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.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Dorman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 6:30 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:6883] Re: RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys"
>The first is one of Marx' finest passages, justly famous. The second is
>an example of the tendentious and invidious argumentation that has
>soured his reputation. Social democracy, whether you like it or not,
>has always been the main form of working class political advocacy within
>capitalism. Shopkeepers and professionals support it sometimes, oppose
>it other times, but it always finds its broadest support among workers.
>There is a huge empirical literature on this. And it wasn't so
>different in Marx' day. One of the many fine sections of "The Rise and
>Fall of Freedom of Contract" by Atiyah details the close connection in
>19th c. England between the extension of the franchise and the emergence
>of welfare statism. Incidentally, "petit bourgeois" slides from
>sociology into smear at the hands of Marx and his followers. It is
>difficult to hear this phrase today without thinking of the blood that
>has been spilled in its name.
>
>Peter
>
>Tom Walker wrote:
>> So I skimmed through the Eighteen
>> Brumaire and was jolted by two other passages: one on the social
revolution
>> of the 19th century and the other on Social-Democracy. These are, like
the
>> tragedy/farce passage, famous passages. With due regard to the irony of
>> using the expressions, the passages are timeless, priceless.
>>
>> On the social revolution:
>>
>> "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry
>> from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself
>> before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former
>> revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to
>> smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century
>> must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own
>> content. There the phrase went beyond the content -- here the content
>> goes beyond the phrase."
>>
>> On social-democracy:
>>
>> "The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact
that
>> democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing
>> away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their
>> antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means
>> proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be
>> trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the
>> same. This content is
>> the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation
>> within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the
>> narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes
>> to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the
>> special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions
>> within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class
>> struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic
>> representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of
>> shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position
>> they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them
>> representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their
>> minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get
>> beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to
>> the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social
>> position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the
>> relationship between the political and literary representatives of a
>> class and the class they represent."
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Tom Walker
>> http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
>
>
