By the way and for the record, I consider myself a déclassé petit bourgeois radical democrat. I suspect that a large part of Marx's and Lenin's rhetorical rancour towards the petit-bourgeois and social-democracy reflected frustration at the impossibility of ridding themselves of what they (in my view, correctly) perceived as an ambivalent and potentially treacherous class subjectivity. You can take the boy out of the country (class) but you can't take the country out of the boy. This is not to romanticize working class folks as 'noble savages', simply because some of them may have had less opportunity to be opportunists. Perhaps the most non-pejorative way of putting it would be to say that class society is predicated on treachery. Those who would deny their own potential for betrayal probably carry a dagger in their backpack just in case they change their mind. Barkley Rosser wrote: > I think it would help if people did not use the pejorative >"petty bourgeois" which is inaccurate and not in Marx in >the original and, in fact, just plain wrong. It sounds like >that when spoken, but the actual term is "petit bourgeois" >which is French for "small" (or "little") bourgeois to be >contrasted with the "grand bourgeois" or "big" (not "grand" >in English) bourgeois. This gives the accurate meaning >and sense of this term without the ridiculously invidious >use of "petty," which I agree with Peter Dorman has been >horribly misused by many people. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
