Exactly! People need to stop translating it as middle class, because it throws people off.

Nobody is coming for Joe Schmoe who makes 70k a year to take away his primary (and only) residence. Or at least, they shouldn't be.

People these days are so bad at understanding historical context. That, like you said, "middle class" back then meant the merchant class who were neither peasants nor nobility, and that the modern-day bourgeoisie have become the de facto ruling class. Nowadays we call them "Upper class," "Owner caste," or "financial oligarchs."

I've tried explaining this to people and they get so caught up in the nomenclature. They say "Bourgeoisie means middle class" as if that's some definitive argument, and they ignore me when I explain to them what that actually meant in the 18th/19th centuries when it was coined.

The modern day "middle class," which another commenter rightly describes as the "petit bourgeois," emerged in the post-WWII era as a result of FDR's policies and similar societal shifts around the world. It's a subset of the working class. Even upper-middle class (doctors, lawyers, accountants, cybersecurity professionals, etc.) who make six figures and live in mcmansions are still working class. Still petit bourgeois proletarians, though they're less likely to think in those terms.

The bourgeoisie are those who own enough capital that they can live off of investment income without actually working beyond sitting in board meetings and telling other people what to do. That's not "middle class" anymore, except maybe in monarchical countries that still have an aristocracy. And even in most of those countries, the bourgeoisie have become more powerful than the "nobility."

I'd really like to see a rework of terms that separates the corporate conglomerates from say the local pizza place. Yes both make money from the labor of others, but the average person has way more in common with a local buisness owner than Bezos.

I personally thinks this is something people get caught up on. A small buisness owner could be less well off than say an electrical engineer. They struggle to hate someone they see as like them. Which is truthfully the case a small buisness owner is more like the average worker these days than they are like a national corporation.

Truthfully I don't know how this is navigated by modern theory. I think the distinction would truthfully only help warm people up to the idea of dealing with the wealthy