According to the US thinktank, Brookings Institution, 3.8 billion people can now be defined as “middle class” or “rich”. The four categories in the Brookings analysis were poor, vulnerable, middle class and rich. Notice what’s missing? The working class.
Brookings’ use of middle class as a synonym for “not poor” may simply reflect a distinctively American practice. “Middle class” is often used in US discussions as a way of talking about “ordinary folk.”
In 2009, the Economist was celebrating that “more than half the world is middle class”.
Marx analysed class through the relationship to the means of production. Capitalists owned factories, workers had nothing to sell but their labour power.
Sociologists established more complex stratifications, based variously on differences in employment, wealth or education.
Given their place in the economy and society, workers, as individuals, possess few means to defend their interests, influence debate or change social structures. Only collectively can they do so. Hence the importance to the working class of communities, unions and collective action. What has been created in this process is not a new middle class, but a new working class. A working class that is often forced to labour in appalling conditions, with minimal wages and few rights. Those who through their toil have helped create growth rarely receive their share of the wealth.
In China, according to World Bank figures, 800 million people have risen out of poverty in the past 40 years. In China inequalities have grown sharply. All of which is generating new forms of class conflicts and labour movement struggles. It is the outcome of such struggles, that will define the future.
Adapted from here
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/as-global-poverty-declines-we-should-beware-new-class-wars
Brookings’ use of middle class as a synonym for “not poor” may simply reflect a distinctively American practice. “Middle class” is often used in US discussions as a way of talking about “ordinary folk.”
In 2009, the Economist was celebrating that “more than half the world is middle class”.
Marx analysed class through the relationship to the means of production. Capitalists owned factories, workers had nothing to sell but their labour power.
Sociologists established more complex stratifications, based variously on differences in employment, wealth or education.
Given their place in the economy and society, workers, as individuals, possess few means to defend their interests, influence debate or change social structures. Only collectively can they do so. Hence the importance to the working class of communities, unions and collective action. What has been created in this process is not a new middle class, but a new working class. A working class that is often forced to labour in appalling conditions, with minimal wages and few rights. Those who through their toil have helped create growth rarely receive their share of the wealth.
In China, according to World Bank figures, 800 million people have risen out of poverty in the past 40 years. In China inequalities have grown sharply. All of which is generating new forms of class conflicts and labour movement struggles. It is the outcome of such struggles, that will define the future.
Adapted from here
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/as-global-poverty-declines-we-should-beware-new-class-wars
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