ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of middle-class authoritarianism and secondary mobilization in the rise of fascist movements and regimes under different historical and sociocultural conditions. The role of class as an explanatory factor, either in the origin or development and maintenance of totalitarianism, was not denied but often occupied a secondary place in such general analytical frameworks. Participation of the lower middle classes in totalitarian movements of the Right, which played a complementary role in the Marxist interpretation, was turned into a central factor in the psychosocial version of the class hypothesis. Theories of mass society have a prominent place in contemporary sociology; the contribution of the classic sociological tradition in its origins has also been outstanding, and critical literature on the subject is abundant. The stability of the middle class in the neocapitalist phase depends on the stability of the stratification system, and obviously, on the global social system.
