Probably not -- but have you encountered many libertarians? Some years ago (for posture improvement) I begin once a week to take training in the Alexander method. My trainer also gives guitar lessons (he has an MA in musicology from the U of Michigan.) He's right out of the textbook. He sees the world as made up of totally independent individuals , and while he is a nice guy, he also it seems to me has a mean streak somewhere at the center of his person, & it comes precisely from "petty bourgeiois" status in the 'pure' sense: an independent petty producer. I never 'debate' him directly. I did once get him to note that the 'customers' that make it pay for him to drive over from Urbana once a week _all_ depend on state pensions. I think 'pure' case such as this are useful in exploring the basis of "petty-b" ideology in less 'pure' categories.
But I would agree never to use the phrase except in special contexts such as the present. It is apt to be toxic.
Carrol
Most are university graduates who come from white and blue collar families. They're no longer predominantly self-employed or living on family allowances or landed and business profits as was common in the 19th century. For the most part, they're salaried professional and technical employees, the newest and fastest growing layer of the working class.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Marv Gandall Sent: Friday, November 08, 2013 10:18 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A short soliloquy on freedom and fishing
On 2013-11-08, at 9:52 AM, andie_nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Great story. I have to confess I don't like fishing either, but I never
pretended to be anything but a petit bourgeois intellectual. Even if I spend
the rest of my working life stacking boxes at Target, that's what I'd be.
Andie may be playfully self-deprecating, and the phrase may still have some polemical utility as an epithet, but does the characterisation of today's intellectuals as "petty bourgeois" retain any explanatory power?
Most are university graduates who come from white and blue collar families. They're no longer predominantly self-employed or living on family allowances or landed and business profits as was common in the 19th century. For the most part, they're salaried professional and technical employees, the newest and fastest growing layer of the working class.
Their class location may have shifted, but some would still argue that the political consciousness of intellectuals (broadly understood) is petty bourgeois. Like farmers, artisans, and other small property holders before them, they're generally accepting of capitalism with a bias towards redistributive reforms and against the rule of Big Capital and the wealthy. Andie goes so far as to suggest that this would still be the case even were he to succumb to the temptation to leave lawyering in favour of stacking boxes at Target.
But isn't this true of of the working class as a whole? It's political consciousness can no longer be described as "proletarian", when large numbers of workers saw themselves as having distinct interests and socialist objectives fundamentally opposed to the ruling class. This anti-capitalist constituency is now pretty much confined to a small minority of leftish academics and other dissenting intellectuals and students, which brings us back to the question of how to describe the class location and political character of the particular social layer to which most of us belong.
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