On the economic identification of the new middle class

Abstract

This essay attempts to define the new middle class from an economic standpoint, with particular reference to the capitalist production relations. These relations bind the three elements of the capitalist production process and can be regarded from the view point of the ownership of the means of production, of productiveness, and of the function performed (i.e. whether the agent performs the function of capital or the function of labour). Thus, the capitalist production relations are the relations binding (1) the non-owner of the means of production/the producer/the labourer (2) the owner of the means of production/the non-producer/the non-labourer and (3) the means of production. Thus, the element of the function performed is introduced within the capitalist production relations. A sizable part of the essay attempts to define precisely what is the meaning of performing the function of labour (i.e. to be the labourer) and of performing the function of capital (i.e. to be the non-labourer). Once this has been done, the working class and the capitalist class are identified in terms of correspondence between the three aspects of the production relations while the middle class is identified in terms of non-correspondence. Thus, the new middle class is identified as all those agents who, while not owning the means of production, perform the global function of capital. Emphasis is laid on the part of the new middle class which is by far the most important, i.e. on those agents who perform both the global function of capital and the function of the collective worker. Proletarianisation of these agents is explained in terms both of devaluation of their labour power (a tendency common to all phases of capitalism) and in terms of the progressive disappearance, for the majority of the agents making up the new middle class, of the global function of capital vis-à-vis the function of the collective worker (and this is the aspect peculiar to monopoly capitalism).