It is often believed that a strong middle class is vital for the democratization of countries. Why?
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It isn’t. A lot of people’s thoughts on this are based on pure political theory or ideology, not on practise or history. I would suggest you have to look at real history to answer the question properly. Another issue is that the definitions being used for “middle class” as opposed to “working class” are not rigorous – I’ll explain that below.
tl;dr: In reality in history, the working class is a promoter for democratic development. This is because of the economic role of workers, but also because of the traditions of unionism and so on. The middle classes sometimes play this role to support democracy, but often don’t. They are often, in fact, active opponents of democratic development.
Long version: The working class is organised in collective workplaces, where the needs of the job often demonstrate a need for democracy. Workers organise themselves in unions, and historically these have been basically schools of democracy, where workers learn how to discuss and make decisions in a democratic way by necessity. Union demands were often tilted toward democratising workplaces. Often employees lives depended on this fact; for example, there is a direct correlation between higher unionisation levels in the construction industry and lower rates of workplace deaths and serious injuries.
Working class protest actions, strikes and rebellions are largely the reason we have many of the democratic rights and freedoms associated with ‘the West’. Most of our ‘democratic heritage’ historically comes from working class political action, or from the threat of such action. For example, the vote in my country was originally restricted to people with money and property; big rebellions from working people forced the vote to be expanded to include the lower classes. This was the pattern in most of the ‘West’.
At the same time as being inclined towards democratic organisation just by having collective workplaces and unions, the working class also has the social weight to cause social change, as a supply of workers is the most crucial factor in any modern economy. They are the productive class in society.
What about the “middle class”? We have to define what this phrase means, because in the US “middle class” is used to refer to the better paid parts of the working class, which is incorrect. Middle class refers to classes that fall between the two main classes in society, which are:
* the big business capitalist class – you are a member of this class if you own or invest in big business and get most of your livelihood from this fact. (In short, if you own ‘capital’, hence ‘capitalist’)
* the working class – you are a member of this class if you work to earn a wage/salary, or if your livelihood is dependent on family members that do, or if you normally would do this but are currently unemployed.
Middle classes can include:
* managers that aren’t owners,
* small business owners (as opposed to big business owners), who are often people that fall into and out of the working class depending on the economy),
* other classes which used to be more important, like peasants who were once the majority of society, but are no longer economically significant
Sometimes the term also applies to “academics” and other professionals, but the majority of these people work for a wage or a salary and are really working class, even if some are better paid than most workers.
Members of the middle class have weird conflicting economic interests. For example, a small business owner might one day be thrown out of business and forced to get a job like a regular worker. When that happens, she may have an interest in a more democratic workplace, higher wages, unionism, etc. The next week, she might be back to making money from her small business – and then she will suddenly NOT have any interest in workplace democracy, in paying her employees higher wages, or in seeing them get unionised. So a small business owner is in a contradictory position, and can have some very mixed up politics as a result.
In many cases, a small business owner will feel trapped – between big business on the one hand (as big capitalists drive her out of business, and big banks take all her money via loan repayments) and workers on the other (as her employees demand higher wages, better conditions, more rights that make it harder for her to get what she wants out of them). Historically, it is these middle classes who have supported the fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 20s and 30s. During that period, they were far more prominent than they are today – they were once a big segment of the population, but are now a minority.
The fascist movements were obviously not remotely about democracy, and they existed precisely to destroy the organisations of the working class – trade unionists, socialists, communists, etc were among the primary targets of the Nazis, for example. They would in fact prefer to get rid of democracy when possible, as long as they are in charge – or as long as someone who says he represents them is in charge.
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