The State and the Formation of a Middle Class: a Chilean Example

Although analysts have written extensively on social classes in Latin America, they have failed, both conceptually and empirically, to deal with the class. Most do not regard it as a social class because it has no consistent and definable relationship to a mode of production. Often middle are defined by occupational criteria as nonmanual labor groups (Stavenhagen, 1968), viewed as social categories with distinct economic and political interests. Much of the analysis of the strata has centered on showing their diversity and their ties to and dependency on the ruling capitalist class (Leeds, 1965; Sunkel, 1965). These studies have failed to explain why the class has so often been a major political actor and how the class struggle shapes its patently contradictory behavior. They have also failed to identify the historical processes that have produced its dependency on the capitalist class or to reconcile this dependency with its self-identification as a class (Johnson, 1958). The class has a phenomenological reality that needs to be accounted for.