<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 10/21/04 12:57:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: Doug wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Middle class is denotation-challenged. It's used to describe everyone from nurses to lawyers, from $30k households to $200k households, blue-collar and white-collar, etc. It can be a euphemism for working class, and it can be a way of making members of the professional-managerial class seem like just folks. But it does have a real existence in people's heads. </BLOCKQUOTE> For this term to make even the most minimal sense, it must denote a social existence that is somehow in between that of other classes. Now I understand who the $200K people may be trying to differentiate themselves from when they say they're middle class: the very rich, who don't have to work at all. But if factory workers who earn 30K identify as middle class, who is on the bottom? I think, in many minds, workers who either work for extremely low wages or are partly or entirely unemployed, and who are also mostly non-white. What this notion of "middle class" completely obliterates is any concept of a working class, i.e. a common identity based on the necessity of selling one's labor (power). It reflects how racism distorts the ways in which Americans conceive of their relation to society.</HTML>