It is often believed that a strong middle class is vital for the democratization of countries. Why?
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The leaders of a government are a function of power. Where power rests in a society directly correlates to who is in charge of that society. Feudal leaders control the land and the military, and because of the nature of military tactics in feudal society, there is a large gap in the effective amount of power between the people in charge the average person.
Democratization happens when the people at the top cannot reasonably oppress the majority of the people anymore. You saw this in Greece because the buy-in for the average citizen to be a part of military was relatively low. The way phalanxes were structured, most people could afford the materials necessary to take part effectively in the military conflicts, so the wealthy people did not have all the power because they could not completely control military force and how it was used the way you see peasant rebellions in the middle ages being put down easily by the upper classes.
Similarly in the age of muskets and rifles, the average person could be a part of the military with relatively little financial buyin. Gear for horses and armor and swords are expensive and take a lot of years of training to master. Guns are pretty much a point-and-shoot situation. This is one of the reasons that the American revolution was able to be successful, and one of the reasons that the second amendment rules about people being allowed to take part in the militias was so important.
In the modern era power is less about military force and more about economic force. A strong middle class allows power to be diffused throughout the society such that a small number of people aren’t able to manipulate them through propaganda, or information warfare.
Tldr; democracy requires the power be spread out throughout the society, and money is power. A large middle-class means that there is less of a divide between the rich and the poor, and the rich are less able to control things. This allows for a democracy instead of an oligarchy. When the wealthy gain too much political control, the government becomes an oligarchy.
This is one of the reasons that the Greeks were so careful to do things via lottery and to pay jurors and political leaders. Democracy requires an even playing field between the rich and the poor or the rich will inevitably skew the system in their favor.
We humans always care more about ourselves and those around us than other people that we don’t know.
So if one person or a handful of people with a lot of money and power control everything at the top, they always care more about themselves than the millions beneath them. They do well while everyone else struggles or barely improves.
But if regular people also have a role in politics, they also care more about themselves, and they can sometimes use their overwhelming numbers to change things for the better–or worse.
You can even ask the Supreme Court, money is speech. Money is political power. So if a country has a middle class, that group by definition has at least some money, which equates to some power. That’s whether or not you allow them to vote.
Usually it comes down to how the middle class is going to spend that money and power. If you give them a vote, they’ll vote to take care of themselves, hopefully wisely. Usually the middle class wants to regulate themselves, for fairness and safety.
If you don’t give them a real vote, they’ll do their best to operate outside of the system, its regulations, and its taxes. You’ll wind up with situations like this coronavirus that popped out of a totally unregulated market. And worse things, which we shall see soon/.
The middle class is educated enough to have a reasonable opinion. They are why the economy works, and are generally the producers of any economy.
However, they don’t own the means of production, because that’s the 1%.
There’s so many in the middle class working hard that there’s no dominant leader to take over without putting said leader in the 1%.
So, we vote. With pitchforks or ballots depending on the rules of the system.
Poor people are too busy surviving to be of much influence.
Rich people are the ones running things.
The middle class on the other hand aren’t constantly busy with survival but don’t have the resources to be in control of things but do have the time and resources to be influential.
The “elite” is typically powerful enough to run things without democratic methods. They are not interested in change. They can hire and arm a strong security apparatus and manipulate the media. This generally holds true for all – capitalist, socialist, theocratic societies.
The “bottoms” often lack education to participate skillfully in democratic process. They often want change, being naturally unhappy at their place at the bottom and would probably opt for a revolution, as they do not have much to lose anyway (the bigger inequality in the society, the more true is this).
That leaves us with the middle class. They do want some change here or there, but they don’t want unpredictable revolutions, or they may lose what they have already. So they have both measures (education) and motivation to upstart the democratic process which ensure changes incrementally, without too big a risk to status quo.
It isn’t. A lot of people’s thoughts on this are based on pure political theory or ideology, not on practise or history. I would suggest you have to look at real history to answer the question properly. Another issue is that the definitions being used for “middle class” as opposed to “working class” are not rigorous – I’ll explain that below.
tl;dr: In reality in history, the working class is a promoter for democratic development. This is because of the economic role of workers, but also because of the traditions of unionism and so on. The middle classes sometimes play this role to support democracy, but often don’t. They are often, in fact, active opponents of democratic development.
Long version: The working class is organised in collective workplaces, where the needs of the job often demonstrate a need for democracy. Workers organise themselves in unions, and historically these have been basically schools of democracy, where workers learn how to discuss and make decisions in a democratic way by necessity. Union demands were often tilted toward democratising workplaces. Often employees lives depended on this fact; for example, there is a direct correlation between higher unionisation levels in the construction industry and lower rates of workplace deaths and serious injuries.
Working class protest actions, strikes and rebellions are largely the reason we have many of the democratic rights and freedoms associated with ‘the West’. Most of our ‘democratic heritage’ historically comes from working class political action, or from the threat of such action. For example, the vote in my country was originally restricted to people with money and property; big rebellions from working people forced the vote to be expanded to include the lower classes. This was the pattern in most of the ‘West’.
At the same time as being inclined towards democratic organisation just by having collective workplaces and unions, the working class also has the social weight to cause social change, as a supply of workers is the most crucial factor in any modern economy. They are the productive class in society.
What about the “middle class”? We have to define what this phrase means, because in the US “middle class” is used to refer to the better paid parts of the working class, which is incorrect. Middle class refers to classes that fall between the two main classes in society, which are:
* the big business capitalist class – you are a member of this class if you own or invest in big business and get most of your livelihood from this fact. (In short, if you own ‘capital’, hence ‘capitalist’)
* the working class – you are a member of this class if you work to earn a wage/salary, or if your livelihood is dependent on family members that do, or if you normally would do this but are currently unemployed.
Middle classes can include:
* managers that aren’t owners,
* small business owners (as opposed to big business owners), who are often people that fall into and out of the working class depending on the economy),
* other classes which used to be more important, like peasants who were once the majority of society, but are no longer economically significant
Sometimes the term also applies to “academics” and other professionals, but the majority of these people work for a wage or a salary and are really working class, even if some are better paid than most workers.
Members of the middle class have weird conflicting economic interests. For example, a small business owner might one day be thrown out of business and forced to get a job like a regular worker. When that happens, she may have an interest in a more democratic workplace, higher wages, unionism, etc. The next week, she might be back to making money from her small business – and then she will suddenly NOT have any interest in workplace democracy, in paying her employees higher wages, or in seeing them get unionised. So a small business owner is in a contradictory position, and can have some very mixed up politics as a result.
In many cases, a small business owner will feel trapped – between big business on the one hand (as big capitalists drive her out of business, and big banks take all her money via loan repayments) and workers on the other (as her employees demand higher wages, better conditions, more rights that make it harder for her to get what she wants out of them). Historically, it is these middle classes who have supported the fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 20s and 30s. During that period, they were far more prominent than they are today – they were once a big segment of the population, but are now a minority.
The fascist movements were obviously not remotely about democracy, and they existed precisely to destroy the organisations of the working class – trade unionists, socialists, communists, etc were among the primary targets of the Nazis, for example. They would in fact prefer to get rid of democracy when possible, as long as they are in charge – or as long as someone who says he represents them is in charge.
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