Petty bourgeoisie

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Petty bourgeois originally were those members of the bourgeoisie who belonged to its lowest class , such as craftsmen , small merchants, elementary school teachers, etc. Ä. as an antithesis to the upper class . Today, with the term, according to the Duden a "member of the lower middle class " or pejoratively a " philistine " section.

Origin of the term

The term “petty bourgeois” seems to have originated in the 18th and 19th centuries. Adelung's dictionary from 1811 does not know the term, only the German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm and Successors mentions it in 1873. The first evidence there from 1783 reads: “In Königsberg the workers are called like that, in contrast to the big citizens”. The Duden names the origin: "originally (scenic) = worker ". The DWDS sees the origin in 1830 as Ludwig Börne , previously in the 18th century occasionally as a "worker".

This sober social divorce subsequently received a negative, moral component: While the often internationally active large merchant and upper-class bourgeois already attributed a cosmopolitan way of thinking and living because of his business relationships, he used the term "petty bourgeois" for one, only to his own small world-related world view of the subordinate. Apparently this deterioration of the term was a consequence of the devaluation of the older term philistine .

Marxist use of the term

In the Marxist-Leninist terminology , “petty bourgeois” is used to designate non- proletarians who adapt to the ruling class without a fixed class standpoint . In adjective terms, ideological deviations (also from proletarians) are referred to as “petty bourgeois”.

Petty bourgeoisie stand - economically as well as from the point of view of Marxism - between the wage worker and the capitalist (see also Marx 's wage labor and capital ). What they have in common with the wage laborer is that they have to live off their own labor , with the capitalist that they use their own means of production and sell their labor product as a commodity that belongs to them. The majority of these are lone workers - which, however, creates problems of demarcation from the peasant , namely (in Leninist terminology) from the “middle peasant ”.

The self-delimitation of the petty bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the proletariat and their lack of solidarity with its communist aspirations brought the petty bourgeoisie, in addition to the contempt of the higher-ups, also the rejection of communist publicists such as Marx and Horkheimer - for them this demarcation seemed to them as an obstacle to a revolution in their sense.

In his Communist Manifesto , Karl Marx wrote in 1848:

"In Germany the [...] petty bourgeoisie forms the actual basis of the existing conditions."

Max Horkheimer noted around 1960:

“We are seeing the classes disintegrating […] The workers in the industrialized countries are for the most part becoming lousy petty bourgeoisie. But the class antagonisms persist. What about the exploitation ? The facts suggest that it has decreased. "

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: petty bourgeois  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

  • Annette Leppert-Fögen: The declassed class. Studies on the history and ideology of the petty bourgeoisie. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-01945-3 .
  • Dirk Jung: From the petty bourgeoisie to the German middle class. Analysis of a social mentality. Die Mitte, Saarbrücken 1982, ISBN 3-921236-40-1 .
  • Berthold Franke: The petty bourgeoisie. Concept, ideology, politics. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-593-33908-0 .
  • Heinz-Gerhard Haupt , Geoffrey Crossick: The petty bourgeoisie. A European Social History of the 19th Century. Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43258-1 .
  • Thomas Althaus (ed.): Kleinbürger. On the cultural history of limited consciousness. Attempto, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-89308-323-5 .
  • Heinz Schilling : petty bourgeoisie. Mentality and lifestyle. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37250-9 .
  • Joska Pintschovius: The dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie. The long way to the center. Osburg, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-940731-04-8 .
  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger : From the unstoppability of the petty bourgeoisie. A sociological cricket . In: Kursbuch , 45, 1976, Rotbuch, Berlin, pp. 1–8

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ petty bourgeoisie . duden.de, accessed on December 22, 2014
  2. ↑ Offer
  3. ↑ petty bourgeoisie. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 11 : K - (V). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1873 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  4. ↑ petty bourgeoisie. In: Digital dictionary of the German language . Retrieved December 22, 2014
  5. ^ Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels : Manifesto of the Communist Party. MEW , p. 64. Full text
  6. ^ Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 14. In: Nachgelassene Schriften 1949–1972. 5. Notes. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main 1988, pp. 327–328: The topicality of Marx and the rescue of Marx. P. 328.