Petit-bourgeois (French pronunciation: [pəti buʁʒwa]) or petty bourgeois is a term that originally referred to the members of the lower middle social classes in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Starting from the mid-19th century, the term was used by Karl Marx and Marxist theorists to refer to a social class that included shop-keepers and government employees.
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Though distinct from the ordinary working class and the lumpenproletariat, who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival, the petit- is different from the haute bourgeoisie, (high bourgeoisie) or capitalist class, who own the means of production and buy the labor-power of others to work it. Though the petite bourgeoisie may buy the labor power of others, in contrast to the haute bourgeoisie, they typically work alongside their own employees; and although they generally own their own businesses, they do not own a controlling share of the means of production.
More importantly, the means of production in the hands of the petite bourgeoisie do not generate enough surplus to be reinvested in production; as such, they cannot be reproduced in an amplified scale, or accumulated, and do not constitute capital properly.
The petit bourgeois were to lose out in the historical processes that Marxism predicted; the claim was made that they were therefore the mainstay of Fascism, which was presented as a terroristic reaction to the inevitability of these losses.[1]
In some modern usage "petite bourgeoisie", a class that lies between the workingmen and the capitalists, is used, usually derisively, to refer to the consumption habits and tastes of the middle class and the lower middle class in particular. This is related to the meaning attributed to the expression "bourgeois mentality", used to define the cultural worldview associated with Victorianism, in particular the repression of emotional and sexual desires, and the construction of an intensely regulated social space where the key desirable personal trait is propriety.
However, Marxist terminology relates the petite bourgeoisie exclusively to its relationship to the means of production and work rather than to tastes, habits of consumption, or lifestyle (because of the Marxist definition of class).
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