ABSTRACT
When we speak of a middle class in terms of its economic role, we are referring to two related but distinct elements within it: an entrepreneurial class that accumulates, organizes, and allocates capital, and a technical-administrative bureaucracy that manages industrial enterprises. In an earlier era of Western industrial society, these two tasks were more likely to be fulfilled by the same persons than they are now. Especially in the last fifty years or so, the West has experienced two well-documented processes: first, the separation between entrepreneurship and management, and second, the relative decline of the individual entrepreneur and the concentration of the entrepreneurial function in management boards (in private or state enterprises).
