explain the features of the new middle class
Answers
Answer:
The new middle class differs absolutely from the old.
The members of the new middle class are not self-supporting, independent industrial units;
They are in the service of others, those who possess the capital necessary to the undertaking of enterprises.
But this new middle class has a character altogether different from that of the old one.
That it stands between capitalists and laborers and subsists on a medium income constitutes its only resemblance to the small bourgeoisie of former times.
But this was the least essential characteristic of the small bourgeois class.
In its essential character, in its economic function, the new middle class differs absolutely from the old.
Explanation:
The middle class is the one which stands between the highest and the lowest strata of society.
Above it is the class of great capitalists; below it the proletariat, the class of wage-workers.
It constitutes the social group with medium incomes.
Accordingly, it is not divided with equal sharpness from both of the other two classes.
From the great capitalist the small bourgeois is distinguished only by a difference of degree;
He has a smaller amount of capital, a more modest business.
Therefore the question as to who belongs to this small bourgeois class is difficult to answer.
Every capitalist who suffers from the competition of still greater capitalists denounces those above him and cries out for help on behalf of the middle class.
In great social disturbances, general strikes, e. g., they may sometimes stand by the workers and so increase their strength; they will be the more likely to do this in cases in which such a policy is directed against reaction.
On other occasions they may side with the capitalists. Those of them in the lower strata will make common cause with a “reasonable” Socialism, such as is represented by the Revisionists.
But the power which will overthrow capitalism can never come from anywhere outside the great mass of proletarian.