Challenging and Utilizing the System at the Same Time THE DOUBLE GAME OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES--Part I By Alain Accardo Le Monde Diplomatique December, 2002
It is a common theme of poll-driven politics that "France is governed from the center," and that struggles for power, as in football, are lost and won in the "middle of the field." In more sociological terms, such an assertion reaffirms the importance of what are commonly called the middle classes. Leaving it to experts to debate the exact contours of this enormous and amorphous mass, what must be emphasized--more than its middle place in the social hierarchy--is the dynamics of its consciousness and the inner conflicts by which it is torn.
In other words, it will not do simply to define the middle classes by situating them somewhere on a ramp that runs from the bottom of society, where the masses lead lives left to social chance, and the top, where the privileged run things as they wish with money to burn.
Whether the different factions of the middle class occupy positions more or less removed from the two poles of capitalist accumulation [bourgeoisie and proletariat--JC], their existence in this in-between world gives rise to a certain character structure. Whatever their specific position in the hierarchy, they must always define themselves in relation both to those above and those below them. Dominant and dominated, they never cease to proclaim, like the bat in the fable: "I am a bird! See my wings! I am a mouse! Long live rodents!"
Their position in relation to the proletariat and bourgeoisie is fundamentally ambivalent, one of attraction/repulsion, which manifests itself in complex strategies of alliance and opposition with these two classes.
Often having come from the lower classes, which they fear falling back into, they are torn between a tendency to cut themselves off completely from the masses, and a tendency toward compassion for "little people". These two tendencies make for a number of condescending attitudes and practices: petty bourgeois profess concern for the lot of "the people" in order to instruct them, inspire them, go among them, care for them, counsel them, act as their spokespersons, and, above all, on the political level, make profitable use of alliances with the most dominated in their competition with the most dominant.
The same ambivalence exists in relation to the bourgeoisie. The middle class is fascinated by the bourgeoisie, whose art of living (as they fantasize it) they strive towards. But, wanting the means to attain it, they often relate to the object of their admiration with an amorous spite like that of Madame Bovary. Their response to the arrogance and condescension of the powerful often takes the form of aggressive resentment, which is sometimes self-punishing.
More generally, the ambivalence of the middle class is the essence of its relation to the entire social world. They draw from it the benefits and privileges they enjoy, and, perhaps more than the actual benefits, which are necessarily limited, the hope that they or their children may move up in the world.
At the same time, the petty bourgeois who aspires to be a grand bourgeois runs into a thousand obstacles, most often insurmountable, because social mobility, which is generally overestimated in a democracy, does not in the very nature of the case imply a redistribution of wealth in each generation and does not interfere with the mecahnisms of social reproduction.
[TO BE CONTINUED]