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  • OgdenTO [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Thanks for posting. I started reading, and now I'm on chapter 4.

    Question though, the author uses the word proletariat for the slave-class and defines "petit-bourgeious" mindset for the white wage workers (essentially PMC?). In other books (eg blackshirts and reds), I've seen this divide dismissed as not a real class division under Marxism.

    I get what the author is doing, and I don't disagree, I guess I just wonder can non-bourgeious be considered a different strata, rather than open or "unawakened" proletariat? Is this strata a function of intersectionality and from a class perspective not real?

    I get in material terms there was and is a significant difference in what the author is describing, but from Marxist perspective is it real or is it a handy rhetorical technique?

    • yeahhhhhhhhhboiii [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I'm not quite sure myself, but it's a good question. Just to check, you're asking if petit bourgeoisie is truly a marxist term? And whether its not real in terms of class division?

      I checked some threads on r/communism101, and have copied over some, what I feel are, useful comments:

      "A very high percentage of people living in the first world are petit bourgeois, because despite not owning any means of production they benefit from the over exploitation of the global south, and often have a close proximity to the Bourgeois." - user ARedJack

      "The petty bourgeoisie do own (Edit: as comrade u/ARedJack pointed out, what constitutes "ownership" is a discussion in and of itself, and is why the petty bourgeoisie is such a difficult class to "grasp") some means of production. However, unlike the 'high' bourgeoisie (the capitalists) they are also workers for the same MoP, in effect "selling" their labour to themselves. The petty bourgeoisie are thus not exploited by capital (unlike the proletariat who are forced to sell their labour to capital they do not own themselves).

      Don't confuse the petty bourgeoisie with the "labour aristocracy", i.e., workers of the imperial core who, while still very much proletarian, do benefit from the relentless exploitation of the global south etc." - user VanguardPartyAnimal

      "The canonical notion is that they are a vacillating class and that under the right circumstances they can be allies of the proletarian cause. But it's probably true that today, and in imperialist countries, they are overwhelmingly a reactionary class. As it's probably true that without their cooperation or at least neutrality no revolution will ever happen in an imperialist country, I guess. Make of that what you will." - user ksan

      "Because of this the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie is of a dual nature: They have a contradictory relationship to both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Their bourgeois nature puts them at odds with the proletariat directly. They also feel the squeeze of the big bourgeoisie, but nonetheless aspire to be like them. If you have ever met people like this you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. They defend the bourgeoisie from proletarian attacks, as they see themselves as bourgeois, yet in the company of other petty-bourgeois they will criticize the big bourgeoisie. Many deal with this cognitive dissonance by claiming the wealth of the big bourgeoisie is the result of "government corruption", global conspiracies about cabals, etc. rather than the nature of capitalist production itself, and that their future success will be the result of hard work and ability. The result is that they are prone to supporting reactionaries. The petty bourgeoisie played an instrumental role in the rise of fascism." - user DeLaProle

      And an interesting dictionary: https://www.prisoncensorship.info/glossary#petty-bourgeoisie

      And so, to summarise, I feel like the answer is that such a term is not just a handy rhetorical technique, but genuinely useful for marxist analysis. As mentioned by a few of the above comments, the petit bourgeoisie are more likely to be reactionary, and have a different relationship to the means of production than the proletariat. So, whether or not they are aware of their current class status, they are still fundamentally different to the proletariat.

      Also, from what I recall, Marx did actually talk about the existence of the petit bourgeoisie. Of course, one should not be dogmatic about theory, but he does make the case that they do exist, but they will eventually be defeated and become absorbed into the proletariats.

      What do you think?

      • OgdenTO [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Thanks, this provides a lot of good insight.

        I guess my confusion came from my limited Marx reading, but in the manifesto he defines the petty bourgeois as something like tradesmen that own there own tools, or small shopkeepers or entrepreneurs. They do own some means of production, in that they have something, that has value and cost money, that assists in their work. A modern day example in my mind is a mechanic, who has to own $10,000 in tools to be able to work on a car on their own.

        As differentiated from the wage-laborer, who has their own skill and body alone that does the work. For example, a mechanic that goes to work for a big company, and the company owns all the tools.

        Marx doesn't differentiate between a base wage labor class and a priveledged wage labor class. They are the same to him, in my interpretation.

        One of the middle quite you provided there mentioned the labor aristocracy. I think this is the concept that I was missing. It is not petit-bourgeious as Marx defined, but a priveledged worker class.

        I also am careful to say worker class rather than proletariat, because my interpretation is that the proletariat requires class consciousness, and this is not a given for all wage laborers or workers.

        In Settlers, the author names all slave-laborers as proletariat and all white wage laborers as petit-bourgeious. I would say that yes, all slave laborers probably had class consciousness and were part of the proletariat. However, I think that labor aristocracy might be a better term for the white wage-laborers that are named here. Not part of the proletariat because their chud-minds have no need for class consciousness, since their relative comfort if provided by the status quo. But from an economic perspective not part of the bourgeoisie, since they do not own capital.

        I could be totally wrong in this interpretation as well. I don't know.

        Thoughts?

        • yeahhhhhhhhhboiii [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yes I agree that Sakai could have used labour aristocracy instead of petite bourgeoisie when describing the white wage labourers.

          But as I was writing that sentence, I thought of how, perhaps, there is another dimension to this?

          The slave labourers could not escape slavery. Their parents were slave, they were slaves, their children were slaves etc. There was no foreseeable escaping of this slavery (until later on in history). And so, they could never have gotten close to owning the means of production, not even the small amount that the petite bourgeoisie have.

          This would be in contrast to the white wage labourers, which technically could escape their working class nature, no matter how rare. I think in one of the chapters Sakai mentions how some white Europeans became indentured servants for a few years, in return for the travel fees/visa, with the hopes of becoming landowners themselves after a while. This freedom is not granted to the slave-labourers. There was no such future for them.

          So yes, the white wage labourer and slave labourer has the same relationship to the means of production at the present moment, but that doesn't mean that in the future, the white wage labourer couldn't become closer to the means of production. This doesn't make the white wage labourer a petite bourgeoisie, but they clearly have different chances/opportunities compared to the slaves.

          Maybe that was the difference that Sakai wanted to put down? But I'm still not sure why Sakai didn't use the term Labour aristocracy, since the term was already around then, first theorised about by Lenin in "Imperialism: The highest stage of Capitalism".

          • OgdenTO [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            If I'm recalling correctly from chapter 4, this situation of inheriting land basically ended during the 1840s. But the white workers being non proletariat did not.

            I think Sakai wanted to stress the class awareness of the white workers, and didn't want to confuse the issue of who is in the proletariat. That is, the slave labourers were class aware, very much so, and so comprised the proletariat. The white wage labourers considered themselves petit-bourgeois, and so were not class aware, therefore not part of the proletariat - even if, functionally, they should be.

            Maybe Sakai just didn't like the term labour aristocracy for some reason - or, like in that really interesting dictionary you posted earlier, defined the labour aristocracy as part of the petit-bourgeois.

            • yeahhhhhhhhhboiii [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Perhaps it is the class awareness aspect, seems most explanatory to me.

              Thanks for the good conversation btw, it was v.productive!