You are 'Middle Class' does that make you a value parasite?

 

There is an amorphous formation known as the middle class. In the United Kingdom the term middle class implies those people who typically have had a good education, own a family house, and hold a managerial or professional post.

Yet the  political identity of this  social stratum known as the 'middle class' has always been notoriously shaky. Historically it has varied from the white collar workers who formed the backbone of German Nazism to those who played a role in re-shaping the political and cultural life of 19th century Paris.

It would be an  overblown claim to advance any general rule yet it would appear that the middle classes tend to lack the reassuring support of a moral tradition they could call their own.

Lacking the blanket of a moral tradition, they are a free floating social strata, who become 'value parasites', i.e cherry picking their consciousness from associations with one or other of the dominant classes in society. For the  middle classes, by historical necessity, must  cultivate all manner of fictitious marks as to their own identity. It is in this way they might be said to be parasitic.

This is most marked in the middle class quest for symbolic capital; the car, the lawn, the fence, the right school, the correct accent; to be seen doing the 'proper' thing; the craving for respectability etc.

And any movement in the values just listed can be of great significance to the middle classes who will be quick off the mark to adopt the new values set by others. It is in this way that the 'middles classes' might be said to be 'value parasites'.