Whats so petty about the petty bourgeoisie? - and their rela

[Wenty]

I know their not bourgeois completely but what, exactly defines them as petty and where does it come from. Mind you i'll probably come across it in a minute whilst reading. Anyway...

[redstar2000]

Well, originally it just meant "small capitalist"--like a small grocery store or something. By the middle of the last century, used much more loosely in left political circles...sometimes meaning anyone EXCEPT an industrial worker or a hobo!

I think most serious marxists would probably be reluctant to use the term now; the structure of the capitalist class is pretty complicated now...and the real small capitalists don't amount to much any more.

[peaccenicked]

Marx was reffering to an intermiadate layer between the bougeoisie and the working class, mainly small propieters who have not the ambition to be ruling class
or the ambition to be free of bourgeois rule. Thus their ambition to sustain only small holdings is petty.

[ComradeJunichi]

Is that middle class?

[mentalbunny]

It sounds like middle class, the kind that work hard at school, get a boring office job, get married, have kids, watch them grow up, retire, die (that is my idea of hell). Their kids, they hope, repeat the pattern and so it goes on, but now these kids are thinking something else. Maybe it's just teenage rebellion, maybe it's more, I hope the latter...

[Wenty]

i know exactly what you mean metalbunny, its monotony, people live their lives out oblivious of the fact they aren't doing anything of any worth at all! They spawn a whole race of blind fools out to make a fast buck. I hate the whole idea of teenage rebellion, some are just hormonal, some actually are indignant and want to change the world or actually LIVE a life worth living.

The petty bourgois are middle class, to an extent i know that.

[Marxman]

Petty/petit burgeois are physically meant as small capitalists and mentally they are meant as the kind of people who act as "GOD'S GIFTS", who act as they are the ONES, who give their money on clothes, cars, houses, luxury.

As small capitalists they own some means of production and/or some piece of property and/or have small proletariat.