Is a Middle Class a natural occurrence in societies?

[OnionPatch]

I've been listening to Thom Hartmann and he often says that the middle-class is not a natural occurrence and that society is more likely to fall into a sort of feudalism when regulation and taxation is removed.

I believe that in a democracy, we have the right to arrange our economic systems to work for everyone and taxation of the rich is a product of that. I believe that most people inherently understand that as an individual accumulates more and more financial worth, they also have more power in most social systems and this eventually makes the range of income and distribution of resources among the people lopsided. Taxation, labor law and regulation is a way the masses remedy this problem in societies that have middle classes.

I think a big problem in the US is the idea that the middle class just naturally occurs within a given society if the government just keeps its hands off. I think one of the main goals of progressives should be to educate people that a middle class is not a natural occurrence.

Anyway, I'm interested in what you all think about this. Is the middle class a natural occurrence? If not, don't we need to be working harder to make Joe American understand this?

[rodeodance]

1. The mc was created in the US in the mid 1800's--in a direct response to

move away from the 'aristocrasy"---it is NOT natural.

[triguy46]

33. It was my understanding that it happened about 200-300

years earlier with the advent of trade and craft guilds in Amsterdam. T

[lcordero2]

2. It's not a natural occurrence

The middle class was singlehandedly created by FDR. Before FDR, every town was a company town, child labor and 18-20 hour workdays were the norm.

[Cary]

4. Great minds think alike there, lcordero2. (n/t)

[Coastie for Truth]

9. A unique accident of history

a combination of a

* conservative like Henry Ford (who built a car that his workers could afford, and paid his workers so that they could buy his cars)
* a liberal like FDR
concomitantly, the labor union movement
* into this mix - near universal literacy, electricity, telecommunications, and increased productivity of agriculture

BUT FDR was the catalyst.

The "natural order" of society is a small aristocracy and a massive proletariat.

[lcordero2]

23. "proletariat"...I think that this word is one that we should drop

I think using simple and more descriptive words are better.

[Coastie for Truth]

27. If you're of MY generation

it is a simple, descriptive, short hand term.

[Cary]

3. Are you a Keynesian?

Classical economists said that markets work, always and everywhere. Monetarists took up this banner too.

Keynes came along and told us that markets indeed work always and everywhere, in the long run. But in the long run we're all dead.

You have to understand, too, that economics is called "the dismal science" because profits always equal zero (in the long run and this is economic profit, not accounting profit). Therefore I guess you could say that there is always downward profits on wages.

The great middle class in the US was no accident. It was engineered, starting with Roosevelt and it was one of his legacies. Why neo-cons are so hostile to it is beyond me.

[OnionPatch]

8. I don't even know

what a Keynesian is. :)

I'm not an economist or anything like that. Just interested in history and economics. This just makes so much sense to me that I was curious to hear what other people here think.

I wonder also if I'm right in thinking that most Americans, especially Republicans, believe that the middle class just magically happens when government does nothing. I think this is a big problem and we need to educate people specifically about this somehow.

[Vincardog]

10. The NoeCons are hostile to the middle class because it is educated

and aware. The two things that work to keep them in check. The inheritance tax was put in place to keep the privileged few from gaining unfair and permanent positions of power in our society.

The Radical right wants to destroy every government function that provides for the general welfare. The Middle Class in not natural but is is essential to the continued health and progress of America.

The radical right would prefer we return to a world of Dickens inequities, With Them holding all the wealth and power while we are left begging for scraps of coal.

[Union Thug]

16. YOu nailed it. The world of Dickens IS the natural outcome

of "Free Market Capitalism"

[Vincardog]

30. OF unregulated 'Free Market' Not of Fair Markets'

The Radical Right Wing Nuts worship their inherited wealth. They believe that everything must bow to it. The irony is that their insistence on bending everything to their benefit at our expense is leading to the new dark ages.
If we do not take back the House and Senate in 06 and act immediately to reverse the slide into FASCISM we are lost.

Read the PNAC plan published before the SCOTUS illegally gave the Presidency to the current pResident to see their plan and true face.

[Cary]

24. That is the irony.

Consumer spending is 2/3 of GDP. The key to a thriving economy is consumer spending.

Income, or ability to consume, is distributed one way or another. Either you pay wages and salaries to support a certain level of consumption, or you extend credit and then allow people to discharge their debts so that they can become consumers again.

Neo-cons have a bizarre concept of money and property. They think money and property. They fail to understand that money and value are abstractions comprised of many other concepts.

It's so typical of them to over simply and reduce complex concepts, which have evolved over thousands of years, to simplistic notions such as "ownership."

[Union Thug]

5. NO - the middle class grows as a function of government

policy. Read NEW DEAL.

Also, it grows as a result of labor organizing and demanding fair pay and treatment.

Capitalism NATURALLY creates a small aristocracy, a tiny merchant class and a huge underclass.

[lcordero2]

11. the word "underclass" is an understatement

"permanent poor class" might be suitable.

[pitohui]

6. he's right, few societies have had any middle class

you can look at the history of the world & you can see that a middle class is pretty damn rare

if gov't keeps its hands off, there would be no middle class, only slaves and elite

why on earth would it be otherwise?

[Nay]

7. I agree with you that the middle class is not as natural an occurrence

as feudalism, for example, or as natural as the rule of the small # of rich over millions of poor. It seems to me that when small middle classes arose in history (as in Rome or China, perhaps, or Byzantium), they arose as a result of the rich person's need for a class of intellectuals or merchants or skilled tradesmen to do more than just the scutwork that any anonymous poor laborer could be hired to do.

I think the rich find the middle class useful at times, but also resent them for acting independently of the rich class and for claiming a 'personhood' as valuable as any rich person's personhood. In other words, they have never considered the masses to be people, and when the masses in the middle class claim that they are autononmous and free people, it irritates them no end. It is never enough that the rich have so much more than we do -- they want to think of themselves as BETTER than the rest of us, and they want us to have to acknowledge it daily. It's a dominance thing, fer sure. And one way they can demonstrate to us that they are on top is by bankrupting us totally and then picking through the rubble, getting good deals and desperate slaves, too.

[OnionPatch]

12. So why do so many believe otherwise?

Why are so many brainwashed into thinking otherwise when it's all right there in plain sight in the history books?

I wonder what do we do, how do we educate people? Shouldn't politicians be pointing this out? I don't remember hearing this specific point "The middle class is NOT a natural occurrance" during any Democratic campaigns unless I missed something.

[Union Thug]

14. Reagan era propaganda still influences thought

Say what you will about the Reaganites and the Thatcherites, the one thing they were good at is marketing their crap. They could make a shit sandwich sound good.

[roseBudd]

35. The Reagan lie "Cadillac driving welfare queen" is a memme that refuses ..

to die. An undercover blogger at the College Republicans convention blooged this identical response from numerous attendees, including one who insisted that welfare recipients drive NEW cadillacs. Must be that 20 year loan GM is offering.

[newportdadde]

18. Most do not care about history. That why they flush unions etc..

They grew up with a middle class therefore there has always been one. Now if those liberal and big government stopped getting in the way and giving away all their money to poor people they would rise into the upper class.

[Union Thug]

19. Excellent point... YOu're right..

my generation (born in 64) grew up in relative affluence thanks to new deal policies and a strong union movement. My father was a union printer and could afford to buy a home and a car and raise a family on his single income. Once Reagan destroyed the unions in the 80's my family started eating government cheese.

My generation and the gen-xers take for granted the hard won battles that were fought to create an affluent society.

[raccoon]

28. Because most people don't know much about history, and

don't take the trouble to learn about it.

Some people may THINK they know history, and they don't. For example, my guess is a lot of people's ideas about the antebellum South come from GONE WITH THE WIND. Well, from GWTW, one would think everyone in the antebellum South was either a wealthy planter or a sorry so-and-so who was just too lazy and sorry to get up and do whatever it was he was supposed to do to become a wealthy planter, or a slave.

But most people, all they know is their own life experience, and maybe something of their parents', as far as this topic is concerned.

[RaleighNCDUer]

32. Because the American ideal is a supposedly classless society.

When people are polled, people bringing in $20,000/yr think they are 'middle class'. So do people making $1,000,000/yr.

The Jeffersonian ideal of the 'yeoman farmer' was the epitome of the middle-class; the vast majority who existed between the aristocrats and the slaves. Once the frontier vanished, however, that ideal became increasingly rare as more and more properties fell into the hands of the banks and, thusly, the wealthy.

The middle-class as we know it results from the confluence of small business, organized labor and government regulation. The oligarchists believe that small business exists only as adjuncts to big business; that labor should be disorganized; and that government regulation that does not favor them should be outlawed. They've pretty much had their way on the last two legs of the tripod - the new bankruptcy law will knock out the third leg now, making small businesses far more vulnerable to the demands of big business.

They wouldn't be able to do it if there was an honest discussion about class in this society.

[Ksec]

13. I dont know if its natural but it made the US great

and now the Reicht side wants to destroy it and concentrate power and money in the hads of a few.

I dont get this? Why would they wanna destroy the middle class?

[OnionPatch]

15. Well the problem is that

too many working, middle-class people on the right and center don't believe their leaders want to destroy it, they've been brainwashed into thinking that WE are destroying it with taxation and regulation!!

[RaleighNCDUer]

34. Despite the fact that it was taxation and regulation that created it. nt

[mestup]

17. Yes, most Americans need educatin' on this.

There are many, many Repub voters who believe themselves to be "middle class," when in fact they are working poor.

In their minds, if you're not on welfare - you're middle class. Consequently they keep voting against their own interests.

[KittyWampus]

20. Onionpatch, Redistribution of the Wealth is part of every society that's

ever been.

Hunter/gatherers had set means to distribute meat and blood and fur from a kill.

Sedentary societies like Kwakiutl had clans owning salmon streams and taking turns throwing potlachs every year depending on whose stream the salmon used that very year.

When societies discarded the Family/Clan system of ownership, out went the role of religion/family/politics to manage wealth and resources. The Economic Branch of societies became the supreme arbiter.

As for the Middle Class... I'd say the most prevalent order throughout history (including non-Western societies) was more of a Uni-Class system with tribal rules delineating who would be leader and decision makers.

[Union Thug]

21. Wasn't the Potlatch banned in WA or OR in the early 1900s?

Talk about the ultimate redistribution plan...Guess the early century boss's couldn't let such egalitarian practices go unpunished.

[KittyWampus]

25. EGALITARIAN... damn, those brain cells aren't firing like they used to

:D

thanks for getting that word on this thread.

[leveymg]

22. Depends on how you define "middle-class" In ancient republics,

Greece and Rome - the vast majority of citizens were what we might today call middle-class. They were by legal requirement landowners who paid taxes and were allowed the civic privileges of voting, holding office, and serving in the Army. Most were small farmers.

There was also, of course, a hereditary aristocracy of nobles and landed gentry, but they were numerically smaller, but always at or near the center of political intrigue.

The unenfranchized - slaves, women and the landless proletariat denied civil rights - were by far the biggest group within the republics of antiquity. Ancient Athens, a city-state of more than 200,000, had no more than 30,000 citizens.

[Nihil]

36. Thank you!

It took 22 replies before someone comes up with the correct answer?

Oh dear ...

[Silverhair]

26. A large middle class can only exist in a blended economy.

In a pure capitalist society, a small group will rise to the top, and will use the power of being on top to keep themselves there, even though they are no longer making the contributions to society that put them on top in the first place. Anybody with a better mousetrap will be suppressed. Society stagnates, until conquered by a newer capitalist society.

In a pure socialist society, the bureaucracy rules all - ultimately for the benefit of the bureaucracy. Innovation is stifled, because you just can't command innovation.

In properly regulated capitalism, new ideas arise from the people, and those with good ideas are rewarded by seeing their ideas sell. But they are not allowed to get so much power that they can suppress the next round of new ideas and services. In that kind of society, a large middle class arises.

[politicat]

29. A *Large* middle class is an historical abberation.

There have always been small middle classes since the dawn of real commerce until the Industrial Revolution, at which point, the middle class receded again and had to wait until the reforms of the late 19th and 20th centuries to rescue it.

In the Greek and Roman societies of antiquity, the artisanal class served as the middle class - rich enough to employ others, but not the ruling elite. They probably held between 15 and 30% of the society at any time, and were far outnumbered by those who worked for others or were slaves.

In the late Roman period, society stratified again, putting the middle class in a group with retired warriors, freedmen, artisans, and the younger children of the higher classes. Again, however, their numbers remained small.

This continued through the medieval period, with the guilds acting as the middle class' placeholder. During the post Plague period in Europe, the middle class began to gain power; with the deaths of so many of all classes, anyone able to work and produce goods was able to command a premium wage. However, many factors kept this incipient middle class from growing fast or wide, so while it was present, growth rates remained small but steady.

The period the encompassed the English Civil war and similar struggles on the continent really brought the middle class to the fore. Cromwell's policies encourage a middle class, and while Cromwell was for the most part a bloody dictator worse than most 20th c. dictators, the basic concept of equality for all made it into the common thought process. Even after the Restoration, when the Puritans were in an awkward position, the middle class continued to grow. (For a fictionalized look at what was going on in this period, try Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle. It's long and huge and very Baroque, but he got his facts pretty straight on the beginnings of modern economic systems.)

By the Regency/Empire/Federalist period, the middle class made up about half or more of any given population, and kept growing through the beginnings of the Industrial revolution. However, with the IR, many of the artisans who relied on their handcrafts for their middle class status began to fall back into poverty as machine made and piecework factories took over their niche. So the 19th century was a period of a diminishing, but wealthier middle class and an expanding working or lower class.

The situation is far more complex than I state above, but the fact is that a middle class has always existed. There have been nearly no periods in history when 95% of the population worked 20 hour days for next to nothing from the time they were 3 years old. If someone's claiming that, they're not looking at historical sources; they're using the Hitler Channel for their information, and it's inaccurate. That is absolutely an abberration. When those conditions arose, they were invariably followed by revolts and riots and revolutions. People just aren't that stupid to put up with that kind of treatment.

Further, in a more agricultural society, that type of work is impossible. The work studies done on hutterite and Amish farms that use minimal technology to understand the economics of pre-industrial agriculture put daily work at between 6 hours (winter) and 12 hours (summer-fall, during harvest and planting), with leisure time incorporated into the day. Similar studies on artisanal workshops find that work ran between 6 and 12 hours, with 3 to 5 more hours (and usually inverse to the number of summer work hours) required for the maintenance of the home life (which has to be done even today.) So in general, the average worker probably worked between 11 and 15 hours a day at zer "job" and in zer home (though those are completely modern distinctions that no medieval or ancient person would have made).

Looking at my schedule... I work between 11 and 14 hours a day, either at my job, in maintaining my living space or fulfilling my communal and social obligations (which would have been incorporated into the daily lives of my ancestors in a way that mine are not). So...

[Nihil]

37. Excellent explanation.

There has ALWAYS been a middle class.

OK, for the pedants, this should include "in a stable civilisation"
as during the interregnums between "fall" & "rise" the situation
obviously gets confused.

I am slightly disappointed with the early answers that seem to
completely disregard actual history in favour of the "American Dream"
storybook version ... do they really think there was nothing between
the Caesar and the slave?

[muriel_volestrangler]

39. It's interesting how much DUers seem to think there is a 'Natural Order'

of a few oppressors, and the rest oppressed, in human society, which is somehow being fought against by modern government (judging by this thread, anyway). It's strange that many tend to blame this on capitalism, a relatively recent development (and thus not soemthing you can claim to be 'natural' using any definition), rather than the straight use of physical force, which has been the basis of historical societies.

I'd say that capitalism depends on a sizeable middle class, to run existing companies, and start new ones. And I can't tell why so many DUers think current western society (with which most of the rest of the world is rapidly converging) is abnormal.

[Armstead]

31. No...And people in the middle class turn against their own interests

Creation and maintainance of a middle class requires intervention in the Primal Forces of Nature. Strength and wealth increase geometrically as it is acquired, unless the rest of society bands together to keep that from happening.

But unfortunately, as people join the middle class they identify with those above them, in hopes of advancing to that status.

That's the story of the last 30 years. Too many members of the middle class have lost site of their roots, and where they might be headed again without the balancing force of liberalism.

Somehow they've got to remember the fact that being middle class is not an entitlement of nature, and it will be lost if they continue to promote values and policies that undermine them.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

38. Japan developed a pre-modern middle class only after

it stopped having continual civil wars in the 1600s.

You need functioning cities, the ability to transport goods without them being stolen on the way, means of accumulating wealth, and means of upward mobility (education--Buddhist temples sponsored the equivalent of elementary schools, and by the mid nineteenth century, Japan had a higher literacy rate than many European countries).

There's a reason that "peace and prosperity" are mentioned in the same breath.