Upper Middle Class Revolutionaries

Gramsci, among others, was taken with the mystery of why peasants and proles often supported the ruling elites instead of following their own class interests. The answer is, of course, that peasants and proles are just as apt to be dumbasses as anyone else. The smartest peasants and proles, given the opportunity, are liable to join the ruling elites or serve them in their own individual interests. And in the absence of opportunity, smart peasants and proles aren't going to have much influence. Very few smart peasants and proles will join the intelligentsia of the peasant/prole movement, and the P/Ps will have to make do with well intentioned academics from other classes who don't know the first thing about actual peasants or proles.

I did some research on class in America and was surprised, appalled actually, to find that I am considered "Upper Middle Class". I don't feel UMC, but I live in a dual earner household that fits the definition (over $100K/year income). I live in a high cost, high tax area, but even taking that into account I am UMC. What the hell does this mean? Do I have to vote Republican? I'm in debt up to my eyeballs, for crying out loud and can't survive with much of an interruption in earning power by me or my working spouse. On the wealth scale, I am way below median. We're both professionals with the usual bourgeois sensibilities and tastes, but we both have solid working class roots and relate to working class people more than to the ruling elites.

I reckon that the class system based on income is not as meaningful as sociologists seem to think. I'll admit that NASCAR's appeal is a mystery to me and that I have no paintings on velvet in my home, but I still live more or less check to check. I have to work for a living. More accurately, both Mrs Vache Volle and I have to work for a living. Our vacations are a little more exotic than our working class kindred are used to and our reading list is a bit more Booker Prize than Oprah, but in essentials we are the same as our blue collar relatives. If the bottom 95% would join together against the top 5% who rule over us, we'd all be better off. The top 5% are not morally superior to us or otherwise fit to rule us.

Anyway, when the revolution comes, no need to trundle me and Mrs VF to the guillotine. We're with you.