The Middle Class and Petitbourgeois - how do they fit into the picture?

[RedHammer]

Not that I am suggesting they are the same thing, since most people who are "middle class" are workers just like everybody else (i.e no control over capital).

But I am curious, where do they fit into the picture of class struggle?

And how would both groups react to a workers' revolution? I suspect there would be strong resistance among the "middle class" proletariat and the petitbourgeois. I heard the Fascists of Europe received their strongest support from these groups, but I don't know if that's true.

[Le Socialiste]

Members of the middle-class can only play an auxiliary role in periods of turbulence or upheaval, depending on their standing. Someone on the lower end of the spectrum may identify more with working-class struggles and conflicts; the opposite, then, is true for those on the other end of the scale. But that's something of an oversimplification, begging further insight into the issue. It is true that segments and layers of the upper middle-class and petite-bourgeoisie will likely throw their support behind reactionary, rightwing forces if pressed. Their tenuous, contradictory character puts them in an untenable situation, which comes to the fore in periods of intense social convulsion. Their position in class society relegates them to that of an auxiliary wing, shifting in terms of support and consciousness as class struggles unfold and antagonisms intensify. Their social and conscious lives are shaped by their own historical developments and experiences as a class, which is in turn shaped by the terms and relationships inherent in capital's productive and extractive forms.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

The middle class workers, petty-bourgeois workers and small capitalists are an important aspect in revolution in my opinion. A Workers' Party for instance in the USA (where workers tend to want to still strive towards the "middle class") should not merely focus on organizing and mobilising workers, but should also rhetorically support "small-business" and show them that a workers government that would nationalise banks would give them cheap interest rates, would get rid of monopolist over-regulation constraining small-business, and would work towards workers integrating with the petty-bourgeoisie, learn from them on management etc.

Of course in reality we want to get rid of all kinds of small business ownership and private property in the long term, but we in fact do want to unrestrain them from monopoly capitalist control. The "middle class" is though a very important aspect in advanced western capitalist countries and needs to be rhetorically shown that a workers' government would respect their business and indeed help them by providing cheap loans with small interest rates from a nationalised bank. The small bourgeoisie will be driven to take on more and more constant capital through cheap interest rates and will kill itself off, forcing the working government to nationalise/socialise them into the existing state-monopoly and hand them over to the workers.

[Book O'Dead]

I think it was Marx who described the middle class as the grist caught between the great millstones of the class struggle between capital and labor.

[Le Socialiste]

The middle class workers, petty-bourgeois workers and small capitalists are an important aspect in revolution in my opinion.

It's not just your opinion, it's a material reality. Their very position(s) in class society fosters a duality in terms of their respective reactions and adaptivity in times of intense struggle. While they are largely similar to their working-class counterparts, they often exhibit divergent attitudes and allegiances that are in direct contradiction to their class interests (supporting and furthering the subversion and overthrow of bourgeois economic forms in their entirety). Middle-class workers, depending on where they stand in relation to the proletariat and means of production, are commonly sympathetic to the historical role of the latter. Its interests and general makeup transforms it into an auxiliary formation of the working-class, playing a small but no less significant role in its movements. Small shop or business owners will find that the movements of these forces conflict with their own, pushing them further and further into the arms of the ruling-classes. Their own experiences and upbringing (normally from a position of privilege) will land them *ideologically* alongside the bourgeoisie. Education, class standing, and general consciousness will render these layers of the middle-class more susceptible to the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling-class.


A Workers' Party for instance in the USA (where workers tend to want to still strive towards the "middle class") should not merely focus on organizing and mobilising workers, but should also rhetorically support "small-business" and show them that a workers government that would nationalise banks would give them cheap interest rates, would get rid of monopolist over-regulation constraining small-business, and would work towards workers integrating with the petty-bourgeoisie, learn from them on management etc.

I don't understand your reasoning here. The point of the DOTP is the seizure of political, economic, and cultural power, the supersession of bourgeois hegemonic interests with the proletariat's. The subjugation of petite-bourgeois/small capitalist interests will necessarily be apart of any formal dictatorship or intermediary movement. An organization or party intent on organizing the most conscious revolutionary elements of the working-class should refrain from appealing to small-business interests, or "integrating" workers and segments of the middle-class whose interests are diametrically opposed to struggle from below. Priority shouldn't be given to the petite-bourgeoisie (I trust this isn't your position).


Of course in reality we want to get rid of all kinds of small business ownership and private property in the long term, but we in fact do want to unrestrain them from monopoly capitalist control. The "middle class" is though a very important aspect in advanced western capitalist countries and needs to be rhetorically shown that a workers' government would respect their business and indeed help them by providing cheap loans with small interest rates from a nationalised bank. The small bourgeoisie will be driven to take on more and more constant capital through cheap interest rates and will kill itself off, forcing the working government to nationalise/socialise them into the existing state-monopoly and hand them over to the workers.

I think we agree on the end result, but not the means of achieving it.

[JPSartre12]

I think it was Marx who described the middle class as the grist caught between the great millstones of the class struggle between capital and labor.

^ Yes :thumbup1:

An interesting theory that I have read states that there is no middle class. What I mean by this is that there really is only the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and the former has made a whole series of things - credit cards, savings accounts, payment plans, debt, loans, and so on - that create the illusion of them being richer than they really are.

You only have the rich and the poor, but the rich are preventing the poor from realizing that they are poor.

An interesting idea, I think. I'm not sure I would subscribe to it wholeheartedly, but it probably has a degree of validity.

[RedHammer]

Small shop or business owners will find that the movements of these forces conflict with their own, pushing them further and further into the arms of the ruling-classes. Their own experiences and upbringing (normally from a position of privilege) will land them *ideologically* alongside the bourgeoisie. Education, class standing, and general consciousness will render these layers of the middle-class more susceptible to the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling-class.

So are they dangerous? Do you think a revolution would ultimately suffer at their hands?




An interesting theory that I have read states that there is no middle class. What I mean by this is that there really is only the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and the former has made a whole series of things - credit cards, savings accounts, payment plans, debt, loans, and so on - that create the illusion of them being richer than they really are.

You only have the rich and the poor, but the rich are preventing the poor from realizing that they are poor.

An interesting idea, I think. I'm not sure I would subscribe to it wholeheartedly, but it probably has a degree of validity.

It is entirely valid. The owners of capital are the only ones with real power. Everybody else is a worker, and at their mercy.

[Le Socialiste]

So are they dangerous? Do you think a revolution would ultimately suffer at their hands?

I think their social standing in relation to how class society has organized and developed more or less forces them into a position akin (but not wholly similar) to the immediate short-termist interests of the bourgeoisie. Small capitalists, despite their relative size, still uphold bourgeois conceptions of the state and property in all its forms. While there's room for sympathy for movements like, for example, Occupy, only a tiny (negligible even) percentage of those who fall under this classification uphold liberal "values." Even then, they're in direct conflict with the material forces driving the mass of the working-class toward struggle.

Is there a possibility that some members of the upper middle-class and petite-bourgeoisie will be won over to said struggle if it intensifies to the point of a serious conflict with capital? Sure. But as a class, they are incapable of providing anything more than a modicum of support, wherein their own interests may still potentially come into conflict with the proletariat's. Are they dangerous? They certainly may be, given their tendency to seek out stability from the state in times of uncertainty (just imagine how they might react if their businesses and property were challenged). On the whole, they are a crucial source of support for the ruling-class. Despite their "small" status, they do possess some of the ideological trappings that distinguishes the bourgeoisie from the 'rabble'. Any revolution that seeks to mollify or incorporate these layers at the expense of those driving and deepening it (the working-class) can only progress so far before it must confront these contradictory and divergent interests.

[RedHammer]

I agree with your analysis, but here is the problem: at least in America, these elements (the middle class and petitbourgeoisie) are arguably larger than the "working class". This almost dooms any revolutionary effort.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I agree with your analysis, but here is the problem: at least in America, these elements (the middle class and petitbourgeoisie) are arguably larger than the "working class". This almost dooms any revolutionary effort.Well numerically they are not in the US - most are workers and many are very low wage workers. Even if they were the majority, their social power is not equal to capitalists or workers - either of whom could shut down the economy which any petty-bourgeois person depends on. But they are a sizable minority and much larger than the ruling class of course.

So what to do with them? Well I think, assuming that there is solid organization and experience and independence in a workers movement, I think you are correct that workers should try and win over sections of the petty-bourgeois to their side. Because this group in society has no real system of its own to fight for, they will either be pulled towards the workers or reaction during a revolution. Some professionals - even some eliete professionals like academics and scientists might side with workers at a time of crisis just because the worker's movement has shown itself up to the task while capitalism is in crisis and it's contradictions evident. Some low-end petty-bourgeois people might identify with workers on a community level or just sympathy because they live in working class neighborhoods.

But all this is sort of besides the point because the main thing is for workers to organize themselves before they really think about this in a strategic and systematic way. It's like if the worker's movement doesn't have enough gravitational pull to unite itself (not necessarily formally into one big union or party) then it's pointless to talk about seriously pulling satellite classes into our orbit. Until then it's best not to needlessly antagonize people from this group (as annoying as yuppies or self-righteous small business-owners can be some times) in a political sense and try and take support as we can on a case by case basis. Hell if there's a strike in a working class neighborhood, small shop-owners, sympathetic businessmen who own places to organize and hold meetings, grocers who can donate food, etc are all welcome and helpful.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Middle-class workers, depending on where they stand in relation to the proletariat and means of production, are commonly sympathetic to the historical role of the latter. Its interests and general makeup transforms it into an auxiliary formation of the working-class, playing a small but no less significant role in its movements. Small shop or business owners will find that the movements of these forces conflict with their own, pushing them further and further into the arms of the ruling-classes. Their own experiences and upbringing (normally from a position of privilege) will land them *ideologically* alongside the bourgeoisie. Education, class standing, and general consciousness will render these layers of the middle-class more susceptible to the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling-class.



I don't understand your reasoning here. The point of the DOTP is the seizure of political, economic, and cultural power, the supersession of bourgeois hegemonic interests with the proletariat's. The subjugation of petite-bourgeois/small capitalist interests will necessarily be apart of any formal dictatorship or intermediary movement. An organization or party intent on organizing the most conscious revolutionary elements of the working-class should refrain from appealing to small-business interests, or "integrating" workers and segments of the middle-class whose interests are diametrically opposed to struggle from below. Priority shouldn't be given to the petite-bourgeoisie (I trust this isn't your position).



I think we agree on the end result, but not the means of achieving it.


"Middle Class workers"... either people are proletarians, self-employed or they are capitalists. The so-called "middle class worker" you are describing does not exist. During capitalist crises (when workers parties' have always taken power), people are divided into those who own and people own nothing, the proletariat. If you are a "middle class" worker, you will be with the "lower class" worker. These are bourgeois terms and they annoy me. To me, the "middle class" is what i believe Marx saw the middle class as: the self-employed and petty-bourgeois (small capitalists, i.e. under 20 employees). But during a proletarian revolution, revolutions happen in the cities, in the urban areas where the owners of the means to produce society's needs are an incredible minority and the vast majority are proletarians (MoP-less wage dependent workers).

So, i am proposing that in a country as the USA, where the self-employed, petty-bourgeoisie are in high numbers and the country not yet been completely urban-ised (but as a side comment here: I agree with JH, the US' population is to 1/3 poor proletarians, another 1/3 who are proletarians who are more educated and paid better, but still proletarians; 1/3 about the petty-bourgeois and self-employed), there will necessarily be a need for the revolutionary Proletarian party to rhetorically win over the petty-owners, those who suffer under monopoly capitalism and in fact are very aware of this, much more so under crises. The fascist Nazis used this tactic very well, they got rid of the Junker class in Germany and gave the land to the self-employed and petty-bourgeois "middle class", nationalised banks in the interest of the petty-bourgeoisie and industrialists and helped german monopoly capitalists monopolise even more in the interest of the fascist state.

You have to be conscious of the material conditions of various countries, Europe is nearly completely proletarian-ised, urban-ised. 84% of germans are landless, wage dependent workers compared to 23% in 1918. The US has a lot more "middle class" populous due mainly to the cultural thing of "entrepreneurial" spirit or something magical like this...
My point is to not be as blind as past communist parties to the other classes. Greece has 12% of its labor force working in Agricultural industry and many "middle class" persons with their own small shops for tourists etc. so KKE use class-collaborationist means because the material conditions call for it. Germany is the opposite of this model as it has a very high amount of its population who own nothing and are solely reliant on capital's wage for their subsistence.

[Yuppie Grinder]

They don't have any revolutionary potential.
It was largely petite-bourgeois peasants who made up the base of mass bourgeois revolutions like the American and Chinese ones. Those days are long gone.

[Blake's Baby]

I agree with your analysis, but here is the problem: at least in America, these elements (the middle class and petitbourgeoisie) are arguably larger than the "working class". This almost dooms any revolutionary effort.

We're talking economics, you're talking sociology. If someone calls themself 'middle class' that doesn't mean they are middle class. There was a programme recently on in the UK about class where three young women with really thick regional acccents were saying they were 'middle class'; when challenged about this by the programme maker, who said he thought they were working class, one of them replied 'well I don't work do I?'

If class is just a question of possessions - I have nice shoes (or whatever) so I'm middle class - then it's meaningless.

The working class - those who do not own the means of production and must sell their labour power - is the vast majority of the population of the USA.

[Clarion]

The term middle class, in the way you seem to be using it, is a signifier of wealth, social status or identity and not of relationship with capital. Those “middle class” wage-earners are, in general, no more or less exploited than their lower waged comrades (as although they are paid more, they probably produce more value for their employers).


Some comrades above point to a supposed tendency for this group to side with their class enemies to protect their perks. It's true there are examples of this but I would argue that it is as much the fault of the 'left' (far- and centre-) as it is there own. To often, and some of the language above hints at this, our struggle has become, de-facto, a struggle of poor versus rich, rather than workers versus capital. We say things like “tax the rich,” and those better-off workers who are screwed from the top say they'll not be screwed from the bottom also. Revolutionaries need to speak to the defence of the entire class, not just a section of it. When we do otherwise we just hand those higher-waged and aspirational workers over to the forces of conservatism.


The petty-bourgeoisie are a different case altogether. Traditionally seen as being trapped between their desire to ascend to the ranks of the bourgeoisie proper and their fear of being driven into the ranks of the proletariat. I can assure you that many members of the petty-bourgeoisie have no such lofty ambitions, they're lone tradesmen or family stores just trying to scrape by. The petty-bourgeoisie can be won to the workers' banner by showing them the capitalist origin of their woes, it is true, but we must resist the opportunistic temptation to ingratiate ourselves with them by becoming advocates of small business.


The first temptation of the petty-bourgeois is to protect his small firm against being out-competed by larger firms which benefit from economies of scale; it will be to keep price levels high and wages low, as his ability to do so is his ability to eat. We can't become nostalgics for past era of capitalist laissez-faire, against the more advanced capitalism of the present era, to do so would to be to fall into the trap of reactionary anti-capitalism.

[passenger57]

hi, you know I am not Schopenhauer, Einstein, Marx, Trotsky, so I don't have their high levels of knowledge, so I can't really judge the political tastes of the upper classes, middle classes and lower classes of the USA. But from my own personal humble opinion about why most american leftists prefer liberalism over marxism, is that I think that the middle class of USA is still too big. And a large part of the american leftists who read alternative news websites, who are anti-war, who have a leftist culture, leftist lifestyle by listening to anti-war progressive music bands such as Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against The Machine, The Subhumans and alternative music but I think that many of them are really not part of the lower oppressed class like poor immigrants and latin americans, poor blacks, poor oppressed whites. and other oppressed sectors of the nation. Of course that most people of the 99% are oppressed by the 1% but we have to be honest and the pain experienced by a high wage worker compared with the pain and suffering of a homeless person, an underpayed undocumented worker, prisoners, unemployed, poor elderly and other very oppressed sectors of the nation.

Having said all this about many leftists being part of the middle class. I think that fact that they are part of the middle class, live in a middle class neighborhood, have middle class parents, relatives and friends. And live a middle class life is like a sort of wall that prevents them from going all the way to being 100% leftists and being loyal only real 100% marxist parties, instead of 50% leftist (Progressive liberals readers of commondreams.org and fans of FDR)

Because look at what this guy who I thought was a leftist and who claims is a leftist said on his Facebook wall:

Steven Ware
Finished my FDR bio yesterday. We need someone like him right about now.
Like · · 13 minutes ago ·


Living in a society where the majority of people who hate capitalism, wars, imperialism, but who prefer social-democracy, liberalism, instead of marxist, leninist, maoist and authentic leftist parties is not a piece of cake !!


.



Not that I am suggesting they are the same thing, since most people who are "middle class" are workers just like everybody else (i.e no control over capital).

But I am curious, where do they fit into the picture of class struggle?

And how would both groups react to a workers' revolution? I suspect there would be strong resistance among the "middle class" proletariat and the petitbourgeois. I heard the Fascists of Europe received their strongest support from these groups, but I don't know if that's true.

[Jimmie Higgins]

But from my own personal humble opinion about why most american leftists prefer liberalism over marxism, is that I think that the middle class of USA is still too big

Again, in Marxist terms, "middle class" is muddled - do a high-earning unionized skilled worker and a VP of a small corporation who may each make "middle class" incomes have the same interests? No one would do better with a stronger union, one would do better by getting rid of the union. - Just as one easy example.

But even ignoring the Marxist terms, if we just look statistically, even then the myths of "middle class" America don't hold up:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/08/opinion/la-oe-norton-wealth-inequality-20101108


The total wealth of the top 60% of Americans is 500 times the total wealth of the bottom 40%.


Bill Gates, America's richest individual, alone has more wealth than 40% of the U.S. population combined, or 120 million people.


The top 1% of households own almost 40% of the nation's wealth.



The top 10% of Americans own over 70% of nation's wealth.

The top 20% of the nation's households own 85% of the nation's total wealth.

The top 60% of households own almost 100%, or 99.8%, of the nation's wealth.


The bottom 40% of households own one-fifth of 1% (or 0.2%) of the nation's wealth.


The bottom 80% of Americans own only 15% of the nation's wealth.


So 40% of the population basically has no wealth to speak of - this is not the "home owning, financially stable" middle class myth that has been repeated to us for ages.

The problem is not numerical - we have the numbers on our side - the problem is ideological and hegemonic. Most people are workers, but "middle class" ideas (more specifically petty-bourgeois and bourgeoisie) ideas are accepted by most people - including workers. It's one of the things about class rule: the winners write the history, the ideas of our rulers are the ruling ideas in society. Even this notion that in the US everyone is middle class - or the Australian variation which claims that everyone is working class and so there is no class division - are ruling class ideas and myths maintained because it is helpful to our rulers.

So it's not a problem of composition in the US, it's a problem of consciousness, specifically low working class consciousness... just the fact that most workers call themselves "middle class" is a superficial sign of this. But how do we overcome this if the ruling class creates and maintains all the institutions and ways of distributing information (education systems and curriculum, heavy influence on community and church groups, think tanks, non-profits, mass media, academic institutions, and the two political parties)? I think the quick and rapid spread of the ideas of Occupy and the wave of solidarity for Egypt and Wisconsin show how this situation can change. After Occupy and Wisco, people began talking about inequality and capitalism and even identifying as "working class". It's a modest step in the long run, but subjectively I think it shows how struggle (when connected to real class issues and forces) can quickly upend these ruling class myths most people accept about our society. Of course spontaneous steps forward can be pushed back or just as spontaneously retreat if a movement hits an impasse, so that's where the role of the already-radicalized activists and workers comes in, we can begin to build up networks and support for oppositional class ideas and movements which will then make it more likely that a new upsurge can have a higher level of politics and organization.