Genevieve, Peter,
I've been following along the twin thread that bifurcated out of the
question of local zones of negative entropy--moving into the middle class
question that Ricardo raised in relationship to causes for optimism.
What we think of as "the middle class" is an abstract category whose
essential characteristic is a measure of welfare in general, but usually it
is a measure of consumption. Which measures of welfare or consumption wil
be used is a matter of debate and political position. The UN, WHO, IMF, and
World Bank, for example, don't really share common measures when justifying
their policies whose putative end is to increase welfare. The bottom line
of the global capitalist system is the extension of the consumption of
commodities, now almost total on a global scale, lower class, middle class,
and upper class are "prototypically" used to situate someone with respect to
their economic abililty to consume.
The concepts "working class" and "middle class" are not comparable.
Minimally, working class designates structural economic relation. Unlike
"middle class" it doesn't signify a quantitative measure. So like Bruce, "I
don't find middle class a useful term without further definition of how
particular groups earn a living i.e. whether they live from wage (or
salaried) labour or from capital". But recognizing this, let's just
consider it a subcategory of consumer culture.
The middle classes we have known in the US and Europe have depended on an
extremely high level of energy consumption (car culture/internal combustion
engine)--that's just not likely to be available for consumption on the scale
of 2.5 billion workers. The definition of the middle class is bound to
change regardless of the distribution of wealth. The 2oth middle class has
been a life style based on a non-sustainable economic system. But although
billions of people might not be able to get a car, they probably will be
able to get on the internet.
It will provide a great deal of substance to the expression "Think Globally,
Act Locally."
Paul H. Dillon
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