> The petty bourgeois in the rich countries has been shrinking for
> decades, and in what we used to call the Third World, the ranks of the
> proletariat have grown enormously. As I recall, based on ILO figures,
> the size of the global working class - defined as wage workers who
> have to sell their labor power or starve - has doubled over the last
> several decades. I suppose if you want to include informal sector
> workers in the p.b., you could bulk up their ranks a bit, but what
> about all the toilers in factories in China, India, Korea, etc.?
I should probably reread the Agamben, but I think he's using a different definition of petty bourgeoisie, or looking at class in a different way, one that's not reducible to income or wealth. My guess is that he's following Foucault here in thinking that neoliberalism changes the form and function of the wage laboring, makes it something more akin to an enterprise. In other words, rather than being just workers we are business owners and managers, owners of ourselves and our individual enterprises. That turns us into petty bourgeoisie, since in addition to being concerned with reproducing our labor capacity we also now concern ourselves with risk analysis, cost-benefit calculation, the assessment of credit and debt, etc.