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Class warfare has a rich political legacy, of course. What is curious about the modern version of it is how oddly one-dimensional it is. Previous generations of class warriors cast society as an epic battle of labour against capital, the working class against the upper class. Today, it’s all about the middle class, those hard-working, long-suffering, put-upon folk, whom every party vows to defend and whom, to hear their opponents tell it, every party is eager to attack.

Hard work is the universal theme of the middle-class pander: the middle class, it seems, being the only one to put in an honest day’s labour, unlike the idle rich or the skiving poor.

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You work hard, the right tells the middle class. Why should the government take so much of what you’ve earned? You work hard, the left tells the middle class. Why should others earn so much more than you? Each agrees the middle class is being held back, pinned down, dragged under. They differ only on who is the villain — the government, in the right’s account, the rich, in the left’s.

All this bipartisan flattery of middle-class vanity and stoking of middle-class resentments is made easier by the absence of any shared definition of the term. Most people in North American societies think of themselves as being middle class, and politicians are content to let them think it, “most people” being another way to say “a majority of the voters.”

Asked in Parliament to supply a definition, the best Marc Garneau, the transport minister, could come up with was that “the government of Canada defines the middle class using a broad set of characteristics that includes values, lifestyle, and income.” He added that “middle-class values are values that are common to most Canadians from all backgrounds, who believe in working hard to get ahead and hope for a better future for their children.” So: everyone, then.