Petite bourgeoisie

Petty bourgeois were originally called those members of the bourgeoisie, who belonged to the lowermost layer, such as artisans, small merchants, elementary school teachers and the like.

Emergence of the concept

The term " petty bourgeois " seems to have originated in the 18th and 19th centuries. Adelung dictionary of 1811 does not know the term, only the German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm and successor calls him in 1873 in the eleventh band. The local first evidence of 1783 is as follows: in Königsberg heiszen the employees so unlike the grosz citizen.

This sober social divorce subsequently received a negative moral component: While the often large international merchant and upper middle class already attributed a cosmopolitan way of thinking and way of life because of his business, he used the term " petty-bourgeois " for a limited, only on your own small World -based worldview of Deep -off. Apparently this term deterioration was a result of the devaluation of the older concept of philistines.

The Marxist concept of using

In the Marxist- Leninist terminology non- proletarians were named with petty bourgeois, who adapted themselves without a permanent class point of the currently ruling class. Adjektivisch ideological deviation was (also of proletarians ) referred to as petty bourgeois.

Small citizens are, economically and seen by Marxism forth between the wage laborer and the capitalist. With the wage workers they have in common is that they have to live by their own work, with the capitalists that they use their own (s) the means of production and sell their work product as belonging to them goods. In their majority, there are individual workers. This, however, problems of definition arise for farmers, especially - in Leninist terminology - the " middle peasants ".

The self- definition of the petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat, as well as their non- solidarity with a communist direction in the proletariat brought the petty bourgeoisie then in addition to the contempt of superiors rejection of communist writers such as Marx and Horkheimer one, they appeared but as an obstacle to a revolution in their senses.

In his Communist Manifesto Karl Marx wrote in 1848:

Max Horkheimer wrote in 1960: