On the Middle Class

I read Wage-Labour & Capital recently & it was very good. I've been really into Marxist theory for a few months now & while I've been slow to read much (due to time/habits/etc) I do think I've got a pretty good grasp of at least basic Marxist economics. What I have trouble though is figuring out where the Middle Class comes into all this.

I do know fundamentally there are only two classes - defined by own's relation to the means of production. Many in the middle class are ultimately members of the proletariat - as while they have a great deal more means of subsistance & luxury they are still just as much under the power of Capital. That said though the Middle Class has several fundamental differences. While for many members of the working class it is impossible for them to ever accumulate Capital - there are many members of the Middle Class who have the option of social & economic mobility. While only very rarely could they ascend to the 1% - it is still quite within the realm of the Middle Class' means to accumulate some small amounts of Capital (think a small business - maybe a not so small "small business" - etc). In Marx's time the Middle Class was not the behemoth that is now - at least in America. (Sorry I'm a burger) Yes the Middle Class is very much idealized by liberal philosophy here & I acknowledge it's shrinking - but I do feel pretty confused about how to ultimately factor in the Middle Class to my understanding of the socio-economic order. Considering how significant this "third class" is in at least the country I live - it seems vital to establish a solid world-view & eventually practical philosophy.

Maybe this is a little simplistic, but as far as I understand it the middle class is an ideological construction to make wage-slaves believe they aren't a part of the same class as fruit-picking immigrants or people who sift through trash for a living.
It's a liberal device for class division.

Capitalists - people who make money by already having money - property, companies, etc.
Working class - people who make money by renting their labor for a wage.
Middle class - people who make money by rending their labor for a wage, except higher.

Football players with a hundred million dollar contracts are still working class.

the middle class is a liberal invention to make the winners of the proletariat and the losers of the bourgeoisie think they are the same.

lmao, america doesn't even have a mythical 'middle class', certainly not anymore. Most households subsist on an income of less than $50,000, are in debt and living paycheck to paycheck.
Middle class = burger for prole

OP here.
True - like I said I do get that even monetarily lucrative careers (doctors/lawyers/etc) are still - for the most part - full of working class people just with more immediate means.

But what really has got me thinking tho is about how this "Middle Class' (I use airquotes because I don't really see it as a concrete class in the way the Proletarian & Bourgeoisie clearly are) has among it many small business owners.

In micro sense their lifestyle/interests/etc become very similar to the Bourgeoisie - and in fact even very small business owners are able to accumulate Capital - mimicking the Bourgeoisie's mass swindling of the value of the worker's labour-power - but realistically these small businesses are all but nothing compared to the true elite who harness the means of production. These small business owners really are excluded from the Bourgeoisie's mass stockpile of Capital the same as the Proletariat - yet these small business in a micro level do often operate similar to the larger corporations. Do the small business then act as further tendrils of Capitalism - beyond the real control of their owners & become mere commodities to the Bourgeoisie - I dunno I'm kinda thinking aloud here.

Also - does it mean anything when you have some well-paid/high-demand proletarians (like we said earlier - say a lawyer or other high-paid worker) who have more monetary power (if not direct Capital) compared to these psuedo-bourgeoisie small business owners who try to replicate the accumulation of Capital but who are ultimately - socially & economically - far weaker than these much more secure "workers"

There is an objective and observable difference in the needs and wants of an engineer making 150000 per year, and a supermarket clerk making 30000 per year.
Different parties target them, they even pay different percentage taxes, and they don't have the same views on politics.

Marx called it the petit bourgeoisie, the small capitalists.
And today the small capitalists are poorer than the wealthiest working class people.
It is a question of ethics then. Justin Bieber sells his own labor, while the local bakery sells the labor of 2-3 people staff. As in, the owner is making money from other people's labor.

I haven't read any modern socialist books, I have no idea how this is handled, this is just me speaking from the old school, when this problem didn't exist.

Lower, middle, upper and class are sociological terms that refer to income levels, and have nothing to do with actual economic class. A doctor, subcontracted to work at a general practice organ, who will make more than a bin man, is still proletarian.

The proletariat is that class which must subsist primarily off of selling its labour on the market, and the bourgeoisie is that properties class which subsists upon managing this labour and the capital it produces. Proletariat is crucially different from "working class" because proletariat really hits on the point of property.

A small business owner would be petite bourgeois.