Nietzsche was a Lutheran minister's son (on both sides of his family; his mother;s father was a minister too), briefly a professor of classics in Switzerland, then an impoverished freelance writer and Bohemian intellectual. Marx's parents were a lawyer from a rabbinical family (his father converted to Christianity to practice law) and the daughter of a very minor Prussian aristocratic family (hence the "von" in von Westphalen) who made a living as a journalist but basically depended on his friend Engels' largesse; Engels was of course a genuine Manchester capitalist.
What does the background of a person tell you about his views? Can you predict from the biographical facts that I have just stated that Marx and Engels would consider themselves revolutionary communists and that Nietzsche would be a an aesthetically minded critic of morality from the point of view of a self-style aristocracy of the intellect and spirit? I don't think so. Statistically speaking you may be able to to say that there are political views that are characteristic of a certain class background, but in the individual case, it's a mystery. Therefore the "petit bourgeois" label, which fits you and me too, btw, as well as it fits anyone is explanatorily empty.
If what you mean is that (some of) Nietzsche's views are the sort that might be attractive to a a typical someone from a petit bourgeois class, that might be so, but you'd have to explain the significance of that. It's just not a particularly useful remark by itself. Some Marxists use it as a a lazy put-down, but it would really be much more constructive to have an active critique of Nietzsche's specific ideas, and there's certainly a lot that requires critique.
--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> Eubulides
>
> Ah, one of CB's favorite strategies is to
> incessantly shift the burden of
> proof to other parties in the discussion/argument to
> immunize his own
> defeasible views from counterevidence that suggest
> the need for change.....
>
>
> ^^^^^
>
> CB: Well, I won't take up the burden of arguing
> against your generalization
> about my strategy. Do you think N. was not petit
> bourgeois ?
>
> I didn't really intend to put a burden of proof on
> Jeffrey ( exchange
> recopied below).
>
> At some level, all I know about N.'s personal
> history seems that he was
> petit bourgeoisie. Was he really bourgeois, working
> class, aristocratic or a
> peasant ? He didn't seem to be rich. It seems on
> the prima facie evidence
> that he is petit bourgeoise, so I was wondering why
> Jeffrey considers the
> label wrong.
>
> ^^^^^
>
> well, like i said, i think the former betrays the
> latter (a la hegel). we
> tend to throw around the labels and people who
> haven't done the work just
> pick up the label. it misses so much of the point.
> and anyway i think the
> label is wrong. :)
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Well, I can go with that honesty. I kind of
> suspected that. The thing
> to do might be to make an argument why he is not
> "petit bourgeois". Although
> I guess you don't think of class analysis as
> important as I do.
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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