A while back we heard a lot about the "squeezed middle", the decent, hardworking people who were having to tighten their belts or expand them according to the price of spelt. No more long breaks at Easter. More Lidl, less Ocado. Less discussion of house prices, more of the cost of education, all of this underpinned by a niggling anxiety about longterm employment. Sure, zero hours and freelance life is great for young "creatives". Less good if you have children, ever get ill, or (and this may come as a blow) you are not actually a "creative" but a worker. A middle-class one with a salary, but a worker nonetheless.
Workers should be able to save but are finding it impossible. The squeezed middle yelps. Indeed, on the latest statistics, it is gasping for air.
A sign of its distress is surely seeing Marx quoted in everything from the Daily Mail to the Spectator, publications not adverse to class war themselves. Now their fight is plaintive. It is for the middle class, which Marx said would be crushed by the logic of late capitalism. He spoke specifically about how the small shopkeepers and tradespeople would fail. There would be left the great mass of poor people and a tiny minority of the ultra-rich, and then of course violent revolution. » | Suzanne Moore | Wednesday, August 28, 2013
