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With the exception of a very few countries like N.Korea, in the remaining world politics are driven around the manupulation of the "middle class", but I am glad you picked it up and asked the question because my definition is not that vague. The vaguness comes together with the manipulation of the majority of the population thinking they are the middle class politicians appeal to.

Don't pretend you've never heard the term, I know you have, to have an aversion to it is understandable.

What I call middle class is management. Those that definitely don't have the same interests with workers, they benefit directly or indirectly from the exploitation, but they are not the owners either. They are the ones that have the authority to blackmail you and terrorize you at work to do as they say or you will be fired, or even never get a raise or promotion.

Who is the capitalist class today, does anyone know? How many of us here have seen a true capitalist in the workplace? Very few in very small outifits where the owner is also a manager directly to the low level employees. The owners have vanished, in some cases nobody knows who they might be with large corporation being in the stock market. How can you engage in class conflict when you don't even see the other class. If you don't see it, you don't see the way of life, how do you know they benefit from your exploitation. The vast majority of large corporations/industries today in paper they show as being in deficit, being worth less than they owe. They are in debt, because that is the financial model of a healthy corporation. Although people can make millions from corporations that are in debt.

This is part of the intentional transformation of capitalism that has sentenced Marxists to be less effective or even making any sense to the average worker. Together with the populism of some left wing parties appealing to managers as "employees" or "proletariat" ... and things have ended up in this dead end we are locked in.

In the old days you walked long muddy paths to get to the factory and the owner passed with his limo and splashed mud on you, someone opened his door and someone else held an umbrella over his tall hat as he walked to the front entrance of the office of the factory. He was the owner. This picture doesn't exist for the past 50 years for 95% of industrial workers.

You can work for a McD franchise and the sole owner of a sole shop is there, in reality all he is is a manager for McD that gets paid a portion of the profit when it exists, or zero when it doesn't, and he is under the illusion he is the owner of the means of production and he can not even buy and use a slice of tomoato in his own means of production. He is just low level management with a really bad (for him) contract to either make money for the boss or work for free. A foreman laying cable for a phone company is higher level manager than the McD owner is.

Dare take it further? Are physicians middle class, college professors, academic researchers with 24 grad students laboring 80h/wk, middle class? Is a plumber with two assistants "the owner of the means of production"?

The working class will never revolt together with their enemies, their managers!