Nation of Shopkeepers
- Book: A Nation of Shopkeepers. Dan Evan.
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Review
Rhyd Wildermuth:
"Dan Evan’s book, A Nation of Shopkeepers, proposes its uncomfortable answer immediately in its subtitle: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie. It’s an answer few orthodox Marxists (if there are any left) will necessarily like, nor will it sit well with US and UK “leftists” still captured by neoliberal identity politics. Also, I didn’t like his answer either, and I still don’t. But I think he’s probably right.
The petite bourgeoisie (sometimes called the petty bourgeoisie) is a strange class in Marxist theory. Meaning literally “the little city-dweller,” they were artisans, small landlords, merchants, shopkeepers, and the early doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other “professionals” during the birth of capitalism. They were not so poor that they needed to work in the factories, but they were also not rich enough that they could open up factories, either.
They worked for themselves, and occupied a rather precarious and strained position between the poor and the rich. They were often reliant upon the new waged class (the “working class” or proletariat) because those people were their customers. At the same time, though, the anger and revolutionary urges of those workers (along with “anti-social” behavior) threatened the security of the shopkeepers and artisans, and they often felt their Protestantism especially made them feel “above” the unwashed lower classes.
On the other hand, this petite bourgeoisie weren’t so keen on the capitalists, either. In fact, they were often quite threatened by them, especially as their factories destroyed many of their trades and crafts. Yet, paradoxically, they also needed to rely upon the capitalists for their own work (especially accountants, lawyers, and other “educated” professions) and benefited from the spent wages the capitalists paid the lower classes.
As Dan Evans points out, Marx initially predicted the petite bourgeoisie would be fully subsumed into the proletariat as capitalism progressed. Later, though, Marx changed his mind about this, and the question of why the petite bourgeoisie seemed not only to persist but to constantly re-create itself perplexed Marx and later theorists. Especially difficult to explain has been how, at many times since the birth of capitalism, this intermediary class actually seems to expand (at least temporarily) beyond the size of the traditional working class itself.
Though focused primarily on the United Kingdom with only occasional asides about the situation elsewhere, A Nation of Shopkeepers presents a rather robust explanation as to why the petite bourgeoisie persist and expand. Dan Evans is able to do this by using the work of Marxist sociologists (most notably Nicos Poulantzas, but also Pierre Bourdieu and Erik Olin Wright) showing how class is reproduced not just economically but socially.
For instance, Evans highlights how that sense I mentioned earlier — that I was unlike and perhaps even superior to those workers in Ohio — is part of the social reproduction of the petite bourgeoisie. That’s because, as Bourdieu has shown, class (or any other category) is “instituted” not just by a sense of who you are, but also by a sense of who you are not. In other words, we all compare ourselves to others and ultimately develop kinds of repulsions or preferences, including aesthetic ones. Consider a few that you might recognize:
They work with their hands / I work with my mind
They live in trailer parks / I live in a city
They shop at Walmart / I shop at co-ops
They drive trucks / I take public transit
They use fast food drive-thru / I order from UberEats
They drink Budweiser / I drink craft beer
Of course, class is not merely about aesthetic preference or lifestyle choices. Instead, at its core, it’s a social relationship based on function and material conditions. The capitalist is a capitalist because he or she owns the means of production and exploits the labor of others to increase their capital. The proletarian is proletariat because he or she does neither of those things and has no choice but to sell labor to survive.
Where things get complicated, however, is what the function and material conditions of the petite bourgeoisie actually are.
To make this less complicated, Dan Evans talks of two fractions (sections) of the petite bourgeoisie: the old and the new. The old fraction — which is also growing — is significantly made up of the manual laborers who aren’t working for others. That is, they are tradesmen and craftsmen who are self-employed or who own small businesses. Think of a mechanic who owns his own garage, or the subcontractors who help build houses, and other similar situations. They’re the “small business owners” that both Democrats and Republicans in the US are always claiming they will help when elected (and never do), and they technically own their own “means of production.”
Importantly, this “old” fraction tends to identify much more with the working class than the newer fraction, but this doesn’t mean they consider themselves leftist by any means. In fact, they tend to be small-c conservative, and they distrust corporations and government equally. They also have no interest in university, because degrees don’t actually help their lives at all. Evans sees them as the primary force in the gilets jaunes movement in France, as well as the Freedom Convoy in Canada.
The “new” petite bourgeoisie, on the other hand, don’t engage in traditional production or own the means of production, yet they are often either “self-employed” — often in “gig” or independent contractor work — or work multiple jobs. Also, they are highly educated (often graduate level), and it is this aspect which leads to the sense that they are destined for better things than they currently have. In other words, they are obsessed with upward mobility and wish, more than anything, never to be stuck in a dead-end job. After all, what was that university degree for?
For Evans, this newer group differs from the older one in another important way: they are closer to the Professional-Managerial Class in their ideas, politics, and cultural forms than they are to both the working-class and the old petite bourgeoisie. This fact is what explains why so many tend to consider themselves “leftist” yet only ever seem to care about social issues, rather than economic ones. Both of these classes were raised to believe they were a kind of “elite” intellectual or creative person, deserving more influence and power over how society is run because of their unique insight and education.
In fact, Dan Evans suggests that, at least in the United Kingdom, there is only a leftism of the PMC and of the new petite bourgeoisie. This seems to be true also for the United States, and very well explains why social justice identitarianism has replaced all discussion of class and material conditions in American “leftist” discourse.
Importantly, Evans insists — along with Marx — that the only class that could actually affect any real revolution is the proletariat. When the petite bourgeoisie agitate for change, they always stop short of revolution because they have too much to lose. The proletariat, on the other hand, by definition has nothing to lose and everything to gain. However, since the only class allied with them currently is a generally conservative class (the old petite bourgeoisie), any revolution that would happen would not be a leftist one.
What’s to be done, then?"
(https://rhyd.substack.com/p/maybe-youre-not-working-class?)