I thought "middle class" arose out of the bourgeois class later on?
It's like when I realized that slaves under christianity were not horribly abused as they were part of the church but simply didn't own very many things
slavery became awuful around things like deciding black people were closer to animals so it was ok to exploit them but really they were competing, or rather, trying to keep up with steam-based looms which were much faster at processing cotton so pick that cotton faster *cracks whip *
I assume small landholders, yeomen etc. and such would be the equivalent of the middle class in such a society.
> slaves under christianity were not horribly abused as they were part of the church
I'm not sure that's strictly true. It of course varied by time and place and the Church tried to somewhat limit the worst abuse.
Also a clear workaround was to enslave infidels. Muslims enslaved Christians (and basically depopulate many coastal areas across the Mediterranean), in turn Christians were fine with enslaving Muslims (all though they didn't necessarily have that many opportunities) and East European pagans were fair game to everyone.
As an Eastern-European, I can definitely say that after year 1000 we were not pagans, but Christian-Ortodox, but it’s true that the Genoese and the Venetians trading us around the
Black Sea called us “schismatics”, i.e. just one step above pagans.
> called us “schismatics”, i.e. just one step above pagans.
I guess technically it was a "hack" though, the Genoese bought anyone the Mongols were selling and shipped them to Egypt and other Muslim states without anyone back at home asking too many questions..
Until of course the Ottomans got right of the middle men and took over the slave trade themselves.
Depends which Eastern Europeans- Lithuania stayed pagan until the late 14th century, with some areas not being Christianised until the early 15th century.
Of course, the Lithuanians themselves might well say they're not Eastern European...
Why would they? They're Balts, and quite homogenously so. Their ancestors were likely centered a bit further East, but not that far out. And their language appears to have split off from a common ancestor of the the Slavic languages.
Wanted to add an aside about the Lithuanians and them not becoming Christian until the 1300s, but, as you said, some Lithuanians themselves might have said that they're not Eastern-Europeans :)
Not as we would recognize it today, but there were always merchants, craftsman and petty gentry that would have a measure of freedom and earning that serfs did not have the ability to achieve.
when I read Road to Wigan Pier I realized that the 20th Century British term "middle class" had an almost unrecognizable meaning compared to what Americans think of as "middle class"
So the first thing you need to figure out, to answer the question "did the middle class exist back then" is: which cultural definition of middle class are we even using to begin with?
You don't need to answer that, in fact, I explicitly handwaved it away. The question is - is there a class between the elites and the serfs, and the answer is always yes. There are always people that the elites need in order to operate a successful polity, but those people are not part of the ruling class.
I’ve always heard that it was the class in between the upper class/nobility, and the working class. That is, the class that isn’t able to just indefinitely stop working and sustain itself by things they own. But also isn’t living paycheck-to-paycheck and forced to work. Professionals in lucrative careers and successful small business owners. This makes more sense to me that the sort of typical misapplication to people around median income in the US.
Around median income is already a thing we have a name for (we can call it median income), and it tells us approximately nothing about their position in terms of labor relations or social class.
Working class people should unionize, they should band together to prevent exploitation. Middle class people don’t have to worry about exploitation, they can walk if they want to. They should form guilds and professional societies, to keep unqualified pretenders out of their fields.
"Middle class" is super-poorly defined. Marxists use it to mean petit bourgeoisie (ie people who own capital, plus professionals, so right from the start you have an anomaly, in that, say, a doctor is middle class even if they don't own anything; it's not purely capitalists). As you say Americans tend to use it to mean 'practically everybody'. The British definition has always been complex and is at this point probably complex enough that it's impossible to fully pin down; a huge part of it is _self-identification_ (there are plenty of British millionaires who consider themselves working class).
I mean, I kinda get it, if you want to retire in the US you probably need a million dollars at least (although, not just in the bank, spread throughout retirement funds and real estate). So I could see a working class millionaire. Technically a retiree is living off their wealth, but IMO that’s an edge case.
"Middle class" is often used as a translation of "bourgeoisie" from "bourgeois" which literally means "town dweller" ie. a city dweller.[0] It also means "someone who belongs to neither the aristocratic, clerical, nor military classes."[0] This distinction was useful because the Three Estates system grouped both city dwellers and peasants into a single class (the third estate).[1] Similarly the English word "middle class" was at one point used by Marxists to describe non-aristocratic, non-working class urbanites and equated middle class directly with "bourgeoisie."[2] This class included factory owners who could be richer than the average noble. Our modern usage of "middle class" would never include factory owners, bankers etc. but this definition did.
You end up with something like this:
Old: Nobles -> "Middle class" -> Peasants
Marxist: -> Nobles -> "Middle class" -> Working Class
In both of these, "middle class" means "Not a noble. Could be a rich merchant"
Modern: Rich -> "Middle class" -> Working class
Here, "middle class" means "Middle income. Owns a house or an expensive apartment." "Working class" is the common term used here but also includes people that do not work.
>Around median income is already a thing we have a name for (we can call it median income),
Nobody uses this term. For example, nobody would say they are a "median income" family. Additionally, not all of what people today would consider "working class" work for other people, and cannot join a union. For example, street vendors often do not make much money[3] and it does not make much sense to categorize them as "middle class" because they are not being exploited by their employer (as they have no employer). Unions exist for highly skilled jobs as well, such as air traffic controllers, which make $137,380 per year on average.[4][5] Defining "middle class" as someone who "doesn't need a union" (taking how to qualify that as given) also leaves open the question of what the "upper class" means in that scenario, being that we are not using income as the barometer for class in favor of union status. Would the street vendor be "upper class" if he had a worker? If anything, I would say we already have a term for what you are essentially describing: "unskilled labor." Unskilled laborers need unions more than skilled ones. This is a direct effect of unskilled laborers making less money due to lack of a marketable skill.
>it tells us approximately nothing about their position in terms of labor relations or social class.
It actually tells us a great deal about social class. People of similar incomes will live in their own neighborhood whether or not they have that money from being in a union or from a non union job (leaving the definition of that aside). It is all decided by income level. Living in a middle class suburb is a vastly different experience from living in an apartment in a poor neighborhood in the city.
Lastly, the "right" definition is not really important as much as explaining what you mean by that word when you use it. In the context of history, as in this article, the definition definitely matters.
Hard agree. It is true that being a slave in one culture is much better experience than others. But that’s only a matter of degree.
Example: You intentionally killed someone and are convicted of it. You have done a bad thing. The how and why only determines your sentence, not whether or not you committed a crime
nobody because the times and places either of them lived in no longer exist. surely the places and the geographical locations and buildings are still there, but the people are all different, so it's not the same place
That's important in literature in a way.. But does it matter to the economy if POSIX were created as it is or if some OS slush fund created a different computing model obsessed with some other primitve besides the file?
In our values a lot of literature is valuable because of how it came about. If Shakespeare never existed and someone wrote like him today we would just lock them up.
it's not about any of that "reasoning"... what matters it the conclusions: the results.
and even more than that, what matters is the capability of the paper to sway the opinion of real power.
our experience dealing with power may vary, in mine, power does not respond to "reasoning" nor any of that stuff.
nonetheless, I agree with your sentiment. why does science demand replication? IMO, a key underlying consequence is that ideas must be transferred, given away before they can be science.
the ideology of "real" human-centric science is equivalent to open source mindset. so then, my question is what to call all that research that happens, privately, in secret and under a lot of NDAs.... it is not science; that is product development.
I think you're conflating the language design stuff with the tooling (packaging, and calling that 'modules') ....to be fair, you're conflating but I'm fanboying python
in any case, the point being there's a distinction between an linker and a compiler but not in interpreted languages. so comparing rust's crates with JS, python (even java) is an instance of apples-to-oranges comparisons
Maintaining boundaries in your code is something you can do in any language, regardless of built-in support in the language or tooling.
Ironically, untyped languages like js and python are particularly prone to the problems from poor unstructured code, because you can't use static type checking to find broken dependencies at compile time.
Can you explain how types would help with code structure? From experience, even with typed TS nothing prevents developers from creating a big ball of mud
then again, most history consists of whitewashing back when northern countries were exploiting everywhere else in various ways: imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, capitalism, financialization,...
typical people prefer to pretend this is simply "order" and "progress"; seemingly blind to their own ideological baggage like fish in water
you've pointed out the problem with the contemporary american two party state.
it's a see saw of nobody does anything but blame their systemic rival
either USA party system gets more than two parties because they're on a steady stalemate, like other poster was saying, 35 years of gridlocked congress because of two way ties.
or look at china, my prediction is that soon enough a ballsy european monarchy is gonna go full-blown one-party democracy or something clever like that
And temporary allies. Maybe with more than two parties we could move past the idea that the platform of one party has to be the exact opposite of the other on every issue. Then, maybe, not every effort would result in a gridlock. Perhaps a nice side effect could be that people stop seeing others who disagree with them as evil.
It's hard to make progress with temporary allies. They're going to expect some kind of mutual benefit. That is easiest when you've got trust, and the belief that you will have my back in the future. It's hard to have faith in temporary allies, and less opportunity to make compromises and trade-offs.
It's far easier when your allies are long term. Which functions a lot like a single party even if you don't call it that.
I am bothered by the implicit assumptions around property and ownership over cultural symbols which are tacit in your thinking.
as explicitly as I can, the very notion of saying "this is my culture, why are you adopting cultural practices or beliefs or symbols (or anything) from a culture that isn't yours!?" is why I'm raising a red flag here. I have a problem with that attitude.
It is not easy. Personally, I'm on the other side of the fence. As Mexican, we often see our culture "misrepresented" in media. But generally, all my friends and family hate it when they "correct it".
For example, we loved Speedy Gonzalez, Yepa yepa! Arriba Arriba! When he was canceled, I guess some people were bothered, but I'm sure there was no consensus around Mexicans whether we wanted it gone. I bet if you did a survey, most Mexicans loved the character. And the same happens with sombreros, nopales and huaraches. I love seeing people using them, people recognizing them, and even selling them (wish all times they were Mexican made, but hey, you can't have it all). It sometimes bothers us, especially when the stereotype affects us personally while looking for jobs, opportunities, etc. But I like having a strong culture that other people imitate, and would rather find ways to educate people in the wrong when the occasion arises and when it is not in our favor than just cancelling it for good.
Funny that you mention that, because I grew up watching both Speedy Gonzales and the Tijuana Toads. The latter one especially was pretty non-PC given the combo Japanese and Mexican stereotypes.
I thought "middle class" arose out of the bourgeois class later on?
It's like when I realized that slaves under christianity were not horribly abused as they were part of the church but simply didn't own very many things
slavery became awuful around things like deciding black people were closer to animals so it was ok to exploit them but really they were competing, or rather, trying to keep up with steam-based looms which were much faster at processing cotton so pick that cotton faster *cracks whip *