Marxism and the Lower Middle Class: A Response to Arno Mayer

Abstract

Arno Mayer is surely correct in arguing that the time has come to rescue the lower middle class from the iibenign neglect'' with which it has been regarded by historians.1 Despite a century of predictions by Marxists and non-Marxists alike that the petty bourgeoisie was about to disappear from the historical stage, it has not only survived, but has played a crucial, perhaps a decisive role in the politics of modern societies. Mayer astutely observes that ''controversy with Marxism has been the most powerful creative challenge'' for social scientists and historians. If our understanding of the lower middle class is to be developed through such a challenge, as Mayer suggests, it is necessary to clarify the Marxist analysis of ''this pertinacious social phenomenon. From the Marxist perspective, the social experience which arises out of the class position of the petty bourgeoisie qualifies them for their decisive political role. The petty bourgeois are the independent men of small property, the owners of their own means of production. This gives them an experience of autonomy and independence in their productive life, qualities they bring to politics, where they are particularly conscious of their interests and willing to act in pursuit of them. Their capacity for independent political action, including its most militant forms, makes the men of small property a crucial-political force. Their large numbers make them even more important. Imbedded in Mayer's essay is a Marxian theory of petty bourgeois politics that is an indispensable starting point. The lower middle class was a crucial swing group in three major phases of bourgeois society. First, during the birth of the bourgeois state, when the bourgeoisie required allies in its attempt to reshape the state in its own image, the petty bourgeoisie served as such an ally. The dominant political form of this phase was Jacobinism, in which the lower middle class provided the shock troops against the old order, as Albert Soboul has shown.2 Second was the phase during which bourgeois society developed and matured, a period of more stable liberal politics; the dominant form of this stage was reformist democracy, for which the lower middle class once again served as the crucial social base. Liberalism portrayed the independent man of small property as the idealtypical citizen; it was he in theory who was represented in representative