Google is a made up term.
Every term or phrase is “made up”.
Funny, I grew up hearing the term middle-class Americans, that the middle-class is the backbone of America, the working middle-class, the lower middle-class and the upper middle-class. It wasn’t until later that I began to understand the concept of political elites and serfs, or the filthy rich. It isn’t a bad term, or a bad reality. It implies upward mobility, and reward for hard work. It has defined America, a place where anyone can start with nothing, and work their way into something. It is the middle area that we move through, live in, hate, enjoy, join and leave behind, and without it, we get stuck looking up. It’s demise is a tragedy.
Note to Google: Marx called the middle class the “petit bourgeois” and rails against it for the fact that it represents people who should be siding with the “workers”, but instead believe that they should side with the capitalists. Attempting to rewrite history so that “middle class” never existed doesn’t even follow the writings of their god, Karl Marx.
Er... OK... so what does this all mean?
You’re going to get slammed with evidence to contrary, so I’m not even going to bother. I grew up hearing the term all the time. However, the use that I heard growing up was more synonymous with working class than the definition we use now.
“Middle Class America” is union-speak for themselves.
They had this perverse tendency to bring their language with them, and the Scots, Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Manx did the same doggone thing.
Now America was vast, empty, wild and wonderful so for a long time the English class system was worn down by it all and quite frankly didn't manage to survive. But some of their concepts ~ dating back to ancient times ~ continued.
You rarely hear the term "men of property' in American history simply because "Owning PRoperty' meant an entirely different thing here where folks had slaves!
There are some other sociological terms the English had developed to refer to their condition that also disappeared.
The Middle Classes were always the non titled men of property who owned stores or farms, or ships, or small factories. A butcher would be a member of the Middle Classes. A tenant farmer wouldn't unless he owned his own team, plough boards, harness ~ and so on.
Merry Old England didn't have as frozen a social structure as the nobility imagined ~ still doesn't ~
The British middle class was the educated, professional, well-to-do bourgeoisie: the class of wealthy, non-titled achievers that was always "rising" in British history.
In the US, "middle class" meant people who were neither very rich nor very poor, in other words almost everybody. As far back as the 18th century it was common to speak of the "middling sort" or the yeoman farmers.
The British middle class contrasted itself with the nobility on the one hand and the working classes on the other. America's middle class excluded the very rich and the very poor.
What the "working class" was over here and whether you could work with your hands and be "middle class" were things we didn't much get into. If you had a job you qualified as "middle class," at least by many accounts.
You are actually right in a way. Most 19th century American references to the "middle class" or "middle classes" have to do with England (or Europe), rather than America. But those Americans weren't looking at their own society and possible divisions.
When they did start to look around at their own country with the same eyes they looked at Britain or Europe with, it was inevitable that they'd apply similar categories to US society, but they were aware of the differences as well.
You or I don't have to be "social scientists" or use words as they do. But if somebody sets himself or herself up as a "social scientist" they aren't going to say that "class" and "caste" are something other countries have, while everything is hunky-dory with us, and we don't have to categorize or label anything about us or distinguish differences between us. Applying those terms where they might fit and drawing possible distinctions goes with the job, like it or not.
Usage always changes a bit with time. You find a few more people here using the word in the British sense, but I'm not aware of any major revolution in usage over the course of the 20th century. "Middle class" has meant, not starving, not on welfare, but not independently wealthy for as long as I can remember.
All words are "made up" in some sense, and any attempt to categorize people by class is going to be disputed. You can categorize them as you wish and use or avoid terminology as you please. But I doubt throwing around the communist label is going to make anything clearer or more precise.
Bob Segar was singing about the U.M.C. (Upper Middle Class) on 1974’s Seven album, which was recorded in ‘73.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_%28Bob_Seger_album%29
If a working class rocker from the Midwest was obviously very familiar with the concept of the middle class in that time frame, why wouldn’t everyone else be?