Man I always thought that the term referred to bootlickers and bourgiours imitators but I see the term thrown around for pretty much any middle class kid or student. Is this incorrect usage? I know the two aren't synonymous but at what stage do they intertwine? It just seems abstract to me
I come from a 'middle class' family (in terms of income) in probably an upper-middle class area. My parents are Blairites but they are workers, own no means of production, do not wish to, and don't identify with any social class above their own. Are they petit-bourgeois?
I am a student born into such a family and a Marxist. Am I a bougie stooge?
My theorylet understanding is that a petit bourg is someone who owns mop, but only employs at most 1-2 people. Your parents are therefore not petit bourgeois. I think Lenin might have called them labour aristocrats though. Don't take me too seriously btw, i'm still entry level.
Nathan Young
Ok OP I will google this for you because I am a kind person:
Btw Political views do not determine your class.
>…but they are workers, own no means of production, do not wish to, and don't identify with any social class above their own. Are they petit-bourgeois? You answered your own question. If they are workers they are workers, not petite bourgeois.
I think your confusion stems from the fact that people will often sloppily use the term petite bourgeois to refer to people who are not technically bourgeois (do not own means of production) but are still rather wealthy and therefore share bourgeois class consciousness.
This is basically correct.
Noah Lee
Petites are those that, while they employ other workers, can't actually afford not working alongside them. It's less about how many workers they have, and more about whether they can live off rent/profit alone.
In this sense, someone that lives primarily off investments and other passive income - but otherwise doesn't employ anyone - is bourgeois, but the small time farmer that employs a dozen or so day laborers - but barely make ends meet - isn't.
Christian Harris
The problems is there are a lot of retards around here throwing terms around without actually knowing shit Like when for a time they kept calling each other lumpen
Also comes from the "UNDERSTANDING" that rich=bourgeois with nerds crying how programmers who earn big numbers are bourgies instead of workers
Kayden Gutierrez
A lot of people on this board seem to be under the impression that "lumpenproletarian" means someone who is a worker but has reactionary beliefs. It's so fucking retarded and I have no idea where they got that idea from.
Nathan White
Just a quick question here, what American social terminology should petite bourg be translated to? Every time I try to convert normines they just say petite what?
Middle class doesn't seem really fit, small biz owner seems a bit off.
And what about lumpen? What contemporary US terminology fits it better, so that normies can easily understand?
Lucas Reed
Do you mean them calling nazis lumpens? A lot of nazis in my experience are actually lumpen.
To be honest, that's the best you're probably going to get without using Marxist terminology. I don't know, thugs? Lowlifes?
Connor James
My not-so-marxist take Lumpens are: People chosen by the thug life Thugs for crime bosses,drag dealers, pimps People connected with or even ARE the underworld People that sell boutleg bags or corn,steal cables,prostitutes etc. People that are somewhat unemployed ,but actually do something and get money from it(legal or illegal) They dont have much stability in life nor they produce anything People that dont have a job or do anything in general Maybe they live of there parents or some shit Read the title again
Robert Kelly
What you described as petite-bourgeois fits lumpen-proletariat Petite-bourg are small business owners who own the MoP but on a smaller scale. You can have proles that acquire much more capital than petite-bourgs. They are the ones that look up and suck of the real bourgeoisie and shit on the proletariat BUT also think that everyone who has more than them has acquired it through illegal means or "cheated" the system while everyone who has less should "get a job" They are the main reactionary force and usually the retards that are pandered to by fascists. If you check out the conspiracy thread that is still somewhere around here, you will see who are the people I am talking about.
Samuel Phillips
I'm "guilty" of the term's abuse. I just hate middle class brats really. I hate the middle class student who whines about their sexual issues and feigns interest in socialism.
Caleb Johnson
Do they not own property or investments in stocks or bonds?
Josiah Lewis
A lot of "middle class" really are petty booj though. They make all kinds of substantial investments they do profit off of, and they also have to work. As well, there are "middle class" who may not be literally bourgeoisie, but are basically honorary booj who identify very closely with the booj and live like low-level booj.
IMO it is very fair to say that a substantial part of the middle class is petty-booj.
Jason Williams
Realistically, just because your family works, that doesnt make them proletarians. Shock and awe, I know, but the Proletarian are an exploited class, they work, but that is not all they are. Reductionists like to reduce them to that, and then scramble to argue against "but the capitalist works too". Your family could easily be petitie bourgeouis, and could still work. If they are overpaid, they likely feel like their bosses interests are more important than another workers. They can own stock, and can then be bourgeois. The fact that you wonder if your family is petite bourgeois, honestly, means that they most likely are. Zig Forums wont/cant tell you this because they often dont read, and when they do they dont think.
Angel Green
It's not exactly orthodox, but it may be beneficial to distinguish people who make the majority of their income from investments/mop ownership, compared to those who supplement their income. Investing is so widespread and accessible that it would render petit bourg a truly meaningless term, should even 30% of a countries population fall into that category.
IMO, if investments fully cover cost of living in a given region, then one could reasonably be classified as petite bourgeois. Even then, they aren't necessarily in such a good position within the capitalist dynamic.
Ayden Brooks
Is it? Where? I think the vast majority of workers around the world, who live in poverty, are not investing. Hmmm….
I think it would say something about that country, wouldn't it? Really activates my almonds.
I own a bitcoin but work full time. Am I petit bourgie? I am still very underpaid and exploited and would certainly consider myself working class otherwise. I'm not the only relatively poor person who has small crypto investments either considering how easy it is to do
Grayson Anderson
Maybe if we're being really autistic with definitions, but in every practical sense you're a worker.
Jacob Kelly
Yea i know what petit bouj means I just dont have a better name for this lumpen category..
Jordan Wilson
You are petite bourg if you own a house or any substantial amount of capital. Like pasted, unless you are dependent on selling your labour (aka if I get fired I'll be homeless), you are petite-bourg. It's not thrown left and right for no reason, in most countries within the ruling imperialist alliance ("1st world"), the vast majority of people are in fact petite bourg.
no mate, you need to educate people about marxism, not accommodate marxism to their idiocy.
Carson Allen
>You are petite bourg if you own a house or any substantial amount of capital. This doesn't sound right. If you simply live in a house you're not exploiting anyone's labour, you're not extracting any surplus value, or anything like that.
>unless you are dependent on selling your labour (aka if I get fired I'll be homeless), you are petite-bourg. You think workers who live in houses aren't dependent on their wage?
Camden Sanders
The house is a MoP, that can be rented for example. If you own 5 inactive factories, the fact that they aren't operational doens't change them being MoP.
Workers who own houses can always sell them or rent them. They won't starve or become homeless when fired
Jacob Bennett
You also own your asshole which can be rented out to your greasy neighbour, still doesn't make you a petit bourg.
Julian Mitchell
Even if it's a two room shack and you can't afford the upkeep? This is vague >unless you are dependent on selling your labour (aka if I get fired I'll be homeless), you are petite-bourg. I'd argue this is exactly what makes them petites. Petites exploit others, but their derived incomes aren't substantial enough that they could just sit back and still make ends meet. You could include everything here from manager-professionals, small time landlords and retailers, etc. Likewise, those sort of types are exactly the ones that gravitate towards fascism. I think people tend to overestimate the size of the petite class. Most people in the west aren't employing others. Instead, the term for that would be labor aristocrats. They're still workers, and they still have to sell their labor power, but otherwise they're getting more or less compensated for their labor. (Low rate of profit)
A house isn't a MoP if it doesn't come with productive lands. On itself it isn't capable of producing value. That's not to say rentiers aren't (or can't be) petites. But simply owning a house isn't the same as being a landlord leeching off the labor of others.
Justin Hernandez
By classic definitions, yes. Yet there are obviously exceptions to this nowdays, for example post-socialist slavic countries are mostly shitholes, yet most people own apartments due to buying the apartments they resided in after the victory of the anti-revolution. Obviously saying "all Serbians are petit-bourg" is false.
Enough capital to be able to make investments whose loss won't affect your quality of life. If you have 10k to throw on bitcoin, 10k which you won't miss if gone. But your next point is actually more correct than what I wrote.
This is a correct term tbh, but it's a grouping that requires more research to become properly defined. You can safely say though that once labourers accumulate enough capital to start investing, they do become petty-bourg themselves.
Yet the worker must reside somewhere in order to produce value. If i own a house next to a factory where the worker works, both me and the factory owner exploit said worker
Kayden Moore
Why is that false if we follow your definition exactly?
Dominic Richardson
because in the framework of classical marxism, owning a house would only be possible through wealth accumulation. acquiring it through the fall of a socialist system is outside the scope of classical marxism
Nathan Davis
Does owning a car make you petit bourgeois?
Lincoln Rogers
Yes, and owning a personal computer too
Cooper Morris
wtf i love capitalism now
Lucas Diaz
Having a dentist makes you bourgeois; owning a toothbrush makes you petite-bourgeois.
I'm coming for that toothbrush whitey.
Andrew Sanchez
Your definition is pretty useless for the modern world then
Angel Gray
Given that you're investing in speculative money that has no productive value, I'd say you're actually poorer than you'd be if you weren't trying to become a porky.
Xavier Foster
No it isn't, renting isn't production.
Oliver Murphy
You can also end up homeless even if you own a house (most Americans don't even own their houses, they're paying them off). If you miss payments, miss taxes, etc.
