Abstract

The Crisis of the Middle Class: I. The Middle Class Under Capitalism

Bewilderment and despair torment large groups of the middle class in the U.S. during 1935, those persons who are not wage workers, big capitalists or farmers. The plight of the middle class is ominous. Racked by the depression, its economic and psychological condition alarmingly approaches that of the European middle class. As an independent propertied class of small enterprisers, the middle class was identified with the earlier capitalism of small-scale industry, of economic individualism. It tried to maintain those conditions by a perpetual struggle against monopoly, from the trading companies of the sixteenth century to the modern trusts. Independent enterprisers are doomed by mounting capital requirements, more savage competition, and the dominion of large-scale industry.