Petite-Bourgeoisie

[Ilyich]

I'm in the middle of an argument right now about the situation of the petite-bourgeoisie. Someone said that Marxism began to fail when the petite-bourgeoisie failed to decline. The person said that Marxism began to fail when the pauperization petite-bourgeoisie failed to happen. They also claim that the industrial middle class has expanded since Marx and Engels' time. I have two questions.

1. I know Marx said that the petite-bourgeoisie would decline somehow but what exactly does he say and where does he say it?

2. Could anyone provide me with some statistics regarding the petite-bourgeoisie then and now?

It's an ongoing argument so if someone could answer quickly, it would be appreciated.

[Questionable]

When Marx said the petite-bourgeoisie would fall, he was referring to big businesses swallowing up small businesses and forming monopolies against them. It seems self-evident to me that this has been happening all across the first-world, but someone here probably has some hard statistics.

[Positivist]

Well I'm sorry but your friend is an idiot who equates the petite-bourgiose with the middle class. The middle class is mostly just highly paid workers. These highly paid workers of the core capitalist countries couldn't possibly exist without the extraction of super profits from the workers of the periphery. Furthermore the petite-bourgiose are small business owners not the middle class.

[Ilyich]

Well I'm sorry but your friend is an idiot who equates the petite-bourgeoisie with the middle class. The middle class is mostly just highly paid workers. These highly paid workers of the core capitalist countries couldn't possibly exist without the extraction of super profits from the workers of the periphery. Furthermore the petite-bourgeoisie are small business owners not the middle class.

When he refereed to the petite-bourgeoisie as being middle class, I think he meant middle class as being between the workers and the capitalists in terms of their relationship to the means of production.

[Positivist]

When he refereed to the petite-bourgeoisie as being middle class, I think he meant middle class as being between the workers and the capitalists in terms of their relationship to the means of production.

Yes, which is incorrect. Petite-bourgiose literally means small bourgiose meaning small scale business owners or capitalists. There is no midway between the relation of employer to employed. You employ and extract suplis values from your employees, or your employed and have surplus value extracted from you. No such midway exists.

[Caj]

I'm in the middle of an argument right now about the situation of the petite-bourgeoisie. Someone said that Marxism began to fail when the petite-bourgeoisie failed to decline. The person said that Marxism began to fail when the pauperization petite-bourgeoisie failed to happen. They also claim that the industrial middle class has expanded since Marx and Engels' time. I have two questions.

1. I know Marx said that the petite-bourgeoisie would decline somehow but what exactly does he say and where does he say it?

The one with whom you are arguing is presenting a strawman of the Marxist position on the decline of the petit-bourgeoisie. He or she is interpreting Marx's prediction of the decline of the petit-bourgeoisie mechanically, as a numerical and quantitative diminishing of this class, rather than dialectically, as a cyclical process resulting inevitably from the inherent contradictions of capitalistic production.

Rosa Luxemburg, in her "Reform or Revolution," addressed a similar argument made by the revisionist Eduard Berstein:


In the "steadfast *******" of middle-sized enterprises, Bernstein sees a sign that the development of large industry does not move in a revolutionary direction, and is not as effective from the angle of the concentrations of industry as was expected by the "theory" of collapse. He is here, however, the victim of his own lack of understanding. For to see the progressive disappearance of the middle-sized enterprise as a necessary result of the development of large industry is to misunderstand sadly the nature of this process.

According to Marxist theory, small capitalists play in the general course of capitalist development the role of pioneers of technical change. They possess that role in a double sense. They initiate new methods of production in well established branches of industry; they are instrumental in the creation of new branches of production yet exploited by the big capitalist.

It is false to imagine that the history of the middle-sized capitalist establishments proceeds rectilinearly in the direction of their progressive disappearance. The course of this development is on the contrary purely dialectical and moves constantly among contradictions. The middle capitalist layers find themselves, just like the workers, under the influence of two antagonistic tendencies, one ascendant, the other descendant. In this case, the descendant tendecy is the continued rise of the scale of production, which overflows periodically the dimensions of average-sized parcels of capital and removes them reaptedly from the terrain of world competition. The ascendant tendency is, first, the periodic depreciation of the existing capital which lowers again, for a certain time, the scale of production, in proportion to the value of the necessary minimum amount of capital. It is represented, besides, by the penetration of capitalist production into new spheres. The struggle of the average-sized enterprise against big capital cannot be considered a regularly proceeding battle in which the troops of the weaker party continue to melt away directly and quantitatively. It should be rather regarded as a periodic mowing down of the small enterprises, which rapidly grow up again, only to be mowed down once more by large industry. The two tendencies play ball with the middle capitalist layers. The descending tendency must win in the end. The very opposite is true about the development of the working class.

The victory of the descending tendecy must not necessarily show itself in an absolute numerical diminution of the middle-sized enterprises. It must show itself, first in the progressive increase of the minimum amount of capital necessary fort the functioning of the enterprises in the old branches of production; second, in the constant diminution of the interval of time during which the small capitalists conserve the opportunity to exploit the new branches of production. The result as far as the small capitalists is concerned is a progressively shorter duration of his stay in the new industry and a progressively more rapid change in the methods of production as a field for reinvestment. For the average capitalist strata, taken as a whole, there is a process of more and more rapid social assimilation and dissimilation.

. . . If one admits that small capitalists are pioneers of technical progress, and if it is true that the latter is the vital pulse of the capitalist economy, then it is manifest that small capitalists are an integral part of capitalist development, and they will disappear only with [the disappearance of] capitalist development. The progressive dsappearance of the middle-sized enterprise -- in the absolute sense considered by Bernstein -- means not, as he thinks, the revolutionary course of capitalist development, but precisely the contrary, the cessation, the slowing up of this development. "The rate of profit, that is to say, the relative increase of capital," said Marx, "is important first of all for new investors of capital, grouping themselves independently. And as soon as the formation of capital calls exclusively into a handful of big capitalists, the revivifying fire of production is extinguished. It dies away.

[#FF0000]

Errrr the petit-bourgeoisie did decline, though. Only like, what, 5% of people in America are self-employed in some kind of small business or craft? The rate for that is uniformly low among all of the more highly developed countries.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Errrr the petit-bourgeoisie did decline, though. Only like, what, 5% of people in America are self-employed in some kind of small business or craft? The rate for that is uniformly low among all of the more highly developed countries.
Last figure I saw was 5-6%, but keep in mind official figures for small businesses are padded to include 1099 workers, who are full-time employees but reported as independent contractors to take further advantage of them re- overtime pay and benefits

[edit]
I feel like I should clarify for whoever happens to read this post - there are legitimate independent contractors who report as 1099. There's just no way to discern actual contract workers (who are legally a 'small business', as in self-employed) from full-time employees being taken advantage of in official small business stats unless somebody blows the whistle for each individual case. This is already more common than most people think and it's getting more common.

[robbo203]

I think the fundamental class dividing line is not so much the mere possesssion of capital - after allm large number of workers possess some capital of some sort even if only a small savings account - but rather the amount of capital that you possess which determines whether or not you are required to work for a living. If you can live off your capital without the need to work then you are capitalist; if not, you are a member of the working class. I think Engels said something along these lines too. There is, in other words, not a sharp dividing between the two classes that make up capitalism but a grey area - a spectrum. However, most are either unequivocally capitalists or workers by this yardstick.


That would include members of the petit- bourgeosie (PB) who in my book are overwhemingly members of the working class. Sure they are different from other workers in several respects - you might call them a different sociological category within the mainstream working class - but they certainly do not possess sufficient capital to live upon and are therefore obliged to work

Objections to this argument I have encountered are several but ultimately not decisive. e.g. The PB are not employed and are not paid wages. They dont produce surplus value the extraction of which is the source of capital and capital accumlation. However, many wage workers dont produce surplus value either but rather are paid for out of surplus value. In fact the bulk of the working class are "unproductive" in Marx's sense of the word . They do not produce commodities and hence cannot directly produce surplus value. Most state employees fall into this category. A primary school teacher in a state school is strictly spraking unproductive from a marxian point of view - though this is no reflection on the usefulness of her work.

Consider the position of the small shopkeeper. Her little commercial premiss may be mortgaged to the hilt so she does not strictly own it. Its rather like people who claim to own their own house when they are paying a mortgage which they would not have to if they owned it outright. So our shopkeeper is paying something to the bank which obviously does not grant her a mortgage on some kind of charitable basis but on the expectation of a financial return. In other words she is being exploited by financial capital where other workers might be exploited by industrial capital. The fact that you dont produce surplus value yourself if you are, say, an unproductive worker, does not mean your not being exploited. The Marxian view is that it is the working class as a whole that is exploitated and that the fruits of this exploitation is distributed internally within the capital owning class as a whole


Our small shopkeeper is not employed by anyone, strictly speaking, but consider the products that she sells in her shop. These are produced by capitalist enterprises elsewhere and she is acting in effect as an intermediary between these enterprises and the consumer. Another way of looking at it is that she is a glorified salesperson who is indirectly and multifariously "employed" (used) by those capitalist enterprises whose products she sells. In other words she works on a kind of commision basis but unlike the conventional working class door-to-door salesman employed by a particular company, assumes full responsibiloty for all the financial transactions she engages in. Her position is if anything far more vulnerable

There are of course difference between the PB and mainstram workers but I think looking at the larger picture and looking at their basic economic condition of not owning much capital, it is more useful to see the PB as a merely a sociological category within the working class rather than outside of it

[Ilyich]

Yes, which is incorrect. Petite-bourgiose literally means small bourgiose meaning small scale business owners or capitalists. There is no midway between the relation of employer to employed. You employ and extract suplis values from your employees, or your employed and have surplus value extracted from you. No such midway exists.

Well, one could always exploit oneself. I could be very wrong but I have been under the impression that that's what a petite-bourgeois is, one who both owns a business and works for that business at the same time. For example, it's obvious enough that if one works for a large or medium-sized company but does not own any part in the company, does not make his or her money from the company's profit but rather from the wages given to him or her by the company, he or she is part of the proletariat. Also, if one is the owner of a company but does not work for the company aside from perhaps making executive decisions, does not make his or her money from wages given to him or her by the company but rather from the company' profits, he or she is pat of the bourgeoisie. Say, however, that one owns a small business and is also the only worker for that company. Perhaps there are two, three, maybe even more other non-owning employees but the main point is that they are owners who work alongside the proletariat. They would have to extract surplus value from themselves in order to make a profit for their company, to keep their business afloat, right? In this sense, they are halfway between the workers and the capitalists as they a both. Because they are both, they have conflicting interests. As workers, their goal is to abolish exploitation and surplus value while, as capitalists, their goal is to make as much profit as possible and to expand, expand, expand their business. These conflicting interests threaten to tear the petite-bourgeoisie in two. I've been under the impression that these opposite interests would be the force which would destroy the petite-bourgeoisie. Is this making any sense or am I totally wrong?

[Positivist]

Well historically petite-bourgiose was used as a blanket term for small bussinessmen, middle managers, cops, and a bunch of other groups which didn't fall into either the proletariat, peasantry or bourgiose. Most people these days take it as small bussinessmen as Marx's prediction was made about them. And the amount of small-business owners certainly has declined. Your friend seems to be connecting the petite-bourgiose to the "middle class." You can be petite-bourgiose and fall at the middle of the income bracket, but its not all too common. Also no you can't exploit yourself.

[Ilyich]

Well historically petite-bourgeoisie was used as a blanket term for small businessmen, middle managers, cops, and a bunch of other groups which didn't fall into either the proletariat, peasantry or bourgeoisie. Most people these days take it as small businessmen as Marx's prediction was made about them. And the amount of small-business owners certainly has declined. Your friend seems to be connecting the petite-bourgeoisie to the "middle class." You can be petite-bourgeoisie and fall at the middle of the income bracket, but its not all too common. Also no you can't exploit yourself.

First of all, I'm sorry for dragging out this thread when most other users have lost interest. I still have some burning questions though.


Anyway, it turns out you were right about him not knowing the difference between the middle class (in the liberal sense of being moderately wealthy) and the petite-bourgeoisie. He included teachers, clerks, civil servants, and medical professionals in the category of petite-bourgeoisie when they are obviously proletarians because they do not own but rather they sell their labor power to a business which extracts surplus value from them; they work and are exploited. I've been trying to explain to him the true nature of the petite-bourgeoisie, that it is comprised mostly of small business owners.

Still, I have to take issue with the fact that you say that one cannot exploit oneself. A petite-bourgeois is a small capitalist, an owner of a small business. Assume there is a small business with only one worker. That worker also owns the business. He or she is a working owner or an owning worker. As an owner, he or she must make a profit so that he or she can expand the business and remain competent. If the business did not make a profit and reinvest this profit to expand, it would soon be overtaken by its competition. A business must make a profit. Profit comes from surplus value which is extracted from the worker through the process of exploitation. If there is only one worker who is the same person as the owner, the owner/worker must exploit himself or herself for the sake of profit. This takes me back to your claim. If one cannot exploit oneself, then how do small businesses where the owner works make a profit.

[Positivist]

Still, I have to take issue with the fact that you say that one cannot exploit oneself. A petite-bourgeois is a small capitalist, an owner of a small business. Assume there is a small business with only one worker. That worker also owns the business. He or she is a working owner or an owning worker. As an owner, he or she must make a profit so that he or she can expand the business and remain competent. If the business did not make a profit and reinvest this profit to expand, it would soon be overtaken by its competition. A business must make a profit. Profit comes from surplus value which is extracted from the worker through the process of exploitation. If there is only one worker who is the same person as the owner, the owner/worker must exploit himself or herself for the sake of profit. This takes me back to your claim. If one cannot exploit oneself, then how do small businesses where the owner works make a profit.

Ok I understand your point. The reason that this isn't exploitation though is because the surplus value is still being reaped by the producer, even if he must put some aside for expansion. Setting money aside for profit expansion does not amount to exploitation in a self-run business because profit expansion directly benefits the producer.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

Well historically petite-bourgiose was used as a blanket term for small bussinessmen, middle managers, cops, and a bunch of other groups which didn't fall into either the proletariat, peasantry or bourgiose.

can you point me to something that discusses police as petty-bourgeoisie? I've always considered them to be reactionary proletarians because of their relationship to production.

[fug]

I'm a "small capitalist" but still a communist. Of course such cases are somewhat rare...

[Marxaveli]

I'm a "small capitalist" but still a communist. Of course such cases are somewhat rare...

Not sure this makes sense to me. How can you be both? Are you a small business owner, but Communist in your political views?

[jookyle]

Not sure this makes sense to me. How can you be both? Are you a small business owner, but Communist in your political views?

Engels owned a factory.

I see the term(by that I mean, how I apply it personally) petite-bourgeoisie to refer to people who are not of the capitalist class but perhaps own a considerable amount of wealth or have an administrative position. For example, an investment banker who works at Goldman Sachs (let's say one who wasn't born into money) is petite-bourgeoisie, the people who make up the board and CEO positions of Goldman Sachs are bourgeoisie. And of course, you can move that to any scale any you want.