What Was the Petty Bourgeoisie? Cultural Positioning and Reification of Marxist Classes in Early PRC Discourse

Abstract

The early PRC discourse of the petty bourgeoisie was the intellectual foundation upon which embodied petty-bourgeois subjects appeared at every level of society. The discourse features three interwoven accounts, each founded on a synthesis of Marxian ideas and conventional and contemporary thinking. The national-developmental account reframes existing notions of class, nation-state, and utopia within a Marxist narrative of class struggle and presents the petty bourgeoisie as vital to nation-building. The political-revolutionary account combines conventional views of the political order and the self with a Marxian analysis of political behavior, and highlights the petty bourgeoisie as an obstacle to the Communist revolution. Based on a traditional understanding of the connection between personal conduct and good governance and the Maoist myth of working-class virtues, the habitual-corrective account portrays the petty bourgeoisie as individuals who are afflicted with habits and dispositions harmful to socialist development. The petty bourgeoisie turns out to be a virtually elastic population. Analyzing how Mao’s regime exploited existing ways of thinking to construct the petty bourgeoisie and, more broadly, “Marxist” classes, furthers understanding of symbolic power under Chinese Communism.