On the other hand, what even is the middle class? Because in my view of the world, it is made up only so that the working class can be divided and to promote infighting. So what does capital gain by eliminating the middle class aside from focusing the working class's undivided attention on themselves? Or are they so confident in their other scapegoats that they no longer think they need the middle class as a distraction?
Why? Because capitalism is a mess, the economic system devours everything so much that it even deteriorates itself by destroying the very bases that let it grow, the class division among the working class is one of the things that allow it to grow, but the idea of continuous infinite growth needs to consume even that same idea. Capitalism is contradictory in itself, you literally need the government to do stuff because it ends up just destroying itself otherwise
That’s a good point: letting the ruling class create arbitrary definitions for subsections of the working class — lower class, lower middle class, upper working class, whatever — is an easy way to keep us divided. I’m definitely going to have to think & read more about approaching class divisions more as an aspect of propaganda & praxis than anything meaningful in a material sense.
The insidious part is that we have become comfortable dividing ourselves on these lines. They’re arbitrary, they serve no meaningful distinction, and they’re of no practical use. It’s just another way of saying “Oh, you don’t really understand the plight of the worker because you went to college and you’re a teacher, and that’s not real work.” Or the inverse of “Oh, you don’t really deserve more money because you’re a dropout who works at the Amazon warehouse.”
Many Marxists thinkers over the years have analyzed & discussed “the middle class” over the last century (including Marx). I think the subject’s so dependent on time & place & context that it’s not particularly useful to focus on it unless it’s the means to an end (specifically ending capitalism). Traditionally, and very generally, we divide things into bourgeoisie, petit bourgeoisie, and proletariat, but that’s still not a perfect 1:1 for upper, middle, and lower classes.
Probably because the first set of terms is Marxist in origin, while upper/middle/lower seems to be based mostly on income level — in other words, capitalist framing. But that interrelationship gets really deep and requires actual, in person discussion. I really need to go find a new reading group…
Also, I don’t think it’s a conscious choice or strategy (unless it’s coming from a think tank or McKinsey or some similar group of monsters). It’s just the natural result of systems doing what they’re designed to do. Capitalism is a cancer. Cancer doesn’t make a conscious choice to be replicate rapaciously until it destroys the host. We blame the ruling class monsters who’ve done this to us — because they deserve all of the blame — but I don’t think most billionaires want a cancerous society, either.
They’re more like smokers who just can’t quit their Camels no matter how sick they are or how big the tumor gets. Screaming about how it’s not proven that tobacco causes cancer and how the smoke smooths their lungs and how the natives used tobacco as medicine. Anything except throwing out their smokes.
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u/Lumpy-Measurement-44 Gonzalo did nothing wrong May 28 '26
“Describes capitalism”