Since its ancient origin in Aristotle's Politics, the idea of the middle class has had three major boom periods, with periods of marginalization in between. The first was during the early nineteenth century in Europe. The middle class was the first explicit class, and it was hailed as a rising actor, against the aristocracy and monarchical absolutism, and as carrier of the new ideology of liberalism. Then followed a long decline, when the middle class was overshadowed in the global North by the worker question, the working class, and the labor movement, and in the South by the colonial question and anti-imperialism. After World War II the idea had a triumphant return, but largely confined to the United States, where it came to eclipse the working class in public discourse.
The third boom, which began in the twenty-first century and currently seems to be ebbing, had its center in...
