>The original article in Radical America was absurd, and the
>classification remains absurd now. _Real_ managers (CEOs, CFOs, etc.,
>perhaps a bit lower on the corporate ladder, are simply members of the
>capitalist class. Their salaries are merely are a share in surplus
>value, and much of their income is fairly overtly capitalist income. As
>to the statistics you quote, there is no way to determine from them
>where the division between managers as capitalists and managers as
>skilled workers lies. Neither is there anyway to divide "professionals"
>into skilled workers and independent professionals. The whole breakdown
>is essentially useless for political analysis and planning.
The whole point of the "middle" class is that they're between things. Most of the managers in the BLS classification aren't big capitalists or senior execs - they're people who both boss and are bossed. That puts them in the middle. Their identifications run both ways, though it's a reality of the human psyche that people are more likely to identify up than down. You're just wrong to say there's no demographically significant middle class in the U.S. It's about a third of the working population and probably half the electorate.
Doug