I should note that I think the middle class barely exists in America today. Look at the way we define middle class incomes — an amorphous number but let’s peg it at $30,000 to $60,000 a year. That amount of income works well where we grew up, in midwestern factory towns. You could do all right on that, until your kids went to college (and 20 years ago both middle class incomes and college costs were much lower). It does not work so well in the vast coastal metropolises where we dwell. In fact, I think it makes much of the middle class part of the lower classes.

So perhaps the Marxist split you describe is occurring here in the U.S. Grim.

A classical marxist would argue that the goal of the oligarchs is to break the middle class (the petty bougousie) absorbing part into themselves and grinding the rest down into the working class. I think a more nuanced reading would be that the oligarchs want to co-opt the middle class in their struggle with the proletariat. As long as the middle class can be convinced that democracy favors their interests, they (the oligarchs) will allow it to continue. Once the proletariat begins to try to turn the rhetoric of democracy into reality, the tide will shift and the middle class will be convinced to abandon democracy in favor of protecting their other values.