What group was oppressed by the middle class according to Karl Marx?

Answer 1

Karl Marx did not say the "middle class" oppressed any group. Marx said the "bourgeoisie" (owners and controllers of the means of production) oppressed the "proletariat" (wage employees who own only the right to sell their own labors). The term "middle class" as we know it today was not a Marxian term.

The bourgeoisie, however, did not rule any nation . This class had rulers that were sympathetic to capitalism.

The ruling classes were both ultra-rich capitalists and the aristocracy ( such as the Romanovs in Russia).

For Marx (and Lenin) the "haves" were those who controlled the societal mode of material production, and also the societal modes of symbolic production. The "have-not's" were those who were dependent upon those controlling, particularly, the material mode of production. This is all very simply operationalized in their concept of "Social Relations to Production." Social class from a Marxist perspective (as opposed to a Weberian perspective) is defined by one's relationship to the predominate means of production. Either you are in a "controlling' relationship (bourgeois - owners) or an exploitative relationship (proletariat - workers.) - So from this view, Peyton Manning or Denzel Washington are essentially workers - so is not always about money or prestige. The Weberain critique of Marx's two tier class system brings into the discourse of social class prestige (social honor) and consumptive capacity (financial resources) and also suggests that a middle class of technocrats and bureaucrats have succeeded in becoming less dependent on the owners (than workers are) because they truly control the "knowledge" of the day to day operations of most aspects of our predominant (hegemonic) mode of production. Antoine Gramsci comes back (followed by many other brilliant thinkers,such as Noam Comskey) arguing that yes their is a measure of "control" in a tertiary relations to production that Marx did not identify, namely Weber's technocrats/bureaucrats, but that such control is heavily influenced by the "have's" control over society's mode of symbolic production - a cultural hegemony that espouses values, beliefs and normative expectation that serve the interests of the haves over the middle and lower classes - Chomskey's "manufacturing of consent" - Steven Luke's/John Gaventa's "third face of power." - manipulation of the basic collective symbols and myths of society that underlay and reinforce hegemonic cultural ideologies (Marx's Superstructure.)

Answer 2

The lower class.