| It seems to be one of those untraceable ideas that says that revolutions don't come from the lower classes; they come from the middle classes that have been eroded or squeezed into oblivion.
But George Orwell addressed this in 1984. This is how you prevent revolution from arising out of the middle class: Keep 'em confused, keep 'em concerned about the wrong things. Make it take all their attention and time just to stay in compliance with what's expected of them. Tell them that good people do X, Y, and Z, and that people who don't do those things are bad/evil/crimethinkers.
Don't let them get a foothold in history, or in observable reality that they can track. Keep them constantly preoccupied with what's going on right now so they don't have the opportunity to measure or compare it against what happened before. Lie to them outright about the past, and make records of the past unavailable.
Inculcate in them a drive that supports and perpetuates the status quo, even at their own expense. Put them at the mercy of their own children, who in youth will be sincere in their support of those drives, and in adolescence and young adulthood will be cynical and manipulative enough to use those drives to wrest control away from their parents.
Keep a nebulous, ill-defined enemy lurking in their thoughts; don't allow serious in-depth discussion of other cultures or points of view. Make sure that rage and outrage are the only emotions expressed in the context of the continuing conflict, and the only emotions ever depicted as belonging to the enemy as well. Switch off enemies from time to time in order to keep things unstable, but always imply that the enemy of today and the enemy of yesterday are the same.
Give them an outlet for occasional dissent—even allow them to believe in a massive organization of opposition to the status quo—but never allow them to believe that they will ever receive help from that organization in any way, and encourage instead the idea that the organization is actually far more likely to ask them to make huge sacrifices that they will probably never see the results of in their lifetimes.
Don't just encourage them to take actions against their own interests; make it impossible for them not to take such actions without being labeled as pariahs or imbeciles or both.
In all these ways, the middle class never gets enough of a head of steam to foment a revolution.
Any of it sound familiar? | 
