Economic inequality is rising not only within but also between countries. Now in the United States and China, more people are seeing social conflicts, specifically the competition between members within their society for power or wealth, as an increasingly dangerous struggle between the rich and poor. While Marxists claim that the bourgeoisies are all-powerful, a specific segment of them, the upper middle class, does not have the same political power and heft to forcefully protect their wealth outright as the top upper echelons of society do. Contrary to the top upper class, they are independent wealthy households that do not organize into a cohesive political force but are instead fractured in their ineffectual coordination. Thus, they turn to concealing their economic position to keep themselves safe, using a “low profile philosophy”.
This philosophy stems from a repeated historical narrative exemplified by the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and numerous Chinese peasant uprisings. In these events, the poor become aware of their being unfairly disadvantaged by a status quo and seek to overthrow and deprive the advantaged groups of their privileges, rights, and sometimes even lives. To avoid such a misfortune, the rich can reduce the transparency of economic distributions and make inequality opaque, which prevents the lower classes from realizing the extent of their adversity and thus prevent the tensions from brewing in the first place, a process modeled by the low-profile philosophy.
The low-profile philosophy says that the rich should act in a pretended way such that they can be perceived as humble and modest by the poor. They should also conceal their material affluence when purchasing and consuming luxury goods in the eyes of the poor. The combination of these ensures that the rich obfuscate their wealth and leads the poor to misperceive economic distributions, thus avoiding the poor’s ire and envy. There are already conspiracy theories stressing the actuality of such a political project implemented by an organized top privileged class, but the low-profile philosophy pertains more to the upper-middle class. Since the top upper class has an even smaller size and more affluent wealth, they can coordinate better and wield considerable political power that allows them to freely flaunt their wealth. The upper middle class, in contrast, must act cautiously because they lack the same political deft to both prevent social upheaval and brandish their riches. They convince themselves that unlike the poor, they have something to lose, and unlike the top upper class, they are fragile to social disturbances by radical resistance.
Consequently, even though they realize that boiling inequality poses considerable risks to them, based on a probably excused pessimism, the upper-middle class accentuates that they are too weak to contribute to lowering inequality through radical resistance. They can protect themselves by keeping a low profile, or inaction despite a still obsession with their “moderately affluent” wealth.
One effect of the low-profile philosophy is that the poor may misperceive their social standing and be unwittingly satisfied with the perceived economic distribution despite their actual material destitution. The poor would be left with no choice but to unconsciously accept a malign social contract: “as long as the rich keep a low profile, the poor cannot seek radical changes of status quo institutions or norms for a fairer distribution of materials.” If the contract is accepted and the rich find ways to “engineer” the poor’s psychology, the rich may become unhindered in pertaining to their unfairly affluent wealth, and the society is deprived of potential egalitarian progress.
The risk above seems to keep the upper-middle class intact, but a second risk of “extremist takeover” should urge them to reconsider the philosophy. Inhabiters of the low-profile philosophy are despised by the likes of Marxists and other ideologies that are popular amongst poorer classes. Low-profile philosophy is perceived as sorely lacking a sense of social responsibility by the poor, who may fail to tolerate or omit an unstopped inequality and turn to those extremisms that ask for a sweeping revolution. Thus, the low-profile philosophy may only postpone, and even aggravate, the misfortune that it is designed to eliminate.
However, there are exceptions to this phenomenon. Notably, some upper-middle-class people still show off their wealth. The philosophy’s confidence is based on the prevalence of this segment of the rich, which in turn varies by nation and culture. The upper-middle class in Turkey, for example, openly distinguishes themselves by adopting a westernized lifestyle. In the US, traditional wealthy Quakers with a plain humble lifestyle coexist with young upper-middle-class ostentatiously revealing their opulent lifestyle on social media like Tik Tok. The low-profile philosophy is evidently dependent on the context of social etiquette and prestige in any given culture or country.
The low-profile philosophy has potentially detrimental economic and political implications, it affects certain countries disproportionately. Wherever it prevails, however, it remains to be determined who must burden the responsibility of correcting social injustices if the upper-middle class is reluctant to address a driving factor: wealth.