Top definition. In a strict Marxist sense, the petite bourgeoisie represents the middle managers who are capable of purchasing the labor power of the proletariat working class , but also do not wholly own the means of production. The key defining factor of this group involves the attitudes, values, and opinions they support and display. Members of this social group strive to mimic the behaviors and practices of the Haute Bourgeoisie upper class, the one percent if you will , even though their own incomes are nowhere near the level of those they deify. They often have an aggressive disdain for the poor even though most of them are a single paycheck away from joining their ranks. Modernly, most of them purchase goods and services on credit, providing for the illusion that they have the same kind of purchasing power that the wealthy do.
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The term is politico-economic and references historical materialism. It originally denoted a sub-stratum of the middle classes in the 18th and earlyth centuries. The petite bourgeoisie is economically distinct from the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat social-class strata who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival; and also are distinct from the capitalist class haute bourgeoisie "high bourgeoisie" who own the means of production and thus can buy the labor-power of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat to work the means of production. Though the petite bourgeoisie can buy the labor of others, they typically work alongside their employees, unlike the haute bourgeoisie.
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The petite bourgeoisie are the social class that's made up of merchants and white collar workers. If your neighbor owns a small shop, she's a member of the petite bourgeoisie. According to Karl Marx, the political theorist who popularized this French term in the nineteenth century, the petite bourgeoisie is made up of capitalists who operate on a modest scale. Inspired by the wealthier haute bourgeoisie , the petite bourgeoisie aspire to make more money and achieve a higher status. The term is a bit derogatory — in philosophy and literature they're portrayed as being spiritually empty and overly conventional.
The "bourgeoisie" in its original sense is intimately linked to the existence of cities recognized as such by their urban charters e. In Marxist philosophy , the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society. Joseph Schumpeter saw the incorporation of new elements into an expanding bourgeoisie, particularly entrepreneurs who took risks to bring innovation to industries and the economy through the process of creative destruction , as the driving force behind the capitalist engine. In English, the word "bourgeoisie" a French citizen-class identified [ when? Hence, since the 19th century, the term "bourgeoisie" usually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper-class of a capitalist society. Historically, the medieval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs walled market-towns , the craftsmen , artisans , merchants , and others, who constituted "the bourgeoisie. As the economic managers of the raw materials, the goods, and the services, and thus the capital money produced by the feudal economy, the term "bourgeoisie" evolved to also denote the middle class — the businessmen and businesswomen who accumulated, administered, and controlled the capital that made possible the development of the bourgs into cities. The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to commerce.
