There is no consensus on what the middle class is, either among social scientists or the general public. In its widest sense majority of the population in developed countries is middle class, as it contains all individuals who are between poor and rich. In a narrower sense, the middle class comprises well-paid skilled manual laborers, routine clerical workers, managers, professionals, and small business owners. In the narrowest usage middle class consists only of managers, professionals, and small business owners. Another method to define the middle class is to use a statistical definition and disregard occupational differences. Most often, statistical definitions of the middle class use some statistical range of annual income (average or median) of individuals or households as an indicator. Pew Research Center, for example, defines the middle class as those people who earn between „two-thirds to double the U.S. median household income”.

                    Marxist Approach to the Middle Class

In The Communist Manifesto (in German, 1848), Karl Marx argues that “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”. He viewed the middle class as a heterogeneous stratum containing intermediate positions between workers and capitalists. The economic and political success of the Bourgeoisie was destroying that middle class as: “The lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants – all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production”.

Charles Wright Mills' book White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951), attributed the increase in the size of a part of the middle class, the so-called "white collars", to three processes: the growth of bureaucracy in all spheres of work, the development of technology, and the growth of industrial production. Corporations are getting bigger, so former small entrepreneurs are becoming ordinary employees within large companies. The growth of bureaucracy in companies requires the creation of more managerial levels within companies, and these levels are linked into chains of superiority and subordination. At each level, specific coordination and supervision of subordinate employees take place. White-collar workers represent a “new” middle class. They are economically dependent on big corporations, while the old middle class, composed of small farmers, small entrepreneurs, independent professionals, and property owners, was economically self-reliant. White-collar workers, unlike experts from earlier periods, do not represent independent professionals but are completely subject to bureaucratic control and manipulation within the companies in which they work. The rise of white-collar jobs showed that Marx's prediction that almost the entire society would be divided into capitalists and manual workers did not come true. The division of labor has led to the work of white-collar workers being very limited to a specific task within the company, and the work process itself being very routine and automated. This has led to a reduction in autonomy and the expansion of semi-professional jobs, which have a low level of authority, income, and prestige. White-collar workers are experiencing increasing alienation, both at work and outside of work. Mills saw a decline in the reputation, autonomy, power, and income of white-collar workers, and in addition to the previously mentioned causes, he cited an increase in the population with higher education, increased white-collar unemployment, and a reduction in the pay gap between white-collar workers and manual workers.

Structural Marxist Nicos Poulantzas develops his own class analysis in the book Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (1974). His analysis is based on three premises: 1) classes cannot be defined outside the class struggle, 2) classes denote objective positions in the social division of labor, and 3) classes are structurally determined, not only at the economic level but also at the political level and ideological level. At the economic level, Poulantzas considers as productive work only that which leads to the relation of exploitation, and in capitalism, it is that work that directly creates surplus value. This is the reason why he includes in the proletariat only workers who directly produce surplus value. At the political level, he separates from the working class all personnel who exercise supervision or management. At the ideological level, he distinguishes between manual and mental work, and on that basis excludes all engineers and technicians from the working class. In his opinion, all employees who perform non-manual work belong to the class of the new petty bourgeoisie (middle class). This class has the potential to form an alliance with the capitalist class.

Erik Ohlin Wright, who advocates the approach known as analytical Marxism, introduces the concept of "contradictory locations within the class structure" as his own solution to the problems of classifying social classes. In his Class, Crisis, and the State (1978), Wright argues that there are only three “pure” classes: bourgeoisie, the working class (proletariat), and petty bourgeoisie (small business owners). There are locations within the class structure that are objectively contradictory in their properties, not only in relation to other classes, but in themselves, and they should be analyzed independently. The three contradictory class locations are: managers and supervisors; employees in semi-autonomous jobs; and small employers. The middle class consists only of managers, supervisors, and employees in semi-autonomous jobs. Those professions are exploited by the capitalists, while simultaneously they exert control over the means of production, control over other people's labor force, and control over investments and resource allocation. 

Barbara and John Ehrenreich, introduced the concept of the professional-managerial class in their article “The Professional-Managerial Class” (1979). This class consists of well-paid experts and managers who do not own the means of production, but who, within the reproduction of capitalism, play the role of maintaining capitalist culture and capitalist social relations. This class acts against the interests of the working class in many ways. Engineers produce technologies that benefit the ruling class, while managers introduce a higher level of social control of workers within the production relationship. This class also directly affects the reduction of autonomy and skills of workers (deskilling), because it eliminates the need for highly qualified workers (the position of foreman) who previously organized the production process. Teachers and social workers indoctrinate children and control adult "problematic" people who do not fit into the capitalist system. Advertising professionals, managers, and entertainers spread capitalist and consumerist ideology among the general population. This class has high rates of intergenerational reproduction and interclass marriage. The final effect of this class is to increase the economic and organizational power of capital. Although not all members of this class have the consciousness and desire to act against the working class, by the very effect they have on the working class, the position they occupy within production, and the inherent lifestyle, they make up a diverse but unique class. The uniqueness of the interests of this class is reflected in the need to appropriate the surplus labor created by the working class, while, at the same time, they want to preserve autonomy in relation to the ruling class.

                                   Middle Class Culture

In the book Class, Codes and Control, 3 vols. (1971, 1973, 1976) Bernstein Basil researched the relationship between the social class from which a child originates and how that child learns and uses language, both in the family and at school. He found that there are significant differences between the ability of members of different classes to use symbolic communication. Different use of language influences the creation of different identities, experiences, and views of the world, and it is connected with socialization in the family and with two ways of organizing the household - "positional" and "personalizing". The positional type and the associated language code are characteristic of the working and old middle classes. The personalizing type is associated with the "new" middle class, which is engaged in the production of cultural content, while the old middle class is associated with material production and trade. The positional system depends on the direct means of social control - clearly defined social roles. The personalizing type allows individual reflection on identity and meaning. The difference between these two types of primary socialization affects the creation of two clearly separated linguistic codes: "limited" and "elaborated". Limited language code more often uses short, incomplete, and grammatically simple sentences. Restricted code uses particularistic meanings because it is always tied to the context in which it is spoken. The elaborated code, on the other hand, contains many details and explanations, and the meanings are universalistic because they are not related to a specific context. Because formal schooling focuses on transmitting and developing a universalist type of knowledge and meaning, children who use limited code are less likely to successfully acquire the necessary skills and knowledge. Bernstein also showed that children from working-class families create classifications based on their own experience and knowledge, while children from middle-class families create classifications using abstract principles.

In Popular Culture and High Culture (1974), Herbert Gans explores the many different cultural tastes that exist in the United States and advocates cultural pluralism. He recognized five such different types of culture: 1) high culture - it is consumed by the upper class, and the creative and abstract aspects of art are emphasized; 2) upper middle culture - it is consumed by the upper middle class, this culture is less innovative, so too experimental and too "simple" content is rejected; 3) Lower Middle Culture - this is the dominant culture in America and it emphasizes easy-to-understand and easy-to-consume content; 4) lower culture - it is consumed by workers, and the most characteristic contents are action movies, rock and country music, family series and the yellow press; 5) low culture - it is consumed by the poorest people from the countryside, and the emphasis is on very easy and receptive content. The hierarchy of cultures and tastes is closely linked to differences in wealth, reputation, and power. The upper class finances and protects its culture, wanting to keep it to itself, while the differences in cultural spending between the middle and working classes are still large.

                   Weberian Approach to the Middle Class

Goldthorp, Lockwood, Bechhofer, and Jennifer Platt conducted a large-scale study from 1963 to 1964 to test the hypothesis of a "bourgeoisization" of the working class, that is, whether wealthy manual workers are becoming more and more like the middle class. The results of this research were published in the book The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (1968-1969), which was published in three volumes. Although most of the surveyed workers had high salaries, even higher than some members of the white collar, the original thesis was not proven. Differences like market situation, the possibility of career advancement, attitude towards work, social attitudes, and political affiliation continued to separate "rich" workers from members of the middle class who had similar salaries. This study also concludes that administrative staff workers are in a position between the working class and the middle class.

Abercrombie and John Urry studied the middle class in Britain in the book Capital, Labor and the Middle Class (1983) and in their analysis concluded that there was a polarization of the middle class. Managers and experts are approaching the upper class, while most ordinary "white-collar workers" are approaching the working class. They believe that in the analysis of classes, it is necessary to combine Marxist and Weberian class analysis because both have their advantages. Classes consist, at the same time, of individuals, but also of their class locations. These two authors believe that the middle class of experts and managers is more influential in the United States than in European countries.

          Anthropological Approach to the Middle Class

Lloyd Warner conducted empirical research in the late 1930s in a small town in the state of Massachusetts. Warner hypothesized that the role that kinship plays in tribal society, in modern society, is taken over by social stratification because stratification affects economic relations, sense of identity and belonging to a community, value systems, and forms of solidarity. He was primarily interested in status stratification, which determines the level of privilege, specific rights, and duties of members of a certain class and their patterns of living. The results of the research are presented in the book The Status System of a Modern Community, 2 vols. (1941, 1942). In the city where he conducted his research, Warner identified six specific classes: upper-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, lower-middle, upper-lower, and lower-lower. The upper-middle class consisted of families who had a small family business or individuals who were employed as highly-paid professionals. This class formed the basis of political and civic participation in the community. The lower-middle class of owners of small private businesses and highly skilled workers, and the upper-lower class, made up of skilled workers, made up the majority of the population and had a large dose of inter-class solidarity.

                         Bourdieu on the Middle Class

Pierre Bourdieu, in the book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment Taste (1979), explores the relationship between cultural consumption and class. He concluded that there are three hierarchically ordered types of aesthetic taste or style of cultural consumption: elite (legitimate), middlebrow (middle class), and popular (mass). Elite aesthetic taste characterizes, first of all, the dominant class, although Bourdieu found that in this class, there is an inverse relationship between the size of economic capital and the size of cultural capital. Each type of cultural consumption and taste serves to give individuals a sense of place within the social structure. The aesthetic taste of a person (elite, middlebrow, or mass) in one of the areas of cultural consumption (e.g., art) usually corresponds to the type of taste in other areas (e.g., fashion, sports, literature). In the same book, Bourdieu presents his theoretical approach to classes. Bourdieu sees classes as the product of symbolic self-classification of a particular group, but also of external classification by other groups. A significant and underestimated aspect of class tensions is, in Bourdieu's opinion, the "classification struggle" concerning the symbolic function of everyday cultural consumption and lifestyles. In order to achieve their goals, that is, for their strategies to be successful, individual and collective actors use various forms of capital. Four types of capital can be employed within each field (although different types of capital will be more effective in different fields): symbolic capital, cultural capital, economic capital, and social capital. Bourdieu's research showed that there are three basic class locations in France: the dominant class, the middle class, and the working class. In the middle, between these two classes, are technicians, small business owners, and those who perform routine administrative tasks, and they make up the "petty bourgeoisie", or the middle class.

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