A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petite Bourgeoisie

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Relying on a structuralist Marxist framework, leaning heavily on the work of Poulantzas, they propose that neoliberalism has changed the class structure from one that was relatively simple, with a large working class, small middle and small ruling class; to one that is far more complex, with a bloated intermediate class and a more heterogeneous ruling class. The intermediate, middle class is then best understood when split into two - the "upper" professionals may be classed as the professional-managerial classes, while the "lower", which is frequently degraded and proletarianised, may be classed as the new petty bourgeoisie, with the lower section being much larger than the upper

This confused me. I remember thinking that there must be plenty of people who didn’t ‘own the means of production’, but who also wouldn’t qualify as ‘working class’. My parents were teachers with no power over the curriculum, but they were hardly proletarian. I flipped the problem round. Tradespeople controlled their own ‘production’, but I wouldn’t have called a plasterer or electrician ‘bourgeois’. Well-meaning though the speaker had been, I felt like his simplistic interpretation of class made little sense. Dan Evans’ new book cuts through the nonsense and provides useful working definitions for fractions of the Middle Class and their role in the capitalist system. Building on the work of thinkers such as Poulantzas, Bourdieu and Marx, his analysis challenges syndicalists to learn how to build alliances with those fractions with whom we share common interests. So, why is all this important for us? The contemporary UK Left is dominated by the NPB. As Evans puts it:

The supposed French original as uttered by Napoleon ( une nation de boutiquiers) is frequently cited, but it has no attestation. O'Meara routinely conversed with Napoleon in Italian, not French. [5] There is no other source. Book Review: Dan Evans “A Nation of Shopkeepers: The unstoppable rise of the petty bourgeoisie” (2023) 8 th February 2023 This rise of solo self-employment echoes a large shift in the economy of the UK and Europe towards small capital and micro-businesses (companies with 1-9 employees). Evans does a terrific job of helping us break out of classic class schemas that are either too abstract to help practical political interventions or have not kept up to date with the evolving and complex developments in the formation of classes in Britain. ”– Mike Wayne, author of England’s Discontents A Nation of Shopkeepers: Trade Ephemera' from 1654 to the 1860s in the John Johnson Collection was an exhibition which showcased trade cards, trades and professions prints (which are digitised), and Bill Headings. Themes included The Great Exhibition, Oxford Trade, Juvenilia, and Women in Trade.

Initially identified as a powerful political force by theorists like Marx and Poulantzas, the petit-bourgeoisie was expected to decline, as small businesses and small property were gradually swallowed up by monopoly capitalism. Yet, far from disappearing, structural changes to the global economy under neoliberalism have instead grown the petite-bourgeoisie, and the individualist values associated with it have been popularized by a society which fetishizes "aspiration", home ownership and entrepreneurship. So why has this happened? stars for the excellent critique of the contemporary Western left, and the very helpful outlining of the petite bourgeoisie as a class defined by precarity and social mobility. This book introduces a way of looking at class that is much more comprehensive and useful than simply proletariat vs bourgeoisie, given the complex class structures of the UK and US in which the “intermediary classes” (the petite boug & the PMC) are more numerous and more politically active than the working class.

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The “Network” model of Industrial Unionism was developed during the IWW’s foray into organising Deliveroo and JustEat riders in 2017-2018, through the IWW Couriers Network. These gig-economy workers were technically “self-employed” and thus had no trade union rights and competed against one another for work. The Network was a way to bring these atomised workers together into an Industrial Union to develop common demands that would make work-life better for them all. It had lots of local successes in various cities (particularly Cardiff and Glasgow) and culminated in the large #FFS410 strike in October 2018. Though the project unfortunately derailed, for reasons that can be found in this piece by FW Pete Davies, it is a model that could be adapted and practiced in different circumstances.The North America-based IWW Freelance Journalists Union is a similar project aiming to unite isolated workers, and there are conversations in UK and Ireland to form an organisation by and for freelance artists. In any case the phrase did not originate with Napoleon, or even Barère. It first appears in a non-pejorative sense in The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith, who wrote: Benjamin Franklin used a similar idea about Holland in a letter to Charles W. F. Dumas on 6 August 1781: The petite-bourgeoisie — the insecure class between the working class and the bourgeoisie — is hugely significant within global politics. Yet it remains something of a mystery. Some writer, I forget who, says that Holland is no longer a nation but a great shop and I begin to think it has no other principles or sentiments but those of a shopkeeper. Reappropriation [ edit ]

I remember going to my first socialist meeting as an undergraduate. Halfway through, an audience member raised their hand and asked the panel to define the ‘working class’. One speaker, true to his Marxist principles, responded: ‘everyone who doesn’t own the means of production.’ Dan Evans knows his readers are probably members of the ‘new’ petty bourgeoisie (he remarks that he has spent most of his adult life among them). As such, the book’s political message feels directed at them. Evans exhorts his young, left-wing readers to stop playing to Labour’s culture of ‘moralizing and careerism’ and instead to seize the initiative. He calls on them to begin building political alliances with their ‘traditional’ petty bourgeois counterparts, based on a shared interest in redrawing economic structures to end precarity. Criticising the new petty bourgeoisie’s preoccupation with US-imported identity politics and cultural snobbery (the book’s garish cover makes a wonderful guilt trap for judgemental hipsters, as I discovered…), Evans insists that embracing structural politics is the only way to unite the fractured petty bourgeoisie – and the working class – behind a progressive vision. Evans himself mentions (though he disagrees with it) that a majority of people in Britain identify themselves as working class. This surely gives us hope as organisers, as well as a potentially fertile terrain to organise. Ultimately for the workplace organiser the fluffy distractions of party politics and the latest fad issues of the day do not matter. Initially identified as a powerful political force by theorists like Marx and Poulantzas, the petit-bourgeoisie was expected to decline, as small businesses and small property were gradually swallowed up by monopoly capitalism. Yet, far from disappearing, structural changes to the global economy under neoliberalism have instead grown the petty bourgeoisie, and the individualist values associated with it have been popularized by a society which fetishizes "aspiration", home ownership and entrepreneurship. So why has this happened?Dan Evans’ book is good for theorising the various conundrums we have been witnessing on the ground. The storming final chapter of the book is worth the price of admission itself, and it strongly argues for the Left to find ways to build alliances among the downtrodden classes. Thankfully, there are aspects of the IWW’s organising model that are suited to some of the issues raised. Against the concept of the “99%” and the idea that “we are all workers now” in a constantly evolving working class – and drawing heavily on the work of Poulantzas - Evans argues instead that highly educated and precarious working people constitute a “new petit bourgoisie”. Roughly speaking he sees the petit bourgeoisie (new and old) as today constituting as much as a third of society. However, this book is more than just an essay on class identity. Those familiar with Desolation Radio podcast will know Evans as a firm critic of the established Left (i.e., the Labour Party) in Wales and the UK. In A Nation of Shopkeepers , he argues convincingly that Labour has given up on serious class analysis. The party has become one of professional-managerial types, flogging the same old neoliberal capitalism dressed up in flimsy cultural progressivism. Its attempts at class discourse have been reduced to embarrassing faux-proletarian dress-up, typified by ex-Pontypridd MP (and pharma lobbyist) Owen Smith’s claim to be unfamiliar with the concept of a cappuccino .

In 2021, in the EU, there were twenty-one million micro-businesses, making up 93% of all companies within the bloc, employing over eighty million people. In the UK, 96% of all businesses are micro-businesses, and 76% of all businesses have no employees … it is small firms that account for the majority of new jobs created in the British economy.” After all, imperialism is a capitalist imperative that benefits not only the ruling classes, but every class in the imperial core, even the most exploited ones. Perhaps because he is British, he is unaware of how strongly the desire to attain and retain the objective and subjective power of being an American motivates people’s politics. Even the working class in the imperial core *does* have something to lose — the massive privilege and power that simply being a part of the empire affords us. This fuels reactionary politics across all classes as strongly as domestic conditions do, if not even moreso. (For instance, the traditional petite bourgeoisie in the US has long identified China as a source of competition, which leads them to support right-wing politicians who are more willing to engage in openly racist denunciations of China, which in turn prompts the Democrats to try to match their “tough on China” rhetoric, thus ratcheting the entire Overton window even further towards racist, imperialist reactionary politics). With every gift membership this Christmas the Left Book Club will send you – the gift buyer – a set of three foiled bookmarks. Plus, if you choose to pay annually, new members will also receive an extra free book and membership pin in their first parcel. The author dismisses the widely understood myth that class is about wages and instead proceeds with the Marxian understanding of being about one's social relationship at work and ownership of the means of production

Exhibitions

A Nation of Shopkeepers: Trade Ephemera from 1654 to the 1860s in the John Johnson Collection by Julie Anne Lambert (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 2001)