Petty bourgeoisie

“ Between the magnificence of the aristocratic throne and those of the imperial purple, between the great of the earth and the People, the bourgeoisie is proving itself petty; it degrades power to its own level instead of rising up to it. ”

“ All belonged to that indigent class which begins to separate from the lowest of petty bourgeoisie in straitened circumstances, and which extends from misery to misery into the lowest depths of society down to those two beings in whom all the material things of civilization end, the sewer-man who sweeps up the mud, and the ragpicker who collects scraps. ”

“ Only those who have been able to save a part of their capital from the wreck can try fortune once more in another branch of industry where great capital has not yet begun to compete, but they are sure to be pursued and finally overtaken by their enemy.
As in the case of the bourgeoisie, the relations which the different members of the petty bourgeoisie have among themselves are determined by the economic system ”

“ And these capitalist exploiters will necessarily be followed by a wide stream of the petty bourgeoisie, as to whom decades of historical experience of all countries bear witness that are constantly oscillating and hesitating, to-day following the proletariat, and to-morrow taking fright at the difficulties of the revolution, succumbing with panic after the first defeat or semi-defeat of the workers, giving way to "nerves," whining, running hither and thither, deserting from one camp to another—just like our Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries! ”

“ The petty bourgeoisie, great in boasting, is very impotent for action, and very shy in risking anything. The mesquin character of its commercial transactions and its credit operations is eminently apt to stamp its character with a want of energy and enterprise ”

“ The bourgeoisie consciously, in the person of its various factions, assumes the leadership of the nation, it lures the masses into struggle, it coins slogans, it dictates revolutionary tactics. Democracy unites the nation in one political ideology. The people—small artisans, petty merchants, peasants, and workingmen—elect bourgeois as their representatives ”

“ In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use, in their criticism of the bourgeoisie regime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for the working-class. Thus arose petty bourgeois Socialism. ”

“ Petty Bourgeois Socialism.
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant bourgeoisie, were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie. ”

“ For if the workers are afraid of losing their jobs, so too are the burgesses, and with almost better reason—for they have more to lose, have further to fall. They fall from a precarious heaven of gentility into the abysses of unrelieved poverty, into the workhouse and the glutted labour exchanges; can you wonder that they live in fear? And as for hate—you can talk about the hate of the proletariat for the bourgeoisie, but it’s nothing, I assure you, to the hate that the bourgeoisie feel for the proletariat. Your burgess loathes the worker because he is afraid of him ”

“ Isnard2369 railed against "that multitude of large property-holders, those opulent merchants, those haughty, wealthy personages who, advantageously placed in the social amphitheater, are unwilling to have their seats changed." The bourgeoisie," wrote Pétion,2370 "that numerous class free of any anxiety, is separating itself from the people; it considers itself above them,... they are the sole object of its distrust. ”

“ Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and its rule. ”

“ Petty industries in a very large number of cases represent a stage in social descent, the wreckage of larger industries whose owners are economically as [Pg 123] dependent as the ordinary wage-workers, or even poorer and more to be pitied. Where, on the contrary, it is a stage in social ascent, the petty industry is, paradoxical as the idea may appear, frequently part of the process of industrial concentration. ”

“ But the bourgeois mistrust the workers and turn against them, when they should sustain them, guide them, direct them in the uprisings whose object is the reconquest of their common rights. The people have so far borne witness by their conduct to their affection, their trust in the bourgeoisie. They have had, they will have faith in it to the end. But sad and irreparable will be the evil for you and for us, if one day the bourgeoisie, having utilized the people to overcome the nobility, should seek to reign in the shadow of a fictitious royalty ”

“ I am speaking to you, the working-men, the proletariat, the downtrodden slaves of the plutocracy, the creators in darkness of the wealth that the idlers enjoy in dazzling halls of brightness. I do not address the bourgeoisie rotting in sloth and apathy. They are the parasites of the rich. They sweat the workers in order to pander to the vices of the rich. They despise the poor and grovel before the rich. They shrink from touching the poor man's hand, but they offer their bodies slavishly to the kick of the rich man's foot. ”

“ This philosophy presided at the formation of a miserable society, an egotistical and mediocre [Pg 269] bourgeoisie, who have no spiritual tendencies, and are incapable of sacrificing themselves to any ideal other than that of money. ”

“ Viler and more dishonest than the nobility despoiled and the decayed clergy, the bourgeoisie borrowed their frivolous ostentations, their braggadoccio, degrading these qualities by its lack of savoir-vivre; the bourgeoisie stole their faults and converted them into hypocritical vices. ”

“ Just as the characteristics of the revolutionary army -discipline and obedience - are precisely the characteristics which workers already possess under capitalism, the characteristics of the leaders are precisely the characteristics of leaders in capitalist society. But the leaders of capitalism are the bourgeoisie, the enemy. ”

“ And at times his figure grew and expanded till it became, as it were, an incarnation of the whole bourgeoisie—that bourgeoisie which at the division of the spoils in 1789 appropriated everything, and has since fattened on everything at the expense of the masses, and refuses to restore anything whatever. ”

“ It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society ... The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeosie itself. ”

“ The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. ”

“ This influence of the bourgeois state, has, in every country, its peculiarities. Each country has its method for the corruption of the working class, and the bourgeoisie of each country uses these methods very successfully for its own interests. ”

“ A great shudder came upon Pierre as he thought of all that mass of iniquity and suffering, of all that went on below amid wealth and vice. The bourgeoisie, wielding power, would relinquish naught of the sovereignty which it had conquered, wholly stolen; while the people, the eternal dupe, silent so long, clenched its fists and growled, claiming its legitimate share. ”

“ It is the bourgeoisie which, more than any other class, is conservative and retrogressive. It is the bourgeoisie which makes and unmakes ministries. It is the bourgeoisie which has destroyed the influence of the Upper Chamber, and which will dethrone the King whenever he shall become unsatisfactory to it. ”

“ When the laborers were told that their wives and daughters were considered rightful booty by the wealthy, they remembered women of their class who had fallen a prey to the fascination of wealth and the elegance of the higher classes, and were angry. The peace of many of them had been ruthlessly destroyed by some rich voluptuary. Perhaps a poor father, thinking of a fair daughter, whose employer in shop or factory had taken advantage of his position and her need to seduce her, gnashed his teeth in rage, and was ready to swear eternal vengeance against the bourgeoisie. ”

“ It is evident that the wealth of the bourgeoisie is rapidly increasing, and their consequence with it; so rapidly, indeed, that the republicans are taking fright at it,—they see before them a new enemy, and begin to talk of the abominations of an aristocratic bourgeoisie. ”

“ But the fact remains that [264] the present economic system produces a class who are not forced to work and can dissipate what others produce. The luxury displayed by the bourgeoisie has injurious consequences for the whole population. ”

“ Thus the struggle of the two classes landed, after a short and stormy flare-up, in a compromise, which gave the bourgeoisie for many years to come more unlimited power than in any other land with the modern system of production. ”

“ If, on the other hand, it gleans sufficient business to make it desirable as a tributary, or potentially dangerous as a competitor, the petty business is pounced upon by its mightier rival and either absorbed or crushed, according to the temper or need of the latter. Critics of the Marxian theory have for the most part completely failed to recognize this significant aspect of the subject, and attached far too much importance to the continuance of petty industries. ”

“ But the real evil is, that the absence of the rich proprietors retards civilisation, the progress of manners, and many liberal improvements; for though the rich may in some respects set a bad example, yet upon the whole they soften and liberalise, excite industry, and make society by bringing men together, who polish themselves, enforce a due administration of justice, and keep down the professions, whose employment is to rob every country, and if left to themselves, naturally produce upstart manners and a total want of principle. ”

“ This truth is that the bourgeoisie, the most enlightened and democratic portion of the bourgeoisie, is even now not stopping at deceit and crime, at the slaughter of millions of workmen and peasants, in order to retain the right of private ownership over the means of production. ”

“ You have a bourgeoisie which maintains itself in almost feudal luxury by means of the labour which it employs, and that labour is content to squeak and open its mouth for worms, when it should have the finest fruits of the world. And all this is for want of leadership. Up you come you David Sands, you Phineas Crosses, you Nicholas Fenns, you Thomas Evanses. You each think that you represent Labour, but you don’t. You represent trade—the workers at one trade. How they laugh at you, the men who like to keep the government of this country in their own possession! ”

“ He has lost the generous blood and the artless strength of the people that he has denied, and has gained the shameful vices of the bourgeoisie, without having succeeded in acquiring the means of satisfying them,—the vile sentiments, the cowardly fears, the criminal appetites, without the setting, and consequently without the excuse, of wealth. ”

“ There was no lack of examples lying near to his hand, The bourgeoisie had taken unto itself many a piece of aristocrat and church property—why should not he now do the same with bourgeois property? The sansculotte had at that time to pass through many hard, albeit many merry days. Often he had to endure hunger in the most literal sense of the term, and hunger, as is well known, is a bad counselor. Thereupon our has-nothing begins to exhibit a great nonchalance toward bourgeois property. The bourgeoisie resists that as well as it knows how. ”

“ In much the same manner the bourgeoisie would make the workers believe that, today, there is nothing more to be done in the realm of economy and that, therefore, one must only indulge in the game of "pure" politics. But "pure politics" means for the workers nothing but kite-tail politics in the service of the bourgeois parties, and the bourgeoisie is fully aware of the significance of this brand of "pure politics," at least such was the case when it was engaged in the struggle with the nobility and clergy. ”

“ The industrial magnates, he says, saw that the best policy for preventing the growth of a public sentiment favoring the encroachments of labor would be to increase the number of bourgeoisie interested in industrial affairs. ”