The Middle Class is the New Proletariat

Progressivism is a system of rule by manipulation. Long ago, the left learned that it can affect change subliminally by changing the language (aka sublation or the German aufheben).

One curious example of manipulating terms happens with the term: "Middle Class."

Traditionally the term "middle class" referred to the social class between the ruling class and the working class (The Third Estate). The ruling class referred to those who derived their income from ruling. This would be the kings, feudal lords and massive bureaucratic structure of the state.

The middle class referred to business owners who were making money independent of the state. A primary characteristic of this class was ownership of capital. The middle class would re-invest their capital and improve their lot. Note, the middle included trained professionals who invested as heavily in their careers as merchants and manufacturers invest in their businesses.

The working class and underclasses made up the vast bulk of the people.

Back in the days when Marx spewed his venom, he used the bizarre terms "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat." The French term "bourgeoisie" meant a person who [gasp] owned a business in town. [The Horror] [The Horror] The English translation of bourgeoisie is "The Middle Class." [The Horror] [The Horror]

During the Industrial Revolution, the Middle Class gained influence and the traditional ruling class waned.

The Middle Class was an open society. The markets created by the bourgeoisie pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into the maligned middle class.

Intellectuals loathed the people benefiting from the new found wealth with a deep passion.

So, an intellectual named Marx sought to unite the ruling class and working class (the proletariat) in a revolution against the horrible Middle Class (the bourgeoisie).

Marx succeeded in igniting a revolution and hundreds of millions of people died in agonizing ways.

History proved Marx a rogue. The bourgeoisie he loathed brought wealth to millions, while his revolution brought death and hardship.

If we were a people who learned from history, we would have rejected Marxism and adopted the ideals of the bourgeoisie.

Unfortunately, there is a group of low lives called progressives who continue to craved the totalitarian power promised by Marx.

Progressives seek the same goals as Marx. But they realized that, if they captured the university and media, they could accomplish the goal of a totalitarian state simply by manipulating the language. One can simply use the process of sublation to turn words into their opposite.

Transitioning the term "Middle Class" into its opposite was rather easy.

So, traditionally, the middle class referred to a relatively small class of business owners who sat on the social scale between the ruling class and the workers.

To change the definition, one simply de-emphasizes the source of the wealth and claim the distinguishing characteristic of the source of the middle class as income. The new definition of middle class labels all the people in the middle of the bell curve as "The Middle Class."

Since the bulk of the massive state bureaucracy (the new ruling class) have incomes that fall in the center of the bell curve, progressives have created a new paradigm where the ruling class is embedded in the definition of the middle class.

So, by clever manipulation of terms, we've arrived at a situation where the left is able to use the "Middle Class" in place of "proletariat."

This is problematic for our nation because it turns out that the source of the wealth does matter.

See, the source of the wealth of the traditional middle class was the re-investment of capital. This traditional middle class had the knack of creating new wealth and increasing the wealth of the nation.

The current middle class gains its wealth largely through redistribution. The modern American middle class consumes more than it produces and created a negative system in which our nation declines.

Since conservatives are too stupid to actually look at the roots of today's problems, I guess there is little to do but applaud progressives for their manipulative ways and lament the decline of our nation.

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