Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:
>
> Yes. I tend to use it, for example, to refer to peoples' self
> congratulatory fantasies.
> Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
Yes. But that is all the more reason why left writers should not use it in any other sense. It is one thing to say, "Many Americans see themselves as middle class," and quite something else to say, "Middle class Americans think such & such." The latter implies that it does have an "objective" content, that it names an empirically existing group.
Discussion of "Middle Class Attitudes" also in effect affirm an objective content for the term. A group that does not exist can't have atttitudes. If I say that Santa Claus is a null term I am not denying that some small children believe in him or that "he" is an important advertising icon.
And in the post Doug quotes I was concerned to explain my use of the phrase "petty bourgeois," a phrase I usually avoid both because it has been leached of force by over use _and_ because it is too often used (or abused) in the same way "middle class" is. A small petty producer class _does_ exist, and its existence (like the existence of the working class) is hidden by the stubborn insistence, even by many marxists, to hold on to "middle class." It is impossible to say "middle class" without implying the existence of a "lower class." In other words, every use of "middle class" helps justify the use of such offensive terms as "white trash," "underclass," etc., as well as contributing to the continuation of the "congratulatory fantasies" referenced above.
My own suspicion is that the main motive for using the term is simple rhetorical laziness. The users don't have the energy to find words which accurately describe the world. And of course, bourgeois ideologists use it with deliberately obfuscatory aims.
Carrol
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> > >the null term, "middle class."
> >
> > It may be fairly meaningless in the "objective" sense, but it carries
> > lots of ideological weight. So it's not "null" by any means.
> >
> > Doug