# Stuck in the Middle with You By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2023-12-12 In the 1972 song _Stuck in the Middle with You_ by Stealers Wheel, they sing, “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am stuck in the middle with you.” There is value in reflecting on this insight as it relates to the middle class in the United States. The middle class is ubiquitous. It seems that nearly everybody in America considers oneself to be in the middle class. This manufactured identity has been created and provided to almost all to hide something more dangerous and powerful. That isn’t to say the middle class doesn’t exist. Certainly, there is a group between the poor and the wealthy. That group is an extremely large _middle_; it isn’t, however, a _class_. The “middle class” has been sold a set of aspirations: Get into the economic system, play by the rules, work hard, keep your head down and your mouth shut, and you might move up into the upper middle class. Whatever you do, don’t rock the boat. A class has interests, not aspirations. The middle-class identity and aspirations have been manufactured to distract and divide the working class. Who is the working class? The working class is anybody who’s income comes predominately from wage labor. The working class, therefore, includes the poor, lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class. This is almost everybody in America. When the focus was on this construction of class in America, the term “wage slavery” was used to describe how work was enacted. By creating, selling, and perpetuating the myth of the middle class, capitalists have obfuscated the notion of wage slavery. The class aspiration of the middle class is to make it; the class interest of the working class is to end wage slavery. Solidarity is formed through shared identification and consciousness. This can only be achieved if one abandons the identity provided for the liberating one. Otherwise, I’m stuck in the middle with you. #### Related Items [[Economics]] [[Music]] [[Middle Class]] [[American]] [[Wage Slavery]] [[Capitalism]]