External Integration as Internal Force: Middle Class Politics and the “Politics of Backwardness” in Eastern Europe

Abstract

This chapter discusses how the process of dependent development produces specific traits in East European politics, and how these come to work in the relation between limited middle class development and middle class politics. Then it asks how these characteristics relate to Western middle class formation as the paradigmatic reference point of the idea of the middle class, and to the global reorganization of middle class prospects that fuel new middle class politics of the crisis globally. Finally, the chapter turns toward the question whether the current wave of middle class politicization can become a source of antisystemic politics. Regarding this problem, it highlights one additional issue: how dependence on knowledge-based positions affects the ways middle class actors can conceive of the relation between general historical projects and their own interests.