>>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 06/27/00 02:31PM >>>
Surely Marx didn't speak of the "middle class" in a way that Ruth Cowan does:
-clip-
For Marx, the middle class = the bourgeoisie. For Cowan, "middle?class American women were defined as actual or potential readers of the better?quality women's magazines, such as the Ladies' Home Journal, American Home, Parents' Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and McCall's"!!! As Carrol noted, "it does not hold the same connotation (Mill's use) for almost any two writers or readers," and Marx's usage differs sharply from how the term gets used variously in American common sense.
__________
CB: I agree with Carrol's basic caveat on this, though I don't hold to it quite as strictly as he. There are middle "strata".
In Marx's lifetime, there were still the remnants of the feudal aristocracy. Marx's wife was a minor aristocrat. So, the bourgeosie were in the middle between the aristocrats and the working classes.