The New Middle Class

Abstract

The collective term “new middle class”¹ goes back in its origin to prewar days. It purports to designate a large number of wholly distinct occupational groups with a catchword, which at the same time suggests a theory of historical development. This theory maintains that capitalism, by reason of its inherent tendencies, irresistibly leads to a concentration of commercial and industrial enterprises with the consequent reduction in the number of independent business men and women and the distintegration and loss of importance of the old middle class. The historical theory also maintains that the existence of a rapidly growing class of dependent workers, containing no manual workers, checks the spread of proletarianization and acts as a buffer between capitalism and labor. This new class is also supposed to take over certain social functions that the “old middle class” is no longer able to fulfill, because it lacks the necessary numerical strength and to some extent also the requisite social and cultural qualifications.

Translated from the German “Der Neue Mittlestand” by S. Ellison and originally published in Gundriss der Sozialekonomik, ix, Abteilung I. Teil (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1926).^†