to secure our livelihoods independently: private property. If we live in a capitalist society, we have no choice but to work under the conditions we are offered. These conditions are exploitative in the sense that our work generates a surplus we do not enjoy. We no longer live off of communal lands or obtain our basic necessities from other common resources. Working for less than the value of our work is therefore the only way for us to earn the money with which we can buy the things we need and want.
From around the seventeenth century onward, shared and common resources have been expropriated and parceled out, most often by force and against immense resistance, in the form of private property, that is, land and other resources that only some people got to own and control. The process was gradual in Europe and then more abrupt in colonial takeovers of other parts of the world. The beginnings of capitalism and its global spread came hand in hand with the violent introduction of private property where it had previously been absent or marginal to the ways in which populations managed their resources. As resources worldwide came to be parceled out in this way, people were left with no choice but to work for a living in whatever conditions the new owners of land, raw material, work instruments and other resources offered them.
There is another way of looking at property, however, which is promulgated by the agents and agencies of capitalism. This approach builds on the legal apparatus that designates and protects everyone’s right to private ownership. The domain of ownership expands to encompass all manner of things that workers and their families covet: material things like a home or a car, immaterial assets like a savings account, an insurance policy, a pension contract, or a range of stock, bonds and securities—and to broaden the scope even further, other things like a university degree, a specialized skill, a professional credential or a social network, which usually fall under the heading of human capital.
We have a pretty good intuitive sense of what the possession of such things can do for us. The value that private property represents is independent of the value we earn by working. In the case of human capital, it could help us attain a better job. Our fortunes as workers can be counterbalanced by our fortunes as property owners. This matters whenever they diverge significantly. We might lose our earnings following employment cutbacks, falling demand for our services, health or family issues, or simply old age. Faced with such difficulties, owning a home, a savings account, an insurance policy or a university degree can mitigate the loss by securing new income. Alternatively, we might have purchased real estate, stock, or professional credentials, which market developments could make more valuable than when we procured them. This property can then help us cash in on a sum greater than what our work earnings alone would have brought in.
As workers who are at the same time existing or aspiring property owners, we do not assess our place in society (or the society that so places us) solely by the nature of our work and its pay. Nor do we see our collective predicament, as workers, as the be-all and end-all of our highly differentiated fortunes. Instead, all of the things we privately own or have the prospect of someday owning tug at our attention. As workers, we may be fully aware that the lower our paychecks in aggregate, the more the agents and agencies representing capital gain at our expense. But as property owners we stand in a more complicated relation to capitalist institutions. Often, we sense that to be able to leverage our possessions in order to secure our future or to improve our prospects by acquiring new property, we have to root for the stability and growth of our national economy. This holds particularly true when this growth is connected to the increase in the value of the property and assets we own, even if this growth is ultimately based on surplus accumulated at the expense of our wages. With the internalization of this sensibility, accumulation has us on board.
There is more to this shift in perspective than just learning to love capitalism. As people who have to work for a living, we crave property more the less reliable and rewarding our earnings from work and our other protections might be. But getting our hands on property, unless we are lucky enough to have inherited it, takes effort and sacrifice. We have to work harder and better than we otherwise would—perhaps harder and better than others do—if we want to earn enough to put something aside. Earmarking some of our earnings for a savings account, a university degree, a house or a pension, means that we cannot spend all of our earnings on the stuff we want right now. Even if we do attain some property immediately on credit or through installment plans, those debts have to be paid off sometime. Ultimately, then, we still have to work harder and save more. We have a word for our pursuit of property: investment. We invest more time, effort and resources than we absolutely must, in order to later have a potential income that does not rely on our work. We perceive this as a means by which to protect ourselves against a possible shortfall in our earnings and by which to spare ourselves or our children the need to work as hard in the future.
The growing popularity of the category “middle class” over the late nineteenth century in Europe’s most advanced economies had everything to do with the proliferation of diverse forms of household property and of the means of obtaining it. This was also a time of social and political upheaval, which endangered the mounting force and dominance of capitalism. Operating to smooth the course of accumulation by appeasing disgruntled workforces, some of the surplus generated by the increased volume of industry became accessible to the populace. It was condensed into resources that allowed significant numbers of workers to become socially mobile and materially protected in ways they hadn’t before. This mobility and protection, or the promise thereof, redirected their energies from protest to investment. Discontented workers could accrue savings, homes or credentials they would be terrified to lose. They could also acquire a broad array of material and cultural accoutrements through which to assert their advantages and showcase their accomplishments.
The benefit for accumulation lay in the creation of a docile and motivated workforce whose members are too busy trying to keep up in the scramble for property and property-dependent income to recognize and resist their common exploitation. Observing this trend, some theorists have written about the middle class as occupying a contradictory position between work and capital.7 Contradictory, in the sense of pitting us against ourselves: as workers, we are exploited for the creation of surplus no matter how prestigious our jobs or how high our earnings. Yet, insofar as we own or have the hopes of procuring some savings, a home, a car, an insurance policy or a credential, we have something to gain by siding with the cumulative dynamic of capital, which might protect or increase the value of what we own, no matter how humble our jobs or how modest our earnings. We also have something to lose by resisting it insofar as our well-being hinges on the continued possession and preserved value of what resources we have managed to acquire.
We are classified in a way that applauds our propensity to look beyond the tight limitations on our work toward a future in which our households will soar or tumble as a result of our investments today, and to disregard the institutional constraints that, to sustain profitability, determine the value of our possessions, work and earnings, and by extension our own fates. We are named middle class. This designation opens its arms to all of us, from the highest-earning professionals and managers, through successful or struggling business owners and self-employed service providers, to the lowliest personnel and precariously employed interns. This is the case insofar as we make most of our living off work yet possess, or have the prospect of someday possessing, material and human resources whose value can be maintained or enhanced through investment. The designation “middle class” represents our consideration of what we own and how we fare as if they were the outcomes of our personal choices and efforts. It further represents our commitment to sacrificing for our future as if this future relied on our choices and efforts alone.
What makes this idea so compelling is that, to the extent that the value of our possessions does not change too radically while also making us better off than people who own less, or better protected against misfortune than we would have been without them, our best efforts often do pay off. We can therefore plausibly consider our pains to acquire property as prudent investments rather than compulsory forfeitures or reckless gambles. The more strenuously we work and study, plot careers and save for a home, for old age or for our children’s education, the more engrossed we become in these endeavors and the greater our inclination to trace our fortunes back to them, above all else. Moreover, the more we delay gratification in anticipation of something better, the more reluctant we become to discredit our renunciations as externally imposed and therefore