THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE CLASS by Alvin Bernstein It is easy to retain false images of the various classes of society. This is especially true of the very heterogeneous middle class or middle classes.1 One such delusion, though not universally held, is that the "in between," those not excessively rich and not poor, tend to self-reliance, independence and virtue in general. They supposedly transcend the assumed evils of either possessing too little or too much. Do some psyches automatically identify the "in between" with what is considered good? Such idealization is akin to the laudations the Communists formerly heaped on the working class. In actuality, many middle-class people have manifested little self-reliance and have exhibited a paucity of virtues connected with the spirit of free enterprise. American middle-class farmers, like wealthier agribusiness people, have regularly depended upon the government for favors such as easy loans, outright cash or subsidies, and other modes of care. Even more so has this been the case with farmers overseas in Japan, France, Germany, Britain and other countries. Further, American farmers and small businessmen were in the past anti-capitalistic in their efforts to throttle large enterprises such as banks and railroads, and at times went so far as to advocate their nationalization. By regarding capitalism as mainly something for themselves, they preserved a narrow view of business enterprise. And now there is the phenomenon of the "welfare cowboys" or the "sagebrush rebels," who profit from government land — land they do not own — and insist on leasing charges that have not risen for many generations. These examples, as well as scores more which may be cited from a variety of middle-class businesses, indicate that many in the middle classes are not endowed with the individualism considered so desirable in capitalistic endeavor. Dependence on government is the rule, not the exception. Some owners of small businesses are sometimes hardly more capitalistic in attitude than their employees. In addition, there has been a phenomenal growth of the bureaucratic middle class in this country; that is, civil servants at all levels of government who are removed from the sound and fury of competition. Former House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill from Massachusetts once said that his hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost gave the United States its middle class, that there was not much of a middle class prior to his administration. If Mr. O'Neill was only thinking of the bureaucratic middle class, he was approaching the truth. Perhaps he was so remote from free enterprise that he could not conceive of a middle class without an undesirably large number of often overpaid government workers. There are efforts in Congress to make the tax system favor the middle class. But how effective and equitable can this be if middle-class civil servants, who do little to make the country wealthier, are included in these benefits? Essentially raising their incomes will hinder rather than aid the economy, so moribund since the 1970s. Civil servants are as a rule not as adapted to economic and other adversities as are those in private industry. This makes them more vulnerable to political extremism. We have only to look at Germany in the early 1930s when civil servants, reacting to hard times, supported Hitler in droves. A middle class overpopulated with government employees may help drain a country of its liberties. The above is not total condemnation of the middle class. It is rather an admonition not to idealize a segment of society whose composition is so varied. Perhaps the middle class is a repository from which both progress and retrogression may arise. Be that as it may, many individuals of middleclass origin have performed impressive services for humanity. Charles Darwin, for example, was part of a class of specialists who maintained a dignified status in the face of the supercilious attitude of the still powerful landed aristocracy in Britain. This class of specialists comprised scientists, businessmen, physicians, inventors, engineers, etc., upon whom British economic and intellectual progress was dependent in the 18th and 19th centuries. The grandfather of Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, was a noted botanist who anticipated his grandson's evolutionism. Charles Darwin's father was a very competent country physician. He was among the numerous unsung individuals responsible for making Britain the most advanced nation in Europe in the 19th century. It is peculiar that whenever a portion of the middle class does become an advance guard in the march of civilization, it is often cordially hated. The Calvinists and Puritans 2 were subjected to such hatred. Their vices have been overstressed to the point of defamation, as if no other religious group possessed them. Their acts of bigotry and cruelty such as the burning of witches, the execution of adulterers, the repression of theological and intellectual dissent, were often committed by others to an even greater extent. The Calvinists of Geneva were morally criminal when they burned the theologian Michael Servetus for modifying the standard conception of the Trinity. Yet their 19th-century descendants at least apologized for the act and had a statue erected in his honor. In contrast, some reactionary Catholics of today still contrive rationales for the Papal and Spanish Inquisitions whereby hundreds of thinkers and thousands of ordinary folk were cruelly annihilated. The very middle-class Calvinists were abhorred more for their virtues than for their vices. Their obvious sin was the possession of a work ethic which was humiliating for others to observe. They comprised a middle class in the ideal sense of individualistic economic endeavor. They progressed beyond their contemporaries in commerce, trade, manufacturing and technology. The Industrial Revolutions in Britain, France and America were replete with their contributions. They had very significantly eschewed much of their obscurantism by the middle of the 18th century, playing a role in the intellectual movement remembered as the Enlightenment. The New England Calvinist establishment largely rejected the rampant and neurotic "revivalism" of the masses which was the beginning of much of the lower Protestantism that still infects the nation. The worldly success of the Calvinists no doubt stimulated a mortal envy that resulted in persecution wherever they comprised a minority. Persecution reached the holocaust stage in Catholic France. A high point of savagery was achieved when the French Calvinists were massacred in Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572. The semiliterate and illiterate masses of France were incapable of comprehending concepts such as original sin and predestination, but they were able to resent the obvious, that the "heretics" were doing well. Yet something fundamental lurked behind envy. What greatly increased antagonism was that the Calvinists curiously and objectively probed the world as they manipulated it while pursuing their various occupations. They thereby gained more competence. To most people in those days, i was sufficiently sinful for a "pure scientist" like Galileo to be curious about the world. Was it not, they most likely mused even more sinful for ordinary folk in ordinary middle-class occupations to manifest such probing curiosity? The Calvinists, in short, gave inquiry into the external world a mass democratic aspect which was much too disturbing for the more retracted masses to countenance. Religions usually teach that the spiritual soul or the spiritual mind is superior to sense impressions and external ma ten Yet the Calvinists, although believing in God, appeared to denigrate the soul, our conceit-churning entity, by making nature unduly important, independent and worthy of stud, The primitive masses of France divined all this as "sin." John Calvin himself was highly sensitive to the intricacies of nature although he rejected the heliocentric approach of Copernicus and considered God to be nature's absolute master.3 Calvin was an empiricist in his peculiar way. It interesting to note that John Locke, history's most famous empiricist, was raised in a Calvinist home. He later rejected Calvinist theology but preserved its empirical sensitivity the world. He plucked out the best that was in Calvinism. The above suggests what many may suspect in the first place, that those who reject the world, those who prefer the! static, Garden-of-Eden life minimal, those seemingly satisfied, with low achievement, are obviously in need of a clear cc science. They attain it in a convenient and immoral way They mentally transfer guilt from themselves to their chosen enemies, those who do not reject the world, those who tend to be high achievers. The generally bourgeois Calvinists, as a result of peering outside themselves, were targets of the guilt-ridden masses overflowing with soul conceit. The latter were really defending their egos and consciences, saying "I'm not guilty, you are!" The Russian Communist persecution of the bourgeoisie in the 20th century had the same mental root as that of the 200-year persecution of the Calvinists in France from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The Communists were mortally frightened by the outwardly oriented capitalistic ethos and its achievements. They therefore smashed the Russian middle classes in both the cities and the countryside. The Russian middle classes, at least a minority of its members, could have led Russia out of the doldrums of its Third World economy. The Communists, however, chose the unsuccessful alternative of bureaucratic, statist, centralized direction of the Russian economy. Was it mainly police repression that caused the Russian people to endure Communist tyranny? It is doubtful. Prior to the 1917 Communist takeover, the Russian masses were among the most benighted in Europe. Even their protagonists, great writers like Leo Tolstoy 4 provided confirmatory evidence. Tolstoy's famous novel, Anna Karenina, is very autobiographical. The landed proprietor in that novel Levin, is apparently Tolstoy himself. Levin tried to establish a profit-sharing scheme with his peasant laborers but the, stubbornly resisted the project. It was too individualistic, too capitalistic, for such communally-oriented people. One peas ant was profoundly disquieted when informed of the probability of increased wealth as a result of profit sharing. The, peasant was too habituated to the life minimal, the undynamic Garden-of-Eden neurosis, to appreciate the prospect of wealth. He was a universal Russian type, a Mr. Everyman His type constantly sabotaged the efforts of more ambitious and enlightened peasants to improve themselves and consequently society in general. He was evading the challenges the external world and throwing guilt onto those who did not. He was like the anti-Calvinists hundreds of years previously. He was excellent material for Communist manipulation. Free enterprise has a hard time surviving when The masses choose to regard it as almost criminal and smelling of heresy. It has been justly remarked that Communism was a religious movement in secular guise. The Communists, I bundling themselves within the bureaucratic, statist cocoon were similar to medieval ascetics averting sense impressions Like ascetics, they cleansed their guilty consciences I regarding their opposites, those actively taking part in external reality, as sin-ridden.
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