He once made the point: the capitalists attempt to divide the working class by confusing “class” with “income.” He said "the term ’middle class’ as used by the capitalists, actually refers to people in a supposed ’middle income group.’" (Victor Perlo, Superprofits and Crises, 1988, International Publishers)
Perlo commented, in Superprofits and Crises, that, “‘Middle-class’ workers are portrayed as those whose historic status as wage workers has been so improved that they can plausibly be considered to have advanced out of the working class proper and into the ‘middle class.’”
The science of Marxism-Leninism teaches us to look for the economic and class interests behind ideas, institutions and events in our society. V.I. Lenin, who applied Marxism to the struggles of the working class, cut through the smokescreen: “The fundamental feature that distinguishes classes is the place they occupy in social production, and, consequently, the relation in which they stand to the means of production.”
The Marxist-Leninist analysis teaches us that what distinguishes classes is not differences in income, habits or mentality, but their relation to society’s means of production.
And the middle class is the small capitalists, owners of means of production, who occupy an intermediate position in between the class of workers and big monopoly capital.
Marxism-Leninism teaches us to oppose ideas that serve the capitalist class against the working class to overcome the power of the capitalists and build socialist society. We need a fighting party of the working class, a Communist Party. V.I. Lenin said "we see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism's victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations." (Lenin, A Militant Agreement for the Uprising)
