Is the lower middle class the scourge of modern politics?

[zarus tathra]

Every destructive political movement of the 20th century has recruited primarily from among the lower middle class. I define "lower middle class" as "white collar but not wealthy enough to be at least somewhat contented." Their political views tend to center around the desire for advancement and a sublimated anxiety regarding the lower class.

European fascism and Nazism claimed to be for "the common man," but very few of their members were actually from the laboring classes but were actually primarily recruited from a "ruined middle class" that saw its opportunities for advancement within Germany's commercial and government bureaucracy destroyed by WWI.

The same is true of Bolshevism, a movement that also claimed to be for "the common man" but also recruited from among the bourgeoisie, who made up a sizable percentage of the inner circle, >30%, but were only like 3% of the Russian population at the time.

Every time that we see mass deaths and a primitive drive towards social uniformity, one sees the lower middle class as the vanguard.

[mykcob4]

Every destructive political movement of the 20th century has recruited primarily from among the lower middle class. I define "lower middle class" as "white collar but not wealthy enough to be at least somewhat contented." Their political views tend to center around the desire for advancement and a sublimated anxiety regarding the lower class.

European fascism and Nazism claimed to be for "the common man," but very few of their members were actually from the laboring classes but were actually primarily recruited from a "ruined middle class" that saw its opportunities for advancement within Germany's commercial and government bureaucracy destroyed by WWI.

The same is true of Bolshevism, a movement that also claimed to be for "the common man" but also recruited from among the bourgeoisie, who made up a sizable percentage of the inner circle, >30%, but were only like 3% of the Russian population at the time.

Every time that we see mass deaths and a primitive drive towards social uniformity, one sees the lower middle class as the vanguard.

You are ignoring a very key element in your assessment. In Nazi Germany it was the Porsches, the Krupps along with many American wealthy that promoted the rise of Nazi fascism. For example general Motors held Opel afloat and in 1936 fired anyone that wasn't a Nazi in those plants.
When a movement, destructive or not, takes place it usually isn't one facet of the population that is the cause or the meat of the movement. The lower middle class is usually the largest demographic of any nations population and therefor gets the blame or credit for everything that happens.

[zarus tathra]

The same is true of Bolshevism, a movement that also claimed to be for "the common man" but also recruited from among the bourgeoisie, who made up a sizable percentage of the inner circle, >30%, but were only like 3% of the Russian population at the time.

[stromboli]

I think you are drawing conclusions based on too little evidence, and the generalization of "lower middle class" is a little broad. The official beginning of the Russian revolution that led to Communism was first aboard the battleship Potemkin for the harsh treatment of sailors, and spread through intellectuals like Lenin, and the poor as much as the lower middle class. Russia had a vast number of people that were living close to starvation. Getting them to revolt wouldn't be hard.

The French revolution was likewise as much among the poor as lower middle class. It has to do with numbers. There are few ultra rich, more rich, even more upper middle class, large numbers of lower middle class and the poor.

And Mykcob4 is right. Nazism was very much fueled by the industrialists.
http://archive.adl.org/braun/dim_13_2_f ... uazSxDn_cs

German Industry and the Third Reich: Fifty Years of Forgetting and Remembering
By S. Jonathan Wiesen

The great majority of German businessmen behaved in a decidedly unheroic manner during the Nazi era. Most of them, especially leaders of larger companies, not only refrained from risking their lives to save Jews, but actually profited from the use of forced and slave labor, the "Aryanization" of Jewish property, and the plundering of companies in Nazi-occupied Europe.

[zarus tathra]

The French revolution was likewise as much among the poor as lower middle class. It has to do with numbers. There are few ultra rich, more rich, even more upper middle class, large numbers of lower middle class and the poor.

Well, there is a saying that the French Revolution wasn't a revolution of poor peasants, but of poor lawyers. At the Estates General, the representatives of the 3rd estate were almost all lower-level lawyers. You'd think that if they were representatives of the "common man" they'd have a few village aldermen or guild masters or, I dunno, an actual peasant, but no, they were all legal clerks looking for cushy government jobs.

[Sal1981]

I don't remember who said it, but (paraphrasing) it is the poor that stop accepting their lot in life and then revolt against the "rich" middle class, afterwards the poor become the new middle class and the rich stay rich.



I don't know well enough to comment on how the middle class took part in how Communism and Nazism formed, but it seems that it's usually first formed by intellectuals of the time; where would Communism be without Lenin, Marx and Engels? I think such ideas are more powerful than people give them credit.

[zarus tathra]

All throughout the Middle Ages, kings were known to be perpetually poor and indebt.