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  • brianlucebrianluce

    before the existence of mass societies, there was no basis for a middle-class, as we understand the term today and as social scientists define it.

    There's is no universally agreed upon definition of middle class, not among social scientists nor anyone else -- at least not beyond the class that exists between upper and lower. And I think you'd have to search high and low to find anyone who says middle class membership requires a population of 10's of millions and a significant energy requirement.

    And we don't know how much leisure time existed in Ancient Athens -- but if entertainment only existed for elites, it's hard to then explain the proliferation of 20,000 seat theaters throughout the Greek Peninsula and the Roman Empire.

    Anyway, this is getting academic, Vitaliy's theory, however we define middle class, has some merit and it'll be interesting to see how it gets filled in.

  • jrdjrd

    Forgive me, but this dispute doesn't begin to rise to the level of "academic". You have yet to cite an example of who was "middle-class" in ancient Egypt, and how those living conditions can reasonably be described as "middle-class" -- unless "middle-class" means nothing more than that said person has resources which fall somewhere between the very poor and the rich, and says nothing about purchasing power, disposable income, leisure, home ownership, access to resources, etc. -- i.e., has nothing to do with the way the phrase "middle-class" is actually used by economists and social scientists.

  • bwhitzbwhitz

    Thing is that you must look at their target, not on their words.

    This is never going to work for the modern progressives and liberals in the states. It's all about HOW someone says something. Clown-bama can do just about anything he wants thanks to the last 2 decades of brainwashing...

    "Don't worry about the stupid wars everywhere... uhh... you people must be concerned with racism... and uhhh... more teachers... uhhh... you're all really smart... and minorities having any job at all is racist... oh, did I mention that everything is rasict? ...bla bla bla."

  • MirrorManMirrorMan

    I thought "middle class" became an accepted term because it's much easier to say than "upper lower class"

    Anyone else reading David Graeber's book on Debt? I'm nearly finished and for me its been extremely refreshing (although not particularly uplifting). But then again I'm a fan of the anthropological perspective of looking at the specific traits of cultures rather than always getting stuck with vague notions of "us" and "them".

    The premise of the book is that in terms of human civilizations, there is an inherent tendency to though "debt cycles", and for us to understand the current situation we need to stop being deluded by "economics" and start understanding things in terms of the current system of debt. The "elites" don't control any "economic system" so much as they manage the tools to maintain our current form of debt society. I don't want to go too deep into it because Graeber says it much better than me.

    For a start its good to check some video interviews with him https://www.google.ee/search?q=david+graeber+debt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=david+graeber+debt&hl=et&client=firefox-a&hs=qki&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnso&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ei=mOaSUOunJ-LW0QXnmYDgAw&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAg&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=2bd86b71c539dd16&bpcl=37189454&biw=1916&bih=1070

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @subco

    I don't think that you post is really useful for anyhting but to position yourself as dominate monkey who are above small things all else are doing :-)

  • brianlucebrianluce

    Forgive me, but this dispute doesn't begin to rise to the level of "academic".

    "Academic" in the sense of little practical or useful significance in terms of Vitaliy's theory.

    You have yet to cite an example of who was "middle-class" in ancient Egypt, and how those living conditions can reasonably be described as "middle-class" -- unless "middle-class" means nothing more than that said person has resources which fall somewhere between the very poor and the rich, and says nothing about purchasing power, disposable income, leisure, home ownership, access to resources, etc.

    I've already said that's the only definition since drawing points of demarcation for income and purchasing power is arbitrary. Generally who is and isn't a member of the middle class is culturally specific. Either way, there is absolutely no requirement of disposable income, leisure time, home ownership and all the other things you enumerate. Those are YOUR criteria. Not sure where you get the idea of some agreed upon definition of middle class among social scientists -- there is no unanimity. I've said this 8 different ways.

    Middle class in Ancient Egypt? I've been referencing ancient Greece, but very well, how about the Scribes. They'd probably qualify.

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