Everyone knows what I'm talking about, even the few decent politicians we have are constantly bemoaning the "disappearance of the middle class," and we here in lefty land usually have the same response, which goes something like "So your saying the solution to the disparity of rich and poor is to invent a conceptual middle ground and focus all your attention on that, instead of the divide itself. Smells like liberalism to me."
I still agree with this, but I got to thinking the other day, and I think the instinct to talk about the "middle class" may actually be a latent anti-capitalist instinct coming out. This is pretty rough around the edges, it was just a stray train of thought, but the way I see it, Capitalism wants to mediate all human experience through the market, through transaction, through money. People, I think instinctively, feel this tendency to basically flatten all of life, and naturally revolt. Problem is, of course, that to most people, capitalism is unambiguously good, or at the very least, necessary in the same way air is necessary to breathe, and it's difficult to square that contradiction.
This, I think, is where the "middle class" comes in, it is essentially a category of people who live under capitalism, with all that entails, but who instinctively revolt against defining their existence in capitalist terms (i.e. wealth, money, possessions, etc). Rich and poor are both categories defined by their relation to capitalism, whereas the "middle class" is completely nebulous vis-a-vis relations of production, so defining yourself as such opens, or perhaps leaves open, the possibility of identifying your existence in some other fashion. Essentially calling yourself middle class means that you'd prefer not to (:zizek:) think of yourself predominantly in market terms, which is a privilege the truly destitute don't have, hence the connotation of comfortableness associated with it, but I do think it's indicative of an instinct that runs counter to the totalizing nature of capitalism.
Thoughts?
EDIT: Based on many responses, I think I was unclear about something crucial, which is that I’m am referring to the mindset of an average American who isn’t particularly political who passively identifies with the term middle class when invoked by politicians or others.
If you're US American... a lot of the times (but certainly not all) the phrase "middle class" is just white peoples' way of referring to white folks without explicitly saying it, because that's no longer socially acceptable. But next time you hear a politician or a white person talk about the "middle class", try substituting "white people" instead and see what the sentence is saying if you make that change. It's a way to demand policies that disproportionately help white folks without explicitly saying so.
Racism is baked into the concept for sure, but I dont think your average “apolitical” American who thinks of himself as middle class is consciously aware of that. That being said, There’s a lot of other responses here that show how correct I was to say the idea is rough around the edges.
Oh sure, I don't want to imply it's always used that way, and certainly when people think of themselves as middle class, it's something different than what I'm talking about.