The Fourth Political Theory rejects class as a concept and denies its relevance for the creation of a political system based on the existential understanding of the narod. Even more so does it reject the concept of the “middle class”, which reflects the very essence of the class approach. The middle class, like the middle [average] person, is a social figure situated at the point of maximal social illusion, at the epicenter of slumber. The representative of the middle class corresponds to Heidegger’s figure of das Man, the generalized bearer of “common sense”, subject to no verification or examination. He is the greatest of illusions.
The middle [average] person is not at all the same as the normal person. “Norm” is a synonym for “ideal”, that to which one should strive, that which one should become. The middle [average] person is a person in the least degree, the most ex-individual of individuals, the most null and barren quality. The middle [average] person isn’t a person at all; he is a parody of a person. He is deeply abnormal, since for a normal person it is natural to experience horror, to think about death, to acutely experience the finitude of being, to call into question – sometimes tragically insoluble – the external world, society, and relations to another.
The middle class doesn’t think; it consumes. It doesn’t live; it seeks security and comfort. It doesn’t die, it blows out like a car tire (it emits its spirit, as Baudrillard wrote [Symbolic Exchange and Death]). The middle class is the most stupid, submissive, predictable, cowardly, and pathetic of all classes. It is equally far from the blazing elements of poverty and the perverted poison of incalculable wealth, which is even closer to hell than extreme poverty. The middle class has no ontological foundation for existing at all, and if it does, then only somewhere far below, beneath the rule of the philosopher-kings and warrior-heroes. It is the Third Estate, imagining about itself that it is the one and only. This is an unwarranted pretension. Capitalism and modernity are nothing more than a temporary aberration. The time of this historical misunderstanding is coming to an end.
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