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The petite bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie is the lower strata of the bourgeoisie, consisting of smaller-scale merchants, semi-autonomous peasants, small business owners, self-employed individuals with complete autonomy, and other business owners who own enough means of production to extract surplus value but not wealthy enough to subsist solely off that extraction, in contrast to the haute bourgeoisie. Therefore, they must also perform labour alongside their employees.
Most businesses are owned and operated by the petty bourgeoisie. Big bourgeoisie wield enough economic power that they can turn that economic power into political power at the highest levels, the national level, whereas petty bourgeois can only do so at a provincial or local level. In the United States, car dealer owners are collectively one of the most organised sub-groups.[1]
Class role[edit | edit source]
The petite bourgeoisie can be either a progressive force (such as in New Democracy) or a reactionary force depending on the material conditions of the place or time.[2][3] Many petite bourgeoisie are opposed to the current form of capitalism, but any revolution led by them is bound to be deeply unstable.[4]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Alexander Sammon (2023-05-30). Want to Stare Into the Republican Soul in 2023?.
- ↑ S. N. Nadel (1974). Great Soviet Encyclopedia (3rd ed.), vol. 16: 'Petit bourgeoisie' (Russian: Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija). [PDF] Moscow.
- ↑ “The leaders of the petty bourgeoisie—the intellectuals, the prosperous peasants, the present parties of the Narodniks (the S.R.s included) and the Mensheviks—are not at present in favour of a revolution against the capitalists and some of them are even opposed to it, greatly to the detriment of the people’s cause. The coalition cabinet is the kind of “experiment” that is going to help the people as a whole to quickly discard the illusion of petty-bourgeois conciliation with the capitalists.
The conclusion is obvious: only assumption of power by the proletariat, backed by the semi-proletarians, can give the country a really strong and really revolutionary government. It will be really strong because it will be supported by a solid and class-conscious majority of the people. It will be strong because it will not, of necessity, have to be based on a precarious “agreement” between capitalists and small proprietors, between millionaires and petty bourgeoisie, between the Konovalovs-Shingaryovs and the Chernovs-Tseretelis.”
Vladimir Lenin (1917). A Strong Revolutionary Government. [MIA] - ↑ “A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge.”
Vladimir Lenin (1920). "Left-wing" communism, an infantile disorder. [MIA]