The Plight of the Petit Bourgeoisie​

Let’s face it, it’s hard to get ahead in this country. Fewer workers are apart of a union, home ownership is down and the young are saddled with student debt. For those that do and have gotten ahead, the anxiety about losing what little ground they have gained is sky high. Everyone seems to be in some sort of precarity, however, for those who have found some success, the prospect of losing it all is even greater. For them, the stakes are high.

What is the Petit Bourgeosie?

The term was coined by my favorite critic of capitalism, Karl Marx. Karl Marx wrote one of the best critiques of capitalism, Das Kapital. Marx defined these people as former members of the proletariat who had found success within the capitalist system. They weren’t the landed aristocracy with their large incomes on rent. But they had assets and capital more than a laborer who was not of the capital class. For him, they were what we might now call the middle class. Not wealthy, but not the working poor either. Someone like this might be a professional, a business owner, or someone else who has deployed capital for their own success and survival.

Professionals take big risks. They buy houses, finance businesses, and get expensive educations in order to carve out their slice of the American dream. Many of them have family help and that certainly is a factor, but many who don’t have these advantages or access to these pathways to the middle class (or above) don’t understand that they have more in common with a doctor or a lawyer than they might at first think. 

While many young socialists and communists might rail against those who practice NIMBYism (not in my backyard) or those that defend lower taxes, the reality is that the differences are artificial. The professional who owns two houses and rents one out is only slightly higher up the ladder of success in life. A few missteps (sickness, bad divorce) could tear the whole thing down quickly. A wealthy doctor today can be living in a shared apartment tomorrow. Why is this? They might have a high income, but they do not have wealth via capital. The Petit Bourgeoisie are simply trying to defend the gains of their labor and cling to what capital they might have acquired. When this is understood, much of what happens in local politics begins to make more sense. Where does the original problem derive? The advantages given to capital over labor.

This is the sinister effect of capitalism. Capitalism grants advantages to a few people of the labor class that allows them to become slightly wealthier than others. However, this can be taken away by those who own real wealth in the form of capital. This can happen due to market changes or a change in the legal structure.

Solidarity

Ideally, workers making $7 an hour and worker s making $70 would stand in solidarity because to they are both being screwed by the same system, one just has a nicer car and bigger house than the other. For those in extreme poverty, they are the most disadvantaged of all. It may be hard to think that a professional doctor or lawyer has anything in common economically with the Mcdonalds’s worker, but it’s true, both are subject to the same system of capital. People commonly confuse a big check with being rich. True wealth, in a capitalistic system, is deriving income, not from labor, but from the payment rent or interest from the investment of capital. This is achieved when someone owns assets that generate a return or other income. When you can leverage those assets to get loans from banks to invest further, real wealth. Those who worker deploy capital to make themselves richer but without having anything to do with the labor required to generate that return are the truly wealthy. This is the group of people that must begin to pay its fair share of the expenses created to build a system where their capital can generate a return in the first place. This idea is not new.

For the Petit Bourgeoisie, they participate in a different aspect of the capitalist system and therefore have different concerns. While the working class would like rents to go down to reduce the amount of their labor going to shelter, the petit bourgeoisie is going to argue to keep rents high and property values higher as well. Their property does not merely represent rental income but hope for their retirement and their future. They don’t have access to the wealth of the upper class and having those assets is a form of long-term survival. In that way, they are in the same position as the working class. This is where solidarity would be helpful. There is more in common with the working class and the petit bourgeoisie than not. They both must derive their income from labor and not just wealth. They both are often exploited or dependent on those who don’t derive their income from labor and they both face harsh consequences if the system should change to disadvantage them.

How Do We Solve the Problems of the Working and Upper Middle Class?

The problems of the working class cannot be solved by getting a better job or by elaborate tax cuts meant to put more money in people’s pockets. The problems of the poor are best solved when there is a system in place where some wealth is moved from those that simply benefit those who perform the actual production. Such a system would be more successful than communism as it has been practiced because rather than seizing the means of production through force and making products for no reason, you can continue to use the ability of people to buy and sell, as long as they contribute to the society that we all live in. Capital and those who derive their income from capital must learn that public good is as important as a Real return on investment. The system only works as long as everyone pays into it. Once people start to leave the system, the system collapses under its own weight. No system can survive when all the output is taken out but no new material is put in. that would be like expecting your car to generate its own gas.

A system that helps everyone with healthcare, education, and other opportunities will equally raise all boats rather than hoping that through enough spending, tax cuts and other “job incentives” that if enough people work at enough jobs generating profit for capital that everyone will be able to survive. The only way to help both ends of what is essentially the broad working class is to actually help them. Everyone has high healthcare costs. Some might have good insurance and others might have no insurance, but there is no reason that healthcare should be something that is used to generate profit. A similar idea goes for education. These are things that are essential to a decent and civilized society. If America wants to have some change at equality and a chance for everyone, then changes need to occur.