The "middle class" again

More than two-thirds of Britons now claim to be middle class, a Daily Telegraph poll has found.

66 per cent of voters now consider themselves to be middle class, while less than a third say that they are working class. The poll found that most people considered that those earning between £40,000 and £60,000 were middle class, with an annual salary of £20,000 or less deemed to be that of the working classes. An income of £100,000 a year is seen by a majority of voters as wealthy, those who earn at that level still consider themselves to be middle class.60 per cent disagree with the proposition that Britain is a fair country where all children have a broadly equal chance of doing well whatever their background. And despite 13 years of a Labour government, a higher proportion 45 per cent think Britain is actually a less fair country than it was in the 1990s.Around half thought the financial gap between rich and poor is too wide.

SOYMB have blogged previously on the issue of class identification.We argue that what class you are in is defined by the position in which you stand with regard to the means of production.The job you do and the status it might have, the pay you receive and how you chose to spent it, are irrelevant as long as you are dependent on working for a wage or salary in order to live.Others such as the self-employed – small shopkeepers, independent workers, professional people – whose income is derived from selling some service or other directly to the consumer rather than from selling their labour power to an employer, many of these can be assimilated, in terms of income, to the ordinary worker. The working class is defined socially as those members of capitalist society who are excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production and are therefore forced to get a living by trying to find an employer to buy their labour power.The capitalist class are those people who enjoy a privileged non-work income derived from the surplus value produced by the working class.

What this means is that essentially we are living in a two-class society of capitalists and workers. But what about the “middle class” ?

In the last century, the term was used by the up-and-coming industrial section of the capitalist class in Britain to describe themselves; they were the class between the landed aristocracy (who at that time dominated political power) and the working class. Eventually, however, the middle class of industrial capitalists replaced the landed aristocracy as the ruling class and the two classes merged into the capitalist class we know today. In other words, the 19th century middle class became part of the upper class and disappeared as a “middle class". The term, however, lived on and came to be applied to civil servants, teachers and other such white-collar workers. But there was no justification for this, as such people were clearly workers just as much obliged by economic necessity to sell their ability to work as were factory workers, miners, engine drivers and dockers. The only difference was the type of job they were employed to do – and a certain amount of snobbery attached to it.

The so-called "middle class" are as dependent on what their employer pays them as the working class are. It may be called a salary and come in the form of a monthly cheque rather than a weekly wage packet, but its recipients still need it in order to live. The overwhelming majority of the population are in the same boat, employed, paid a wage, needing to work for a living, at risk of losing their job, pushed around at work, working longer hours and doing less interesting work than they would wish. They shop in the same malls and supermarkets, use the same schools, hospitals and transport systems, are subject to the same laws and government regulations. Above all, they are seen by their employers as a means of creating profit rather than as human beings with feelings and family responsibilities.As far as socialists are concerned, anyone in this situation is a member of the working class, irrespective of their educational background or the accent they speak with.

Living in a larger house and running a couple of cars does not in itself raise someone into another class. Neither does earning a bigger wage. The roller-coaster of capitalism's economy has recently brought thousands of people in this country sharply up against the fact that there is more to it than that. Thousands who thought that taking out a mortgage on a house made them "middle class" were deprived of that delusion by the reality of re-possession. Thousands who assumed they were middle class because they sat in a manager's chair and drove a company car were forced to re-arrange their concepts about society when they got their redundancy notice.

Those who proclaim that "we're all middle class" are not stating a fact. They are putting forward a political programme. They want us to think that we are all just isolated classless individuals who can only improve our lot by our own individual efforts. It is an attempt to disarm the working class ideologically, to get us to give up the idea of collective struggle, whether on the industrial front or to replace capitalism with socialism. While governments continue to fail to solve social problems, while profits continue to be put before needs, while exploitation continues, the class war is not yet over.