We Have Never Been Middle Class

There is lot of hype over the rise of a new middle class in emerging economies, and grave concern over the decline of the established middle class in the developed world. But trying to pin down who the middle class really is has been notoriously difficult. In my talk I ask what the middle class means and what purposes it serves. I suggest that the middle class does not exist in the sense that it is represented, but that its promotion has nevertheless been very important for modern capitalism. I try to explain why this is so, and why financialization allows us to see through it in a way we have not been able to before.

Hadas Weiss is a junior research fellow at the CEU IAS. She has earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago, and has since been working on issues related to financialization and the middle class.