tasks. This serves double roles in the laws of colonial and imperial relations in places like the USA, as this distinction is also in practice highly racialized and rooted in the ongoing historical unfolding of these basal-and-superstructural systems of exploitation.
Make note of the conspicuous absences and obfuscations when duopolist-exploiter X or Y says they "fight for the middle class;" that they are not fighting for you or me in the working class, but pandering to those "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" that they've bought off enough or otherwise tricked into this false consciousness, to give them their ever-shrinking electoral margins they require and fight each other over so they don't have to pay any mind to the working class masses who make up the majority; because they in reality work for the big bourgeois, the capitalists, and the petty-bourgeois "small business tyrants" who think of themselves as capitalists --- all at the expense of the working class domestically and abroad.
This guy capitalisms ^
For those who haven't had their coffee yet this morning - 'middle class' is yet another term they use to divide us and make us fight with each other instead of the real enemy
Yeah I'm for sure reading that later. My brain is just reading this like one of those sovereign citizen rants right now, despite there actually being valid points. I think it's the emphasised word that's messing with me.
Hell of a 'first post reply of the day'
In this context, I guess the self-employed would be an intermediate 'middle class'. A doctor or accountant with her own practice, a master tradesman who can pick and choose his clients, a programmer who does contract work for companies - none of them are propertied enough to have their own workers, but neither are they employed by a boss who takes a cut of their pay. But I agree that a lot of people who call themselves middle class are actually either upper class or working class.
Are we talking US here?
We have great upward mobility here though and it's a capitalistic country.
Social mobility only describes the ability of the hierarchy to reorder itself. It does not negate or even mitigate the fact that most people are poor.
interesting, how does one become a billionaire in such a way that anyone and everyone could do it?
Oh, you had to be a billionaire to be middle class? I never knew that.
If there's no way to get to the top, how is the upward mobility "great"?
Being a billionaire is so extremely rare so it doesn't matter. Social mobility is the ability to move from lower to middle or upper class not from lower to the extreme upper class.
Then define your terms, what is the mobility method, what are the bounds of the classes and by what metric and, what is excellent/great/good/average/poor/bad/terrible mobility?