Petty Bourgeoisie | Encyclopedia.com (2024)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The term petty bourgeoisie originally referred to the class of people involved in small-scale commercial enterprises who owned their means of production. It included merchants and traders, and, in some cases, wealthier land-owning farmers. Thus conceived, this class partakes of the structures of private property on which capitalist society is grounded, but it does not own sufficient capital to reap the benefits of large-scale industrialization and workplace rationalization. Moreover, its members are not dependent upon the sale of their own labor-power. They occasionally employ others, although, unlike capitalists, they themselves must also work, and often do so alongside their employees, including family members.

The petty bourgeoisie has been assigned a particularly significant role in Marxian historiography by virtue of Karl Marxs (18181883) claim that, during the failed revolution of 1848 in France, they transferred their allegiance from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. In the mid-1840s, a period of famine and widespread discontent throughout Europe but especially in France, the petty bourgeoisie had fought alongside members of the urban proletariat and students to demand workers rights and liberal political reform. However, when this conflict began to assume anarchic dimensions, they joined with the bourgeoisie, the conservative peasantry, and residual feudal powers to support a counterrevolution whose outcome was the establishment of the Second Republic and a new era of European despotism.

By the late twentieth century, the term had receded from usage, and has been replaced in large measure by middle class. This has occurred at the same time that the term middle class has come to be dissociated from its original referent of the bourgeoisie. The reasons for this development, particularly in the United States, reveal much about both the nature of economic life in contemporary capitalist society and the ideology by which it is sustained. This ideology can be described as one that valorizes the middle class, that sees its expansion as the necessary condition of economic growth and democratization, and that links middle classness to upward mobility.

Significantly, this understanding rests on a slippage in the definition of the middle class from Marxs time. Friedrich Engels (18201895) had warned against this possibility in a letter to Marx in 1852. There, he distinguished the middle class as that group between the nobility, which it had superseded, and the proletariat, which would ultimately displace it. In this sense, middle class meant transitional class for Engels, rather than simply the class of small business people and professional managers now typically associated with the term.

However, the question of transition has itself become problematic in economic history. The joint stock company, which Marx believed to be a mere stage in the development and transformation of capital, now dominates capitalist enterprise, and its professional managers (as well as their support service workers) now form the core of what is sometimes referred to as the new petty bourgeoisie.

Like the more classically conceived proletariat, these individuals are also employees of capitalist enterprises. However, they do not own the means of production in the sense that enables them to alienate it, and they are somewhat contradictorily positioned as the representatives of capitalist interests. Various theorists have tried to exclude this new form of the petty bourgeoise from the categories of both the bourgeoisie and the working class, on the basis that they perform unproductive mental labor which is antithetical to the interests of the proletariat (Poulantzis 1975); that they do not own the means of production despite exercising the function of capital (Carchedi 1977); or, more generally, because older notions of property ownership no longer describe the ambiguous distribution of rights over property that define modern joint stock companies today (Olin Wright 1978). In each of these cases, the managerial classes are thought of as a problem for both theory and radical political organization. Allin Cottrell (1984) nonetheless suggests that the variability in forms of ownership, social roles, and ideological commitments that characterize the managerial classes in contemporary capitalist societies requires a new conception of class, and prohibits any predictive model identifying the new petty bourgeoisie with any particular political orientation.

The older model of the petty bourgeoisie nonetheless retains great ideological force in many neoliberal societies, where the idea of the self-employed businessperson who is free from the demand to sell his or her own labor continues to occupy a dominant position in popular representations of the middle classes. It is often associated with radical individualism, as well as the values of personal autonomy and rational decision making. Moreover, it is frequently imagined as the ideal form of immigrant assimilationand serves as a counter-image to balance other immigrant economies, including those of short term contract labor in the agricultural or energy sectors, and the feminized economies of domestic and sexual labor.

SEE ALSO Bourgeoisie; Capitalism; Class; Liberalism; Marx, Karl; Marxism; Middle Class; Neoliberalism; Welfare State

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carchedi, G. 1977. On the Economic Identification of Social Classes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Cottrell, Allin. 1984. Social Classes in Marxist Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Marx, Karl. [1850] 1978. The Class Struggles in France, 18481850. In Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 10, 45145. New York: International Publishers.

Marx, Karl. [1852] 1951. Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, with explanatory notes. New York: International Publishers.

Olin Wright, E. 1978. Class, Crisis and the State. London: New Left Books.

Poulantzis, N. 1975. Social Classes in Contemporary Capitalism. London: New Left Books.

Rosalind C. Morris

Petty Bourgeoisie | Encyclopedia.com (2024)

FAQs

What did Karl Marx say about petty bourgeoisie? ›

Historically, Karl Marx predicted that the petite bourgeoisie was to lose in the course of economic development.

What does the term petty bourgeoisie mean? ›

: a social class that is between the middle class and the lower class : the lower middle class.

What is the petite bourgeoisie ideology? ›

According to Karl Marx, the political theorist who popularized this French term in the nineteenth century, the petite bourgeoisie is made up of capitalists who operate on a modest scale. Inspired by the wealthier haute bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie aspire to make more money and achieve a higher status.

What are the characteristics of the petit bourgeoisie? ›

The 'Petite Bourgeoisie' refers to a social group within the bourgeoisie that typically includes small business owners, independent artisans, and professionals who are not part of the upper class. They play a role in the economic and social structure, distinct from both the working class and the wealthy elite.

Why did Marx not like the bourgeoisie? ›

By controlling wealth and the means of production, Marx argued that the bourgeoisie held all the power and forced the proletariat to take dangerous, low-paying jobs, in order to survive. Despite having superior numbers, the proletariat was powerless against the will of the bourgeoisie.

Does bourgeois mean rich? ›

This word is used to describe a class of people who fall somewhere between the lowest and highest classes. Bourgeoisie is often used insultingly. In between the very poor and the super rich is the bourgeoisie. People have traditionally viewed the bourgeoisie as kind of crass and pretentious.

What is a synonym for petty bourgeoisie? ›

Definitions of petty bourgeoisie. noun. lower middle class (shopkeepers and clerical staff etc.) synonyms: petit bourgeois, petite bourgeoisie. bourgeoisie, middle class.

What are the 5 types of bourgeoisie? ›

The bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking countries consists of five evolving social layers: petite bourgeoisie, moyenne bourgeoisie, grande bourgeoisie, haute bourgeoisie and ancienne bourgeoisie.

Do the bourgeoisies still exist? ›

The bourgeoisie and proletariat of today are the same as the bourgeoisie and proletariat of the past; the definition of bourgeoisie is literally the capitalist class, and the definition of proletariat is the working class. Both of these classes do exist today.

Can a bourgeois be a socialist? ›

In expressing their views on the subject, Marx referenced Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty, stating the following about bourgeois socialism: "The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom." Bourgeois ...

Who coined the term petit bourgeois? ›

The philosopher Karl Marx is often credited with coining this phrase, although experts note that Charlotte Brontë was the first to use it in print, in 1832. The class of petit bourgeois people is often described as yearning after the money and power of the higher economic class.

What are 3 characteristics of the bourgeoisie? ›

The European bourgeoisie presents faces so different that common traits can be discerned only at the simplest level: the possession of property with the desire and means to increase it, emancipation from past precepts about investment, a readiness to work for a living, and a sense of being superior to town workers or ...

Are petite bourgeoisies middle class? ›

The petty bourgeoisie, or petit bourgeoisie, in sociology refers to a social class between the working class and the middle class, often including small business owners, managers, salespeople, independent professionals, and other workers who may own means of production but do not employ a substantial workforce.

What is the bourgeoisie in layman's terms? ›

Bourgeoisie means a social class of people who own the means of production, making them in the upper or merchant class. Hence, all employers are bourgeoisie.

What is a bourgeois personality? ›

adjective. having, reflecting, or relating to conventional tastes, opinions, and values believed to be determined mainly by a concern for respectability and material wealth; middle-class: He lived a bohemian lifestyle frowned upon by bourgeois morality.

What is the bourgeoisie class according to Karl Marx? ›

Marxist theory

According to Karl Marx, the bourgeois during the Middle Ages usually was a self-employed businessman – such as a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur – whose economic role in society was being the financial intermediary to the feudal landlord and the peasant who worked the fief, the land of the lord.

What did Karl Marx believe would happen between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? ›

Thus, the bourgeoisie overthrew the aristocracy and replaced feudalism with capitalism; so too, Marx predicted, will the proletariat overthrow the bourgeoisie and replace capitalism with communism.

What did Karl Marx think about rich and poor? ›

The well-worn assertion that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer echoes Karl Marx's theory of immiseration which said that capitalists could only become richer by lowering wages, thereby reducing the living standards of workers until they had no choice but to revolt.

What is class conflict according to Karl Marx? ›

The class conflict definition, then, is the struggle over the means to control society. Two classes in particular are important for understanding Marx's theory, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The proletariat is the class of those who sell their labor for wages.

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