Middle-class values

The term middle-class values is used by various writers and politicians to include such qualities as hard work, self-discipline, thrift, honesty, aspiration and ambition. Thus, people in lower or upper classes can also possess middle-class values, they are not exclusive to people who are actually middle-class. Contemporary politicians in Western countries frequently refer to such values, and to the middle-class families that uphold them, as worthy of political support.

Middle-class values can be contrasted with other values that may be held by other people belonging to other classes and historical time periods, such as:

British economic historian Gregory Clark has controversially claimed, in his book A Farewell to Alms, on the basis of extensive research, that Britain may have been where the Industrial Revolution began because the British people had a head start in "evolving" – through a combination of cultural and possibly even genetic changes – a critical mass of people with middle-class values.

Others have claimed, by contrast, that the "natural inclination" of workers at the early stages of the Industrial Revolution was to work as few hours as needed to earn a subsistence living, and workers had to be brainwashed into working long hours. Some have claimed that compulsory education and advertising played a part in this brainwashing - compulsory education instilling obedience and hard work at an early age, and advertising instilling desire for consumer goods that had to be paid for with more work.

In A Farewell to Alms Clark disputes such explanations, citing persistent large differences in labour productivity in India and Britain, even when British managers and identical machines to those used in Britain were used, and even though both countries have compulsory education for children.

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