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''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, literally 'small
bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. Th ...
'; also
anglicised Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...
as petty bourgeoisie) is a French term that refers to a
social class A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inc ...
composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale
merchants A merchant is a person who trades in commodities produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Historically, a merchant is anyone who is involved in business or trade. Merchants have operated for as long as industry ...
whose politico-economic ideological stance in times of socioeconomic stability is determined by reflecting that of a ''haute bourgeoisie'' ('high' bourgeoisie) with which the ''petite bourgeoisie'' seeks to identify itself and whose bourgeois morality it strives to imitate. The term is politico-economic and references
historical materialism Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
. It originally denoted a sub-stratum of the
middle class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...
es in the 18th and early-19th centuries. In the mid-19th century, the German economist
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and other
Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
theorists used the term ''petite bourgeoisie'' to identify the socio-economic stratum of the bourgeoisie that consists of small
shopkeeper A shopkeeper is a retail merchant or tradesman; one who owns or operates a small store or shop. Generally, shop employees are not shopkeepers, but are often incorrectly referred to as such. At larger companies, a shopkeeper is usually referred ...
s and self-employed
artisan An artisan (from french: artisan, it, artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art ...
s.


Definition

The ''petite bourgeoisie'' is economically distinct from the
proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
and the ''
Lumpenproletariat In Marxist theory, the ''Lumpenproletariat'' () is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary a ...
'' social-class strata who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival. It is also distinct from the
capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
class '' haute bourgeoisie'' ('high' bourgeoisie) that owns the
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
and thus can buy the labor-power of the proletariat and ''Lumpenproletariat'' to work the means of production. Although members of the ''petite bourgeoisie'' can buy the labor of others, they typically work alongside their employees, unlike the ''haute bourgeoisie''. The ''petite bourgeoisie'' is little-defined in Marx's own work, with only the words 'smaller capitalists' used in '' The Communist Manifesto''.


Role in fascism

Historically, Karl Marx predicted that the petite bourgeoisie was to lose in the course of economic development. Following this, R. J. B. Bosworth suggested that it was to become the political mainstay of
fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and t ...
, which represented in political form a terroristic response to their inevitable loss of power (economic, political, and social) to the haute bourgeoisie.
Wilhelm Reich Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author of several influential books, most ...
also highlighted the principal support of the rise of fascism in Germany given by the petite bourgeoisie and middle class in '' The Mass Psychology of Fascism''. He claimed that the middle classes were a hotbed for political reaction due to their reliance on the patriarchal family (according to Reich, small businesses are often self-exploiting enterprises of families headed by the father, whose morality binds the family together in their somewhat precarious economic position) and the sexual repression that underlies it.''The Mass Psychology of Fascism''
Retrieved 13 June 2018.
This was disputed by historian
Richard Pipes Richard Edgar Pipes ( yi, ריכארד פּיִפּעץ ''Rikhard Pipets'', the surname literally means 'beak'; pl, Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic who specialized in Russian and Soviet history. He publi ...
who wrote, in the case of the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
, that while at first limited to this group, by the end of the 1920s workers joined the party en masse and were the largest occupational group in the party by 1934.


Literary treatment of the petite bourgeoisie

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...
wrote that "the petty bourgeois is spiritless ... Devoid of imagination, as the petty bourgeois always is, he lives within a certain orbit of trivial experiences as to how things come about, what is possible, what usually happens, no matter whether he is a tapster or a prime minister. This is the way the petty bourgeois has lost himself and God". According to him, the petite bourgeoisie exemplifies a spiritual emptiness that is rooted in an overemphasis on the worldly, rather than the inwardness of the
self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...
. However, Kierkegaard's indictment relies less on a class analysis of the petite bourgeoisie than on the perception of a worldview which was common in his middle-class milieu. In fact, though there have been many depictions of the petite bourgeoisie in literature as well as in cartoons, based on an image of their overly conventional practicality, the realities of the petite bourgeoisie throughout the 19th century were more complex. All the same, writers have been concerned with petite bourgeois morality and behavior and have portrayed them as undesirable characters.
Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential pla ...
's ''
An Enemy of the People ''An Enemy of the People'' (original Norwegian title: ''En folkefiende''), an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, followed his previous play, '' Ghosts'', which criticized the hypocrisy of his society's moral code. That response in ...
'' was a play written in direct response to the reception of another one of his plays for making "indecent" references to syphilis and in general his work was considered scandalous in its disregard for the morality of the period. Later,
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
's concern with
Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...
and his Marxist politics got him interested in exploring the petite bourgeois mind and this interest led him to represent the petite bourgeoisie repeatedly throughout his work (one was even titled '' The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petite Bourgeoisie''). In his book '' Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play'', James C. Scott dedicates an entire chapter to describing some features of the petite bourgeoisie. First, he points out the contempt of this class by Marxists due to the ambiguity of their political position. He further points out that this position of contempt or distaste encompasses both the socialist bloc and large capitalist democracies, due to the difficulty of monitoring, taxing and policing of this class. This difficulty results from the complexity, variety and mobility of activities taken on by this class. He points out the petite bourgeoisie has existed for most of civilized history. He also states that even those who are not part of the class have to some degree desired to become small property owners, due to the conferred autonomy and social standing. He continues that the desire to keep and restore lost land has been the
leitmotif A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglic ...
of most radically egalitarian mass movements. He argues that the petite bourgeoisie have an indispensable economic role in terms of
invention An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...
and
innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed enti ...
, citing as an example software startups that develop ideas which are then usually bought by larger firms. He also points out that small shopkeepers provide several "unpaid" social services such as:


See also

* Professional–managerial class * Kulak * Petty nobility *
Producerism Producerism is an ideology which holds that those members of society engaged in the production of tangible wealth are of greater benefit to society than, for example, aristocrats who inherit their wealth and status. History Robert Ascher traces ...
* Worker aristocracy *
Xiaozi ''Xiaozi'' (), is a Chinese cultural term describing a lifestyle chasing modern taste, living standards, and arts. Originally the term was a Chinese translation of "petite bourgeoisie". After the economic reform in the People's Republic of China, ...


References


Further reading

* Andrews, G. J. and Phillips D R (2005) Petit Bourgeois healthcare? The big small-business of private complementary medical practice Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice 11, 87-104. * F. Bechhofer and B. Elliott, Persistence and change the petit bourgeoisie in the industrial society, Eur J Soc xv 11 (1976), pp. 74–79. * B. Elliott and G. McCrone, What else does someone with capital do?, New Soc 31 (1979), pp. 512–513. * F. Bechhofer and B. Elliott, The petite Bourgeoisie comparative studies of an uneasy stratum, Macmillan, London (1981). * R. Scase and R. Goffee, The real world of the small business owner, Croom Helm, London (1981). * D.R. Phillips and J. Vincent, Petit Bourgeois Care private residential care for the elderly, Policy Politics 14 (1986) (2), pp. 189–208. * Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780-1914
Routledge. 1998. * "Petite bourgeoisie" at th


External links

* {{Authority control 19th-century neologisms French words and phrases Social groups Marxist terminology Middle class Bourgeoisie