Marx’s Conception of the Middle Class(es), the Petty-Bourgeoisie and the Peasantry

Originally written: 21.01.2021.

It is pretty common to hear, when talking about Marx’s conception of classes, that he thought the development of capitalism would simply reduce the social pyramid to a bipolar opposition between, on the one hand, the proletariat, and on the other hand, the bourgeoisie. This is almost always based on a quote from the Communist Manifesto, taken to mean that all the other classes in between those two poles would disappear. Apart from this narrow minded choice of taking a (admittedly notorious and rather brilliant) political pamphlet – thus necessarily intended as political propaganda rather than a rigorous analytical work – as representing Marx’s definitive conception on such a topic, we will see that even in this case the actual original meaning is rather different. Obviously the “two class-model” should at the very least be extended to a three-class class schema, including the landowner class as a third class, as we saw in a previous part of this series. But beyond that, both two- and three-class models is, as you may have guessed, simply a temporary and self-consciously incomplete portrait by Marx of the actual class structure of modern capitalist society. Anyone who read his writings on France will be aware of how much more sophisticated his observations can be, including up to seven classes and class fractions; we will come back to this in the final part of this project (on his overall class “theory”). For the time being, let us start with Marx indicating unambiguously that there isn’t, in fact, a simple bipolar two-class structure or, in this case, three-class model, in capitalist society:

Even here though [= England], this class articulation [= the “three great classes”: capitalists, proletarians, landowners] does not emerge in pure form. Here, too, intermediate and transitional stages conceal the boundaries.

This is from his very last, and famously unfinished, chapter in Capital III. This translation is from Moseley, F. (Eds.). (2015). Marx’s Economic Manuscript of 1864-1865. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, p. 946. The original German version of “intermediate and transitional stages” is “Mittel- und Übergangsstufen”: Mittel and Übergangs are adequately translated (intermediate/middle and transitional) as far as I know, but it is Stufen (= noun equivalent) that is more tricky. From a quick (and amateur) look into this, I think it is fair to say that this word could be translated as follows: stages, stairs, steps, levels, and possibly tiers/layers (I am less sure about the latter). Marx mentions the petty-bourgeoisie as a Übergangsklasse, a “transition class”, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Hal Draper explains why Marx often relied on simplified class models:

As a step in economic analysis, for methodological reasons, Marx often treated society as if it were simplified down to the polar classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, often plus the landowning class. Even in these contexts he did not neglect to caution that he was not examining “the actual composition of society, which by no means consists only of two classes, workers and industrial capitalists.” But this methodological simplification is seldom of use in political analysis; here other classes and class elements play a role that cannot be neglected.

[Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. II: The Politics of Social Classes, Monthly Review Press, 1978, p. 288. Henceforth KMTR 2]

Draper is here quoting a comment by Marx in what is usually known as Theories of Surplus Value.

We do not examine the competition of capitals, nor the credit system, nor the actual composition of society, which by no means consists only of two classes, workers and industrial capitalists, and where therefore consumers and producers are not identical categories.

This, in addition to two other remarks from the same TSV, not only shows that he indeed was aware of these classes (or intermediate strata/class elements), but goes directly against what Draper calls “the alleged theory of the disappearance of the middle classes” [1] which we’ve already mentioned above:

What [Ricardo] forgets to emphasise is the constantly growing number of the middle classes, those who stand between the workman on the one hand and the capitalist and landlord on the other. The middle classes maintain themselves to an ever increasing extent directly out of revenue, they are a burden weighing heavily on the working base and increase the social security and power of the upper ten thousand. Malthus, “the profound thinker”, has different views. His supreme hope, which he himself describes as more or less utopian, is that the mass of the middle class should grow and that the proletariat (those who work) should constitute a constantly declining proportion (even though it increases absolutely) of the total population. This in fact is the course taken by bourgeois society.

I will come back to these remarks once we’ve got an idea of what the “middle classes”, in a broad sense, consist of, in Marx’s thought. So far it is evident that 1) Marx didn’t think the intermediate classes/strata would simply cease to exist, 2) he simplified for the sake of his theoretical investigation by not taking those class elements into account unless he was analysing concrete political situations – such as his writings on France, and 3) he might even have foreseen – or rather acknowledged – that there’s a certain growth of the “middle classes” in advanced capitalist social formations [2]

Let us pause here for a second in order to state clearly that unlike what could be found in the three previous parts, on the “three great classes”, the intermediate classes or class elements weren’t theorized in as much depth or detail by Marx. Some elements are theorized in a more precise manner, such as the peasantry in his writings on France, but what is offered here is on the one hand an overview of his conception of these intermediate class layers – as best as I and others who’ve investigated this can tell – and, on the other hand, some reliable hints and guesses at how these could be integrated in Marx’s critical theory of capitalism, as outlined in his CoPE (Critique of Political Economy) writings. However, that doesn’t mean this is just speculation, since the analysis provided here is based first and foremost on looking at Marx’s own words throughout his works (and letters, etc…). What’s important to keep in mind is that he, apart from a few more explicit and detailed arguments, did not himself outline explicitly how we were to conceive of these elements as part of a CoPE.

In this article, I will first provide an overview of Marx’s use and conception of the “middle class(es)” and my general findings. Secondly, I will address the common (mis)interpretation claiming that Marx thought that modern society would be reduced to a two-class model, with the middle classes disappearing. I will then define the category of lower middle class, before outlining Marx’s views on the petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry. In the last section I try to deal with the possibility of other middle class categories, and conclude with a brief summary.

How did Marx view and talk about the “middle class/es”?

As a general observation, Marx (and Engels) used the notion of the “middle class” in various and not always consistent ways [3]. To a large extent, at least in Marx’s writings, it was a synonym for the bourgeoisie; we find this kind of use/meaning throughout his whole life [4]. You can see an example of this at the end of this delightful bit from the Grundrisse [“middle-class rule” referring to the rule of the bourgeoisie]:

Hence not a single category of the bourgeois economy, not even the most basic, e.g. the determination of value, becomes real through free competition alone ; i.e. through the real process of capital, which appears as the interaction of capitals and of all other relations of production and intercourse determined by capit.al. Hence, on the other side, the insipidity of the view that free competition is the ultimate development of human freedom ; and that the negation of free competition = negation of individual freedom and of social production founded on individual freedom. It is nothing more than free development on a limited basis – the basis of the rule of capital. This kind of individual freedom is therefore at the same time the most complete suspension of all individual freedom, and the most complete subjugation of individuality under social conditions which assume the form of objective powers, even of overpowering objects – of things independent of the relations among individuals themselves. The analysis of what free competition really is, is the only rational reply to the middle-cIass5 8 prophets who laud it to the skies or to the socialists who damn it to hell. The statement that, within free competition, the individuals, in following purely their private interest, realize the communal or rather the general interest means nothing other than that they collide with one another under the conditions of capitalist production, and hence that the impact between them is itself nothing more than the recreation of the conditions under which this interaction takes place. By the way, when the illusion about competition as the so-called absolute form of free individuality vanishes, this is evidence that the conditions of competition, i.e. of production founded on capital, are already felt and thought of as barriers, and hence already are such, and more and more become such. The assertion that free competition = the ultimate form of the development of the forces of production and hence of human freedom means nothing other than that middle-class rule is the culmination of world history – certainly an agreeable thought for the parvenus of the day before yesterday.

The reason is simply that nineteenth century Europe was structured differently from what we’ve come to known in the last 100+ years. The bourgeoisie that Marx observed in his time was to a large extent still a rising would-be ruling class, in the process of asserting itself as the new hegemon of modern society. Having not yet reached the stage of hegemony/dominion even in Western European countries it wasn’t as of yet the unambiguous upper layer, though it was getting there. Marx thus used this synonym, especially in his writings in English, to refer to the class that stood in between the lower orders and the ‘actually-existing’ upper class in these countries, the landed aristocracy. This doesn’t mean that the bourgeoisie wasn’t part of the ruling class; on the contrary. This specific meaning can be thought of as corresponding to the upper layer of the Mittelstände (German word for middle class or middle estate), the upper middle class. For instance, in this article (1857), he mentions the “upper classes” as “the aristocracy and the higher ranks of the middle class” or “the aristocracy and upper middle class”. Indeed, in The Class Struggles in France, he differentiates the “upper bourgeoisie” (upper middle class, also sometimes called the “big” bourgeoisie in earlier writings) from the “petty bourgeoisie” (lower middle class) [5]. The two are never conflated in Marx’s writings: the petty-bourgeoisie is not the small bourgeoisie [6].

However, it is also clear that Marx’s conception of the middle class wasn’t restricted to the bourgeoisie: to use his terms from an article in 1848, there are also “non-bourgeois strata of the middle class”. Most evidently, this refers to the kleine Mittelstände, the lower or petty (literally, kleine = small) middle class (1857): in other words, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, as will be explained in the section about these two categories. In Capital I [The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation], he mentions this category, giving the example of shopkeepers (the most recurrent example of the petty bourgeoisie mentioned in Marx’s writings):

Furthermore, the better-off part of the working class, together with the small shopkeepers and other elements of the lower middle class, falls in London more and more under the curse of these vile housing conditions, in proportion as ‘ improvements ‘, and with them the demolition of old streets and houses, advance, in proportion as factories spring up and the influx of people into the metropolis grows, and finally in proportion as house rents rise owing to increases in urban ground rent. ‘ Rents have become so heavy that few labouring men can afford more than one room .’

For the time being, let us keep in mind that, as Tom Bottomore wrote,

Neither Marx nor Engels made a systematic distinction between different sections of the middle class, in particular, between the ‘old middle class’ of small producers, artisans, independent professional people, farmers and peasants, and the ‘new middle class’ of clerical, supervisory, and technical workers, teachers, government officials, etc.

Tom Bottomore, A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, 1991, p. 378.

There isn’t any detailed work or section in which Marx provides us with these kinds of details, so it won’t be possible to settle conclusively here how these different sections or class elements are to be understood based on his conception. This should be kept in mind throughout this article; my goal in this project is more to provide a solid overview/analysis of Marx’s thought, rather than an exhaustive or “definitive” one.

Nonetheless, there seems to be a general notion of the middle class – Mittelstände referring to this broader meaning instead of a synonym for the bourgeoisie – composed of the different fractions already mentioned: upper layer (bourgeoisie), lower layer (petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry), as well as the old” and “new” middle class, as Tom Bottomore put it (we will see later where this can be found in Marx). We already saw that Marx (in 1848) distinguishes the bourgeoisie from the “non-bourgeois strata of the middle class”, and this apparently remains his conception later on, in his writings on the Paris Commune (1871):

[The Civil War in France IV, The Paris Commune]

The Commune represents not only the interests of the working class, the petty middle class, in fact all the middle class with the exception of the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalists) (the rich landowners, and their State parasites)

[First Draft; the bit at the end about landowners was found like this in the original document, my guess is that since Marx was writing a draft, he put it in parentheses because clearly the sentence doesn’t make sense otherwise]

Here again the bourgeoisie is tied to the middle class, although also clearly separated from the rest (lower strata) of it because it is, ultimately, part of the ruling class (alongside landlords and their “State parasites”). On the other hand, the wording suggests that the petty middle class is contained within, but not necessarily the sole component/category of, the “non-bourgeois strata of the middle class.” Marx is here talking specifically about 1871 Paris, thus we can’t jump to too much conclusions; but it supports the general findings outlined so far.

The Myth of the Disappearance of the Middle Classes

We already saw that Marx explicitly said – twice – in the Theories of Surplus-Value that there was, in fact, a relative growth of the middle class as capitalism develops

This is supposedly in contrast with what Marx said in the Communist Manifesto, from which what Hal Draper calls the “myth of the disappearance of the middle classes” originates [See his full appendix dealing with this question in KMTR 2, p. 613-627]. Here are the two main passages, which as we’ll see below, are actually a mistranslation based on the standard 1888 English edition by Samuel Moore:

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. (…) The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proper translation, based on the original German text of 1848 (the first English edition of 1850 apparently got this right) is as follows. I checked myself in the Marx-Engels Werke (Band 4, p. 469-484), to confirm what Hal Draper was saying (KMTR 2, p. 615-619). The parts that were mistranslated in the 1888 edition are italicised, and also you should know that Hal Draper chose to translate Mittelstände as “intermediate strata”, but another translation could be “middle classes”.

The previously existing small intermediate strata [7] – the small industrials, merchants and rentiers, the artisans and peasants – all these classes sink down into the proletariat, partly because their small capital does not suffice for the carrying on of large-scale industry and succumbs in competition with the larger capitalists, partly because their skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population. Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie nowadays, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes are decaying and being ruined in the face of large-scale industry; the proletariat is its most characteristic product. The intermediate strata, the small industrial, the small merchant, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to safeguard their existence from ruin as intermediate strata. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative.

There’s another relevant passage, here properly translated as in the original text (1850, first English edition), following Draper’s recommendation.

In countries where modern civilization developed, a new petty-bourgeoisie has formed, which hovers between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and continually renews itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by competition; indeed, with the development of large-scale industry, we see a time approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent part of modern society and will be replaced, in commerce, manufacturing and agriculture, by labor overseers and stewards [Domestiken].

Draper adds a note about his translation of the word Domestiken, which is put in brackets in the quote:

I translate it stewards (as did the first English version of the Manifesto in 1850), instead of servitors, since stewards has a broader connotation: in fact, many elements of new clerical, white-collar, salaried, managerial or bureaucratic sectors of the so-called “new middle classes” functions as stewards of the capitalist controllers on a high or low level.

[KMTR 2, p. 618]

Hence the main thing that is lost in this translation is that what Marx is actually saying is not that the middle classes will simply disappear, but they will cease to exist as an independent class. As Hal Draper explains,

… we learn that not even the traditional petty-bourgeoisie is actually disappearing. Just the reverse: it “continually renews itself.” True, individual members of this class are “constantly” proletarianized, but the class limps on, in a more and more ruined state. Furthermore, some day this class will completely disappear as an independent part of society – which is not identical with simply disappearing like the rabbit in a magician’s hat. But while these petty-bourgeois elements (small-property-holding producers) move into the background of society as more and more dependent hangers on of the real bourgeois powers, the Manifesto immediately indicates that their places in the foreground are taken by new elements arising out of the needs of the bourgeoisie itself. They tend to be replaced, as capital develops, by another kind of intermediate element, the various employees of capital hired to superintend the labor process and to serve the new needs of the owners of commerce, factory and farm – “labor overseers and stewards.” These elements are certainly new in the mass, and they are certainly in the middle of something, and so they are “new middle class” elements of a sort.

[KMTR 2, p. 618-619]

This last part on the “new” elements will be dealt with later on, in the last section. Now I think we’re ready to move on to the next part on the petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry.

The Lower Middle Class

The lower/petty middle class [kleine Mittelstände] is the class category corresponding to what Marx sometimes calls petty-bourgeois or small-peasant (mode of) production, “in short (…) all forms in which the producer is still the owner of his means of production”[TSV]. This is the class (or section thereof) of small-property-holding producers, which we can divide, following Hal Draper [KMTR 2, p. 290] in two sections, an urban one – the petty-bourgeoisie (etymologically speaking, refers to the inhabitants of “burgs” = towns) – and a rural one – the peasantry. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the petty-bourgeoisie is defined by Marx as a transition class [Übergangsklasse], “in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously mutually blunted”, i.e. the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. I think it is fair to extend this to the whole section of the lower middle class, the main difference between the petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry being, in Marx’s conception [8], that the latter is defined by a certain lack of internal (between members) and external (with society as a whole) connectedness. This last point is crucial and will be explained in the section on the peasantry: the social and political atomization of this class from the rest of society is one of its central characteristics according to Marx, even though he certainly didn’t think that this was an inevitable or strictly fixed reality. We will see how this has political consequences: both for the petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry, there’s a political duality rooted in the social or economic duality of these parts of society. The core of Marx’s view is summed up in one of his drafts on the Paris Commune:

The middling bourgeoisie and the petty middle class were by their economical conditions of life excluded from initiating a new revolution and induced to follow in the tracks of the ruling classes or [be] the followers of the working class

[First Draft, “The Character of the Commune”]

In this context I think ‘petty middle class’ refers to the petty-bourgeoisie, so I will try to outline clearly the subtle differences in Marx’s characterizations of the political behavior of the petty-bourgeoisie and that of the peasantry. This general statement still represents one of the main observations by Marx about this lower middle class: their economic position generally makes these strata unable to lead or initiate political or social change, and they tend to follow the lead of other classes. It must be said unambiguously that this is not as static or strict as it may sound, because Marx does for instance acknowledge the endogenous political capacities of the peasantry in specific contexts.

There’s an important section concerning the small-holding lower middle class in Marx’s (so-called) Theories of Surplus-Value, titled “The Labour of Handicraftsmen and Peasants in Capitalist Society”, which I’ve included below in its entirety. This passage sums up the bulk of his social/structural/economic conception of this lower stratum of the middle class; to a large degree what will be outlined in the following sections is already mentioned here. This also supports my argument that Marx does indeed have a certain concept of the lower middle class containing both the (‘old’) petty-bourgeoisie and the small-holding peasantry.

What then is the position of independent handicraftsmen or peasants who employ no labourers and therefore do not produce as capitalists? Either, as always in the case of peasants <but for example not in the case of a gardener whom I get to come to my house>, they are producers of commodities, and I buy the commodity from them—in which case for example it makes no difference that the handicraftsman produces it to order while the peasant produces his supply according to his means. In this capacity they confront me as sellers of commodities, not as sellers of labour, and this relation therefore has nothing to do with the exchange of capital for labour; therefore also it has nothing to do with the distinction between productive and unproductive labour, which depends entirely on whether the labour is exchanged for money or for money as money as capital. They therefore belong neither to the category of productive nor of unproductive labourers, although they are producers of commodities. But their production does not fall under the capitalist mode of production. It is possible that these producers, working with their own means of production, not only reproduce their labour-power but create surplus-value, while their position enables them to appropriate for themselves their own surplus-labour or a part of it (since a part of it is taken away from them in the form of taxes, etc.). And here we come up against a peculiarity that is characteristic of a society in which one definite mode of production predominates, even though not all productive relations have been subordinated to it. In feudal society, for example (as we can best observe in England because the system of feudalism was introduced here from Normandy ready made and its form was impressed on what was in many respects a different social foundation), relations which were far removed from the nature of feudalism were given a feudal form; for example, simple money relations in which there was no trace of mutual personal service as between lord and vassal, It is for instance a fiction that the small peasant held his land in fief. It is exactly the same in the capitalist mode of production. The independent peasant or handicraftsman is cut up into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is capitalist; as labourer he is his own wage-labourer. As capitalist he therefore pays himself his wages and draws his profit on his capital; that is to say, he exploits himself as wage-labourer, and pays himself, in the surplus-value, the tribute that labour owes to capital. Perhaps he also pays himself a third portion as landowner (rent), in exactly the same way, as we shall see later, that the industrial capitalist, when he works with his own capital, pays himself interest, regarding this as something which he owes to himself not as industrial capitalist but qua capitalist pure and simple. The determinate social character of the means of production in capitalist production—expressing a particular production relation —has so grown together with, and in the mode of thought of bourgeois society is so inseparable from, the material existence of these means of production as means of production, that the same determinateness (categorical determinateness) is assumed even where the relation is in direct contradiction to it. The means of production become capital only in so far as they have become separated from labourer and confront labour as an independent power. But in the case referred to the producer—the labourer— is the possessor, the owner, of his means of production. They are therefore not capital, any more than in relation to them he is a wage-labourer. Nevertheless they are looked on as capital, and he himself is split in two, so that he, as capitalist, employs himself as wage-labourer. In fact this way of presenting it, however irrational it may be on first view, is nevertheless so far correct, that in this case the producer in fact creates his own surplus-value <on the assumption that he sells his commodity at its value>, in other words, only his own labour is materialised in the whole product. But that he is able to appropriate for himself the whole product of his own labour, and that the excess of the value of his product over the average price for instance of his day’s labour is not appropriated by a third person, a master, he owes not to his labour —which does not distinguish him from other labourers —but to his ownership of the means of production. It is therefore only through his ownership of these that he takes possession of his own surplus-labour, and thus bears to himself as wage-labourer the relation of being his own capitalist. Separation appears as the normal relation in this society. Where therefore it does not in fact apply, it is presumed and, as has just been shown, so far correctly; for (as distinct for example from conditions in Ancient Rome or Norway or in the north-west of the United States) in this society unity appears as accidental, separation as normal; and consequently separation is maintained as the relation even when one person unites the separate functions. Here emerges in a very striking way the fact that the capitalist as such is only a function of capital, the labourer a function of labour-power. For it is also a law that economic development distributes functions among different persons; and the handicraftsman or peasant who produces with his own means of production will either gradually be transformed into a small capitalist who also exploits the labour of others, or he will suffer the loss of his means of production <in the first instance the latter may happen although he remains their nominal owner, as in the case of mortgages> and be transformed into a wage-labourer. This is the tendency in the form of society in which the capitalist mode of production predominates.

The Petty Bourgeoisie

The petty-bourgeoisie is the urban sector of the lower middle class, consisting essentially of self-employed small producers, such as artisans and shopkeepers. Here are some examples: carpenters working in their own shops, taylors working with their own customers, small merchants… They are small property owners, and live from their labour rather than from others’: although they do own some property (e.g. their own means of production, their shop), they aren’t capitalist employers living primarily by extracting surplus-labour from workers.

As we know, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx called the petty-bourgeoisie a “transition class” [Übergangsklasse], a class “in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously blunted”, the two classes being the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Hal Draper calls it the “Janus class” [see KMTR 2, p. 291] to describe this conception from Marx, as expressed by the following passage from Theories of Surplus-Value, already mentioned above:

…The independent peasant or handicraftsman is cut up into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is capitalist; as labourer he is his own wage-labourer. As capitalist he therefore pays himself his wages and draws his profit on his capital; that is to say, he exploits himself as wage-labourer, and pays himself, in the surplus-value, the tribute that labour owes to capital. Perhaps he also pays himself a third portion as landowner (rent), in exactly the same way… The means of production become capital only in so far as they have become separated from labourer and confront labour as an independent power. But in the case referred to the producer—the labourer— is the possessor, the owner, of his means of production. They are therefore not capital, any more than in relation to them he is a wage-labourer. Nevertheless they are looked on as capital, and he himself is split in two, so that he, as capitalist, employs himself as wage-labourer.

Now we must take a look at how the petty-bourgeoisie is portrayed in Marx’s political writings on France, where the small-holding producers (#1 peasants; petty-bourgeoisie) constituted the majority of the population around the middle of the nineteenth century. The volatility and political ambiguity of the petty-bourgeoisie is highlighted by the evolution of political and class struggles during the 1848-1851 period, and the Paris Commune. Writing about the Paris Commune, Marx offers a brief overview of this historical process:

… this was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative, even by the great bulk of the Paris middle class – shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants – the wealthy capitalist alone excepted. The Commune had saved them by a sagacious settlement of that ever recurring cause of dispute among the middle class themselves – the debtor and creditor accounts. The same portion of the middle class, after they had assisted in putting down the working men’s insurrection of June 1848, had been at once unceremoniously sacrificed to their creditors by the then Constituent Assembly. But this was not their only motive for now rallying around the working class. They felt there was but one alternative – the Commune, or the empire – under whatever name it might reappear. The empire had ruined them economically by the havoc it made of public wealth, by the wholesale financial swindling it fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralization of capital, and the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had suppressed them politically, it had shocked them morally by its orgies, it had insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the education of their children to the fréres Ignorantins, it had revolted their national feeling as Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which left only one equivalent for the ruins it made – the disappearance of the empire. In fact, after the exodus from Paris of the high Bonapartist and capitalist bohème, the true middle class Party of Order came out in the shape of the “Union Republicaine,” enrolling themselves under the colors of the Commune and defending it against the wilful misconstructions of Thiers. Whether the gratitude of this great body of the middle class will stand the present severe trial, time must show.

[The Civil War in France, The Third Address. See footnotes about the references (e.g. frères Ignorantins)]

In June 1848, the proletariat stood alone against all classes, and was brutally defeated. The Parisian petty-bourgeoisie “had rallied (…) against the Proletariat under the banners of the capitalist class, their generals, and their state parasites” [First Draft. The Commune]. As he put it, the Boutique (shopkeepers → petty-bourgeoisie) was in the front line against the Barricades (proletarian insurrection):

No one had fought more fanatically in the June days for the salvation of property and the restoration of credit than the Parisian petty bourgeois – keepers of cafes and restaurants, marchands de vins [wine merchants], small traders, shopkeepers, handicraftsman, etc. The shopkeeper had pulled himself together and marched against the barricades in order to restore the traffic which leads from the streets into the shop. But behind the barricade stood the customers and the debtors; before it the creditors of the shop. And when the barricades were thrown down and the workers were crushed and the shopkeepers, drunk with victory, rushed back to their shops, they found the entrance barred by a savior of property, an official agent of credit, who presented them with threatening notices: Overdue promissory note! Overdue house rent! Overdue bond! Doomed shop! Doomed shopkeeper! (…) The petty bourgeois saw with horror that by striking down the workers they had delivered themselves without resistance into the hands of their creditors. Their bankruptcy, which since February had been dragging on in chronic fashion and had apparently been ignored, was openly declared after June.

[The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850, Chap. II]

We see here one side of the petty-bourgeoisie “Janus-like” character: its drive to protect the small property it owns, which is the “capitalist-like” interest as opposed to the “proletarian-like” one, in Marx’s notion of ‘transition class’. Thus very quickly, seeing themselves poorly rewarded for their services [as explained in the two previous quotes], after the victory of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie drew closer to the proletariat. Marx also describes this shift as two stages depending on whether the petty-bourgeoisie (or ‘sections’ of it) is “removed from the revolutionary movement” or “already revolutionized”: first, it “found in the high dignitaries of property the natural representatives of their petty prejudices”, but then, “[as] against the coalesced counterrevolutionary bourgeois class,” it had “to ally themselves with the high dignitary of revolutionary interests, the revolutionary proletariat” [CSF, II].

It will only be an illusion, “an unimaginable comedy” [eine unsagbare Schlacht, the MIA version below translated unsagbare to “unutterable”, it could also be “untold”, “unspeakable”, etc.], Marx comments, before concluding:

In June, 1848, the constituent bourgeois republic, by an unspeakable battle against the proletariat, and in June, 1849, the constituted bourgeois republic, by an unutterable comedy with the petty bourgeoisie, engraved their names in the birth register of history. June, 1849, was the nemesis of June, 1848. In June, 1849, it was not the workers that were vanquished; it was the petty bourgeois, who stood between them and the revolution, that were felled. June, I849, was not a bloody tragedy between wage labor and capital, but a prison-filling and lamentable play of debtors and creditors. The party of Order had won, it was all-powerful; it had now to show what it was.

[CSF, II]

Just as 23 June 1848 for the proletariat, 13 June 1849, the day of the insurrection of the petty bourgeois, represents “the pure, classical [alt. transl.: classically pure] expression” of a class (“of the class which had been its vehicle”, CSF, III). Here are some further passages in which Marx describes the petty-bourgeoisie’s “parliamentary insurrection”, and its political behavior (or that of its political representatives):

The democratic petty bourgeoisie, for its part, wished, as always, for nothing more fervently than to see the battle fought out in the clouds over its head between the departed spirits of parliament. Finally, both of them, the democratic petty bourgeoisie and its representatives, the Montagne, would, through a parliamentary insurrection, achieve their great purpose, that of breaking the power of the bourgeoisie without unleashing the proletariat or letting it appear otherwise than in perspective; the proletariat would have been used without becoming dangerous. June 13 closes the first period in the life of the constitutional republic, which had attained its normal existence on May 28, 1849, with the meeting of the Legislative Assembly. The whole period of this prologue is filled with vociferous struggle between the party of Order and the Montagne, between the big bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, which strove in vain against the consolidation of the bourgeois republic, for which it had itself continuously conspired in the Provisional Government and in the Executive Commission, and for which, during the June days, it had fought fanatically against the proletariat. The thirteenth of June breaks its resistance and makes the legislative dictatorship of the united royalists a fait accompli. From this moment the National Assembly is only a Committee of Public Safety of the party of Order.

[CSF, III]

Seldom had an action been announced with more noise than the impending campaign of the Montagne, seldom had an event been trumpeted with greater certainty or longer in advance than the inevitable victory of democracy. Most assuredly the democrats believe in the trumpets before whose blasts the walls of Jericho fell down. And as often as they stand before the ramparts of despotism, they seek to imitate the miracle. If the Montagne wished to triumph in parliament it should not have called to arms. If it called to arms in parliament it should not have acted in parliamentary fashion in the streets. If the peaceful demonstration was meant seriously, then it was folly not to foresee that it would be given a warlike reception. If a real struggle was intended, then it was a queer idea to lay down the weapons with which it would have to be waged. But the revolutionary threats of the petty bourgeois and their democratic representatives are mere attempts to intimidate the antagonist. And when they have run into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently compromised themselves to make it necessary to activate their threats, then this is done in an ambiguous fashion that avoids nothing so much as the means to the end and tries to find excuses for succumbing. The blaring overture that announced the contest dies away in a pusillanimous snarl as soon as the struggle has to begin, the actors cease to take themselves au serieux, and the action collapses completely, like a pricked bubble. No party exaggerates its means more than the democratic, none deludes itself more light-mindedly over the situation. Since a section of the army had voted for it, the Montagne was now convinced that the army would revolt for it. And on what occasion? On an occasion which, from the standpoint of the troops, had no other meaning than that the revolutionists took the side of the Roman soldiers against the French soldiers. On the other hand, the recollections of June, 1848, were still too fresh to allow for anything but a profound aversion on the part of the proletariat toward the National Guard and a thoroughgoing mistrust of the democratic chiefs on the part of the chiefs of the secret societies. To iron out these differences, it was necessary for great common interests to be at stake. The violation of an abstract paragraph of the constitution could not provide these interests. Had not the constitution been repeatedly violated, according to the assurance of the democrats themselves? Had not the most popular journals branded it as counterrevolutionary patchwork? But the democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie – that is, a transition class, in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously mutually blunted – imagines himself elevated above class antagonism generally. The democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the nation, form the people. What they represent is the people’s rights; what interests them is the people’s interests. Accordingly, when a struggle is impending they do not need to examine the interests and positions of the different classes. They do not need to weigh their own resources too critically. They have merely to give the signal and the people, with all its inexhaustible resources, will fall upon the oppressors. Now if in the performance their interests prove to be uninteresting and their potency impotence, then either the fault lies with pernicious sophists, who split the indivisible people into different hostile camps, or the army was too brutalized and blinded to comprehend that the pure aims of democracy are the best thing for it, or the whole thing has been wrecked by a detail in its execution, or else an unforeseen accident has this time spoiled the game. In any case, the democrat comes out of the most disgraceful defeat just as immaculate as he was innocent when he went into it, with the newly won conviction that he is bound to win, not that he himself and his party have to give up the old standpoint, but, on the contrary, that conditions have to ripen to suit him.

[18 Brumaire, III]

The following passage describes this alliance between workers and the petty-bourgeoisie and summarizes a large part of his writings on French political history; but more importantly, it characterizes the political behavior and manifestations of the petty-bourgeoisie.

As against the coalesced bourgeoisie, a coalition between petty bourgeois and workers had been formed, the so-called Social-Democratic party. The petty bourgeois saw that they were badly rewarded after the June days of 1848, that their material interests were imperiled, and that the democratic guarantees which were to insure the effectuation of these interests were called in question by the counterrevolution. Accordingly they came closer to the workers. On the other hand, their parliamentary representation, the Montagne, thrust aside during the dictatorship of the bourgeois republicans, had in the last half of the life of the Constituent Assembly reconquered its lost popularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and the royalist ministers. It had concluded an alliance with the socialist leaders. In February, 1849, banquets celebrated the reconciliation [between the working class and the petty-bourgeoisie]. A joint program was drafted, joint election committees were set up and joint candidates put forward. The revolutionary point was broken off and a democratic turn given to the social demands of the proletariat; the purely political form was stripped off the democratic claims of the petty bourgeoisie and their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose social-democracy. The new Montagne, the result of this combination, contained, apart from some supernumeraries from the working class and some socialist sectarians, the same elements as the old Montagne, but numerically stronger. However, in the course of development it had changed with the class that it represented. The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.

[18 Brumaire, III]

So all this quote-mining was interesting… but what do we make of this overview of Marx’s political analysis of the petty-bourgeoisie? This last passage is crucial here, and will be so in the final part on Marx’s general conception of class. In various places, such as the critical (and cynical) comments on other types of ‘socialism’ in the Communist Manifesto, Marx criticises people who recognize – at least part of – the ills of modern society, but either fail to see the proletariat as the ultimate revolutionary agent, or want to “have their cake and it eat it too” by solving these ills without having to go through class-based social revolution, or aim for things like the abolition of private property. Here the political orientation of the petty-bourgeoisie is described as being limited by their material conditions: unlike the proletariat’s drive for revolution, i.e. seeing far beyond their present condition and aiming for the abolition of class society etc., the political behavior of the petty-bourgeois is generally limited by its economic position – essentially the fact of being property owners. Here’s Marx’s description of “Petty-Bourgeois Socialism” in the Communist Manifesto [emphasis added]:

This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities. In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian. Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture. Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.

Based on the previous citations from Marx’s writings on France [e.g. “… imagines itself above class antagonisms generally”], I think this short passage from Marx’s description of “Critical-Utopian Socialism” is also relevant:

They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms

But that doesn’t mean that the petty-bourgeoisie (the same applies to the peasantry) cannot or never does fight for progressive or even revolutionary change. On the contrary, it sometimes does but according to Marx, the political volatility he observed (i.e., it could just as much, depending on the context/economic cycles, ally with the ruling classes to crush popular insurrections, as in 1848) and the dual character of their economic conditions – remember his definition of “transition class” – make this class unable to initiate, lead revolutionary change or fight for it independently. Here “revolutionary” is to be understood as it applies in Marx to the bourgeoisie (feudalism → capitalism) and to the proletariat (capitalism → communism). Therefore, when it does actually fight for radical change, it is by following the lead of the revolutionary proletariat. As he explicitly says in Class Struggles in France: “the petty bourgeoisie can maintain a revolutionary attitude against the upper bourgeoisie only so long as the proletariat stands behind it.” The contradictory character of the petty-bourgeoisie – or at least some sections thereof [“A petty bourgeois of this kind…”] is expressed by Marx in a letter to Pavel Annenkov, concerning Proudhon (who was one of his go-to leftists that he called “petty-bourgeois”). Notice how he acknowledges that the petty-bourgeoisie can take part in social revolution; this is to some extent similar to what he says in his writings on the Paris Commune.

He is at one and the same time bourgeois and man of the people. In his heart of hearts he prides himself on his impartiality, on having found the correct balance, allegedly distinct from the happy medium. A petty bourgeois of this kind deifies contradiction, for contradiction is the very basis of his being. He is nothing but social contradiction in action. He must justify by means of theory what he is in practice, and Mr Proudhon has the merit of being the scientific exponent of the French petty bourgeoisie, which is a real merit since the petty bourgeoisie will be an integral part of all the impending social revolutions.

[Marx letter to P. Annenkov, December 28, 1846]

Finally, here are some other important aspects of Marx’s views on the petty-bourgeoisie, some of which were already mentioned. This is from the Dictionnaire critique du marxisme, translated by myself (plus I tried to find the links to the texts or letters cited, the others are to be found in the MECW). There’s no doubt that Marx and Engels often used “petty-bourgeois” and “petty-bourgeoisie” disparagingly, as they also did with categories such as peasants and (more strikingly) the lumpenproletariat. It is important to acknowledge this even though we know that it wasn’t an unconditional and automatic hostility – as is the case with the lumpenproletariat, it could be argued – but a generally negative viewpoint mostly rooted in a simultaneous heroification [on that point, Marx and Lenin shared a similar passion] of the proletariat as the only “true” revolutionary class.

Such ambiguities are to be found in the political assessments made, most often in a polemical manner, of the petty bourgeoisie in particular. Negative judgements are clearly dominant. “Philistines” and other “toads”, preferably to designate colleagues in socialism or communism, are used in the [letters], where the word “petit bourgeois” is obviously an insult rather than a sociological one (e.g. “Freiligrath, this petty bourgeois”; Marx ltr, 24 April 1860). The adjective “petit” itself is frequently used in a contemptuous manner, whether it is used to castigate the petty bourgeois, small rentiers or small capitals (e.g. Marx ltr, 24 Nov. 1857). Shopkeepers are a ‘class of whiners’ (Marx ltr to Engels, 26 Sept. 1868). And even Lassalle had to be defended against “petty bourgeois scoundrels” (Marx ltr, 25 Nov. 1864). The nature of the class is not the only thing at issue. Two other elements reinforce this depreciative character, marking it with feigned lion’s denunciation: the conflictual relations maintained, indeed, for their theoretical positions, with all sorts of intellectuals, from Bauer to Proudhon, from Grün to Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin, from the utopians to the anarchists. German inferiority, on the other hand, doubles the condemnation: the German petty bourgeois, even more lamentable than his neighbours, is far below the level of English and French, Engels again notes in the evening of his life (Engels ltr to P. Ernst of 5 June l890). The contradictory aspect of the situation is not underestimated, even if the positive assessments are less numerous than the previous ones. It is that one must take into account both the considerable importance of the petty bourgeoisie and the necessity for the working class to turn to its advantage precisely the instability of the middle classes. Hence the insistence on the revolutionary possibilities of the petty bourgeoisie (from Marx ltr to Annenkov, 28 Dec. 1847; MEW, 27, 461-462, to Engels ltr to Lafargue, 2 oct. 1884; MEW, 36, 539) Hence the repeated invitations to the alliance (from 1848 to the Gotha Programme, cf. Glom; MEW, 34, 126; trans. 44-45), with the understanding, however, that here Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were thinking primarily of the peasantry.

[Gérard Bensussan, Georges Labica, Dictionnaire critique du marxisme, p. 866]

To conclude this part, here’s another comment by Marx characterising the “Janus-like” character of the petty-bourgeoisie:

These lousy small shopkeepers are a wretched [pitiful] class. (…) Many, in fact most, of these shopkeepers experience all the misery of the proletariat, plus the ‘fear’ [Angst] and ‘serfdom [enslavement] of respectability’, but without the compensating self-esteem [self-reliance] of the better workers.

[Marx letter to Engels, 26 sept. 1868]

The Peasantry

Now let’s review Marx’s views on the peasant class. I really recommend/invite you to read Claudio Katz’s article – “Marx on the peasantry: Class in Itself or Class in Struggle?” – one of the only good analyses of the question that I’ve been able to find. The most in-depth treatment of this is Hal Draper’s KMTR 2, chapters 12 to 14. There are also two other resources I want to mention, because I can certainly not cover everything about this topic. That would necessitate diving into other topics such as Marx’s theory of rent – briefly addressed in a previous article, and the transition from feudalism to capitalism, which is particularly relevant for the peasantry, as you can probably guess. I’ve left out the question of peasants in pre-capitalist societies, so I’ve included one article on this by Tomanaga Tairako. Utsa Patnaik’s book is a compilation of Marx’s writings on the peasantry, transition from feudalism to capitalism, and the theory of (ground) rent. Here are these readings with links to where you can find them (tbh, I myself haven’t completely read all of these except Katz’s article, I’m leaving this here in case you might want to look deeper into this question at some point):

Claudio J. Katz, “Karl Marx on the transition from feudalism to capitalism”, Theory and Society, Vol. 22, 1993, p. 363-389. [link to download pdf on jstor]

Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution 2: The Politics of Social Classes, Monthly Review Press, 1978, p. 317-452. [link to pdf]

Utsa Patnaik (ed.), The Agrarian Question in Marx and his Successors. Volume 1, LeftWord Books, 2007. [link to pdf]

Tomonaga Tairako, “Marx on Peasants and Small-Scale Industry – The Changes of Marx’s Insight Into The Pre-Capitalist Societies”, Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, Vol. 50: No. 1, 2019, p. 15-56. [link to pdf]

In this part I will provide an overview of Marx’s conception of the peasantry, based on the research done by Hal Draper, Claudio Katz and Bue Rübner Hansen; I’ll also a bunch of things that I found on my own. Let’s start by addressing the inevitable myths and misconceptions.

As Draper puts it (in his usual tone),

One of the hoariest Marxology myths is that Marx & Engels dismissed the peasantry as rural troglodytes without interest – the “Marx against the peasants” legend. In fact, they wrote more voluminously on the peasant question than on many important aspects of the working class movement. Marx against the Peasants is the title of a book by D. Mitrany, a Romanian peasant champion… There is little indication that Mitrany was even acquainted with the considerable writings of Engels as well as Marx on the political and programmatic aspects of the peasant question.

[KMTR 2, p. 317]

I would say that this “Marx against the peasants” myth comes from three things. Actually, two things, because the other one goes the other way: we still have to acknowledge that Marx was sometimes unambiguously hostile and insulting to the peasantry, as when he called it a “class of barbarians” in Capital III. Here’s the full sentence (only the first half being relevant for us here):

While small landed property creates a class of barbarians standing halfway outside of society, a class combining all the crudeness of primitive forms of society with the anguish and misery of civilised countries, large landed property undermines labour-power in the last region, where its prime energy seeks refuge and stores up its strength as a reserve fund for the regeneration of the vital force of nations – on the land itself.

[Capital III, Ch. 47. Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent]

We already see, however, that Marx is emphasizing the contradictory nature of this class – as he did with the petty-bourgeoisie – rather than simply defining it in black or white terms. So the actually disparaging comment – ‘class of barbarians’ (also ‘crudeness of primitive forms’, probably) – is part of a broader sociological conception, in which Marx underlines the social condition of the peasant class in modern society. We’ll come back to after having mentioned the first reason/source of this “myth”.

One of the reasons Marx is alleged to have been hostile to peasants is simply that as self-proclaimed “marxists”/followers of Marx developed political and economic regimes that treated the peasantry horrendously – such as Stalinism and Maoism, the attempt to trace their violence and negative views of this class back to Marx himself became widespread. Obviously this is to a large extent a product of the Cold War, as can be seen from the fact that Mitrany’s notorious book came out in 1951. Already at the time, Maximilien Rubel criticised this book, dismissing it as an uninformed and ideologically-driven piece of disinformation on Marx’s works [9]. The persecution, oppression and exploitation of the peasantry (among many others) in regimes like 1930s Stalinist USSR was in fact completely antithetical to Marx’s political views on how to deal with (or rather, cooperate with) the peasantry. As we will see, Marx’s vision was that the needs of rural population (owner-peasants and agricultural/rural workers) should be accommodated and their specific emancipatory aspirations should be integrated in the broader political project, as part of the revolutionary movement, even though the latter would be led by the revolutionary proletariat.

The second part of this alleged hostility against peasants is more relevant: it’s actually grounded in Marx’s writings. This generally comes down to the phrase “the idiocy of rural life” that Marx supposedly wrote in the Communist Manifesto, seemingly indicating that he is equating rural life and stupidity. As with the passages from this same text on the alleged ‘disappearance of the middle classes’, Hal Draper showed how this is based on a mistranslation, which first appeared in the standard English edition of 1888 [see KMTR 2, p. 344-345]. Bue Rübner Hansen sums this up in one appendix from his thesis [thanks to Hansen for pointing this out on twitter!]:

However, as Hal Draper remarks the idea that “idiocy” equals stupidity is based on a mistranslation. ‘In the ninetheenth century German still retained the orginal Greek meaning of forms based on the word idiotes: a private person, withdawn from public (communal) concerns, apolitical in the original sense of isolation from the wider community’ [10]. The backwardness of the peasantry has nothing to do with a rejection of rural life, but with the fact that they – in the absence of means of communication and transportation – cannot easily participate in organised social life and its struggles, except by proxy, exemplified by the long representation of the French peasantry by the Bonaparte family.

[Bue Rübner Hansen, Atoms Organised. On the orientations of theory and the theorisations of organisation in the philosophy of Karl Marx, 2013, p. 378]

This also gives an indication about how we should understand the previous quote about the peasantry “standing halfway outside of society.” The geographical and social/economic isolation of members (individuals and families, for instance) of the peasantry is one of the main differences compared to the petty-bourgeoisie, which is concentrated in cities and therefore generally has better access to means of communication and transportation. Class formation – including class consciousness – and political organization is thus potentially made easier for members of the urban lower middle class, for example through organizing cafes, discussions and so on, back in Marx’s time. This is similar to the argument that workers can develop a more coherent and organized form of class agency, because they are concentrated in factories and therefore communication is sped up.

Let me now reproduce Hansen’s analysis of Marx’s conception of the peasantry; I found this really useful so I thought it you might want to read this too [Hansen, 2013, p. 228-233].

The counter-revolutionary section of the lumpenproletariat was organised by Bonaparte, because he offered not merely Vertretung [representation], but a temporary solution to their condition of insecurity and poverty: pay, comradeship and a mission. While the lumpenproletariat secured the dominance of Louis Bonaparte in the Parisian streets, it was the peasantry that elected him in December 1848. Marx asks what it is about peasant life that made them susceptible to electing a leader so alien to them. Unlike the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry does not easily produce or come into contact with more or less organic intellectuals. This gives us the basis of Marx’s often criticised statement that the smallholding peasants are

incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent [vertreten] themselves, they must be represented [vertreten]. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself.

[18 Brumaire]

But what is it in their mode of life that makes the peasants susceptible to this mode of Vertretung? Here we must ask how Bonaparte became an answer to the peasantry’s need for orientation and representation. By understanding this need we understand how it might instead by satisfied by a movement of revolutionary composition. Marx’s inquiry into this problem starts not with the consciousness of the peasants, but with a description of the peasants’ specific mode of life, their problems and the possible solutions:

The small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France’ bad means of communication and by the poverty of the peasants. … Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient… and thus [the peasantry] acquires its means of life more through an exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. A small holding, the peasant and his family; alongside them another small holding, another peasant and another family. A few score of these make up a village, and a few score of villages make up a Department. In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.

[18 Brumaire]

Thus the everyday and the mode of (re)production of the peasants separates them from one another, making it hard to constitute any political collectivities. And unlike the isolated urban proletarians who live in close proximity and attend the same workplaces, peasant families live stationary lives with few neighbours. Where a discourse that starts from the need of science and ideology would ask: how can the peasants be represented, and how can they be enlightened about the conditions under which they live, an inquiry starting with the way the peasants are living their condition comes up with different results:

Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class.

[18 Brumaire]

The peasantry lives this common problem, but the very character of the problem itself, as well as the peasants’ limited means of communication and its localised mode of life, means that it cannot form a class. This shows the strictly relational and self-relating character of Marx’s concept of class; the peasants share certain problems (market fluctuations on their goods, competition, their enslavement to capital through debt),683 but the ways these are formulated and dealt with are local. While this might create strong bonds of local communities, the peasant population as a whole is a mere mass. It does not find the collectivity in which these problems could be articulated as common interests, where the everyday struggles of each peasant family or village could become a common struggle.

The isolation of the small-holding peasants meant that they were lost for the revolution: instead they were homogenised by Bonaparte, a man in whose fame and power these individual peasants found a protector. Their trust in him as their representative was based on the historical memory of their alliance with the old Napoleon. A mass, whether heterogeneous and connected by locale (like the lumpen) or relatively uniform and separated (like the peasantry), is most easily united under a master or master-signifier. However, the isolation also points to the fact that a movement which develops the technical means and organisational forms through which peasants can communicate and link up is one that will abolish the need for a Vertreter and enable the peasantry to represent itself.

Marx, however, did not think along this route, but instead invested his hopes in the revolutionary organisation of the small-holding peasantry on its worsening condition. In order words, Marx pointed to the possibility that a change in the character of the peasants’ problem would lead them to seek its Vertreter in the proletariat. In short, Marx did suggest that the peasants cannot be revolutionary:

The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant who strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather one who wants to consolidate his holding; not the countryfolk who in alliance with the towns want to overthrow the old order through their own energies, but on the contrary those who, in solid seclusion within this old order, want to see themselves and their small holdings saved and favoured by the ghost of the Empire.

[18 Brumaire]

Marx defines revolutionaries as those who aim to abolish the old order, rather than improve their position within it, who opt for a different future rather than a repetition of the past in the present. Further, he notes that the ranks of the revolutionary peasants are likely to swell with the growth of the rural lumpenproletariat, ‘the five million who hover on the margin of existence and either have their haunts in the countryside itself’ or move back and forth between town and countryside with ‘their rags and their children’ [18 Brumaire]. As the small-holding peasant class is drawn further into the bourgeois order, the conservative consolidation will become an option for still fewer peasants; in other words, the strategies and modes of living the peasant condition will change as this condition changes. Now, Marx writes (in what is certainly also a political intervention in a process of class composition), the interests of the peasants are close to those of the urban proletariat, in which they will find a ‘natural ally and leader’ – while many young lumpen peasants will be lost to the army [18 Brumaire]. The terrain of struggle and political class composition also changes – the majority of the peasants no longer find their interests aligned with the bourgeoisie, as under Napoleon, but as turning against it. Thus, while Bonaparte would like to appear as the ‘patriarchal benefactor of all classes … he cannot give to one class without taking from another’, severely constricting his capacity to unite different classes under his representation [18 Brumaire].

Curiously, the proletarian leadership of the peasantry advocated by Marx seems to install it in position of representation of the isolated peasantry, similar to that of the modern Prince Bonaparte. It would thus seem that our reading brings us to the very traditional interpretation that Marx – according to the iron logic of his own argument – could only be champion of the industrial proletariat. However, Marx is not hostile to peasants per se, nor does he present the peasants as necessarily counter-revolutionary. The arguments around their subordination to proletarian leadership mainly relate to the development of the means of communication and combination, i.e. the means of relating and composing in struggle, and of representing themselves. As we see in the case of the petty bourgeoisie, it is the character of their mode of life, its problems and solutions, which keeps them conformist: as their problem is changing, then so will their political orientation. In The Civil War in France, written in 1871, Marx asks: ‘how could it [the peasants’ earlier loyalty to Bonaparte] have withstood the appeal of the Commune to the living interests and urgent wants of the peasantry?’ The reactionary rural assembly of landowners, officials, rentiers and tradesmen…

knew that three months’ free communication of Communal Paris with the provinces would bring about a general rising of the peasants, and hence their anxiety to establish a police blockade around Paris, so as to stop the spread of the rinderpest.

In the 18th Brumaire Marx was hostile to the lumpenproletariat, sceptical of the peasantry’s revolutionary capacities, and hopeful about the urban proletariat. The whole issue here is to keep in mind that Marx’s reflections, while informed by a structural analysis, are first of all conjunctural. They are focussed on the material conditions of combining or allying what is separate around common struggles, and on the invention and construction of new solutions to the problems of the times and of life. Technologies of communication (means of contagion, as it were) and the capacity to overcome or bypass the force of the state are here decisive. But first of all, it is a question of aligning and shaping the interests of populations. In his rebuttal of Bakunin’s critique that he wishes to make the proletariat the master of the peasants, Marx remarks that it is simply an issue of composing interests. With owner-peasants it is a matter of the proletariat doing for them at least what the bourgeoisie is able to, while proletarianised agricultural workers can organise with the proletarians immediately, because of shared interests. Finally, with respect to the rural workers, the goal is not a mere class alliance, but to effect a reorganisation of their reproduction toward communal ownership, without antagonising the peasants, i.e. without forcibly collectivising them or removing their rights to the land [Karl Marx, “From Comments on Bakunin’s Book, Statehood and Anarchy,” in Selected Works, vol. 2 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), 410–411.].

Claudio Katz focuses on Marx’s analysis of the peasantry in nineteenth century France. According to Katz, the structural definition of the peasantry “is given only in the context of a study of the changes in the peasants’ relationship to other classes prior to and following the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. The peasants did not simply find themselves objectively distributed within capitalist relations of production; their economic position was itself the product of previous processes of class struggle” (58). The standard structural definition [given in passages from Class Struggles in France and 18th Brumaire, and already mentioned above] situates the peasantry within the ‘nexus of ownership relations’: they’re characterised by the private property of small land parcels. You need to read Katz’s full article for the complete details, but here’s the core of his reconstruction of Marx’s views.

Whereas peasant ownership in a premodern context provided the main impetus for economic growth, its continued existence in a capitalist context acted as a major brake on the economy. The triumph of capitalism put an end to the peasants’ contribution to the development of modern human beings as well. Capitalism’s civilizing influence, Marx argues, consists in its conquest of nature and the development of universal human intercourse. Peasant production is both isolated and subject to the rhythms of nature. Hence two of the terms Marx uses to define the peasants’ cultural horizons — barbarism and idiocy. These terms are not, or not primarily, insults, evidence of Marx’s irrational hostility toward peasants. Rather, they have a narrower meaning, derived from their classical Greek roots, referring to individuals isolated from the main currents of civilization. (…) Capitalist rule proved disastrous not only for the peasants’ conditions of existence, but also for their ability to respond to their predicament. (…) Against the seigneurs, their common antagonist, they maintained their unity; in other respects, large and small holders were divided. Their cohesion made the Revolution possible, but their very success in removing the seigneurs destroyed their rationale for concerted action. (…) Capitalist relations of production, Marx points out, had the paradoxical effect of isolating rather than uniting the peasantry, undermining their capacity for class struggle. But Marx’s analysis belies the thesis that the peasantry permits only a structural definition, independently of any expressions of peasant class struggles, because it was merely the passive instrument of other classes and their various representatives. Quite the contrary, Marx shows that the peasants could still resist mightily the loss of their lands, even if eventually they were defeated. Marx’s main interest is to explain what forms peasant resistance would take.

(61-63)

Then, Katz addresses the most well-known statement by Marx on the peasantry, from the 18 Brumaire:

Insofar as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond and no political organisation among them, they do not form a class. They are consequently incapable of enforcing their class interests in their own name, whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.

This is almost universally interpreted to mean that the peasants are incapable of organization and concerted action, but Katz notes that:

The structural conditions of the peasants’ existence consigned them to the role of a junior partner to one of the major contending classes and parties in nineteenth-century France. But it was an open question whose junior partner they would become and what would be the terms of their partnership. The answer required both historical explanation and astute political practice. For if the peasants’ interests “must be represented,” their support still had to be won, and there was no shortage of available suitors. The peasants themselves, Marx argues, had to decide their fate. Accordingly, his historical analysis seeks to determine the extent to which the peasants’ conditions of existence placed them in hostile opposition to other classes, which classes they engaged in hostilities against, and what forms this hostility assumed.

(63-64)

Finally:

Despite his sometimes disparaging language, he shows that their political dispositions were historically intelligible, in their own terms, given their experiences, felt interests and aspirations. Their class behavior was an understandable result of their common hostility against the major class interests in nineteenth- century France: the Legitimists, remnants of the Bourbons, representing the landed proprietors whose “very existence . . . is in itself an encroachment on [their] conquests of 1789”; the Orleanists, representing the finance aristocracy who held the lion’s share of the peasants’ debt; the bourgeois republicans (and their subaltern proletarian component), representing the rest of the propertied classes, who introduced themselves to the peasants by levying a new tax. The peasants’ vote for Napoleon was their collective response to a real threat to their property. Napoleon’s triumph was not, however, merely an unexpected manifestation of underlying class relations. Rather, it represented a particular mode of organization of the contending classes. Marx’s text belies the structural thesis that classes are uniquely given by the relations of production alone whereas the discovery and defense of common interests takes place in the contingent realm of subjective actions. The relations of production underdetermined the formation of classes. The complexity of The Eighteenth Brumaire is in large measure due to the fact that Marx explores both the vertical struggles between classes and the horizontal struggles about the definition of classes.

(67)

I won’t prolongate this section any longer, but as I said: Katz’s article is strongly recommended to complete what has been covered here.

Other sections of the middle class?

As we saw, Marx didn’t specify the different sections of the intermediate layers/middle classes: apart from the bourgeoisie as upper middle class (and eventually, simply ruling class!), it is for the most the lower middle class, including the petty-bourgeoisie, that is mentioned and defined by Marx. But there is still an open question, which is the issue of this section: there might be other class elements comprised in the “non-bourgeois strata of the middle class.” This latter group might be restricted to the lower middle class, or not: we can’t say conclusively, because Marx doesn’t settle this anywhere. So obviously the following arguments aren’t to be considerd as definitive.

Let us recall the following passage from the Manifesto, and the comments by Hal Draper:

As alreay mentioned, Draper also comments that,

[KMTR 2, p. 618-619]

Draper adds about his translation of the word Domestiken:

[KMTR 2, p. 618]

Various Marxists and other authors have talked about the growth of this ‘new middle class’, which is largely tasked with superivising the workers. We see that Marx briefly mentioned this in the Manifesto, even though he doesn’t define it as a class or even a class fraction. In fact, we know that Marx was aware of this growing body of overseers and managers, because he mentions this in Capital too. He mentions that,

Mr. Ure has already noted how it is not the industrial capitalists but rather the industrial managers who are ‘the soul of our industrial system’

More significantly, he talks directly about this category of ‘overlookers’ that appear more and more as the capitalist organisation of the production process asserts itself:

The ‘need for discipline and supervision’ gives rise to a distinctively capitalist function within the production process, namely the ‘labour of superintendence’ undertaken by ‘overlookers’ who ‘represent the capitalist towards the workers’

[Søren Mau, Mute Compulsion. A Theory of the Economic Power of Capital, University of Southern Denmark, 2019, p. 206]

This is a reconstruction of Marx’s own words from a passage in the Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1863:

But finally, in so far as firstly children are required here for wholly simple menial services, and on the other hand young people of both sexes and women are required for the actual machine labour, a new division of labour emerges, found already in handicrafts, and in slave labour resting on cooperation, namely between overlookers and actual workers. This division of labour arises from the need for discipline and supervision in the armies of workers, as in other armies, and has nothing to do with the development of specialisation, unless it be specialisation in checking, giving orders, and cavilling. These overlookers in fact represent the capitalist towards the workers. In the case of the small handicraft master, who works with a few journeymen, this work of supervision and command, the disciplinary power, is bound up with his cooperation in the work. With the industrial capitalist, this labour of superintendence, which is “his”, is performed by workers delegated by him. These are the NCO’s of the workshop. It is in fact the overlookers and not the capitalists who perform the real labour of superintendence. The mechanical workshop is altogether characterised by these relations of subordination, regimentation, just as under the system of slavery the ruling mode of cooperation is slave-driving Negro slaves and working Negro slaves. It is labour for the exploitation of labour.

We find the same theme in the corresponding chapters of Capital Vol. 1 (the chapters on relative surplus value):

We also saw that, at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal result of the fact that the worker, instead of working for himself, works for, and consequently under, the capitalist. Through the co-operation of numerous wage-labourers, the command of capital develops into a requirement for carrying on the labour process itself, into a real condition of production. That a capitalist should command in the field of production is now as indispensable as that a general should command on the field of battle. All directly social or communal labour on a large scale requires, to a greater or lesser degree, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious co-operation of the activities of individuals, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the motion of the total productive organism, as distinguished from the motion of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor : an orchestra requires a separate one. The work of directing, superintending and adjusting becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under capital’s control becomes co-operative. As a specific function of capital, the directing function acquires its own special characteristics. The driving motive and determining purpose of capitalist production is the self-valorization of capital to the greatest possible extent, 14 i.e. the greatest possible production of surplusvalue, hence the greatest possible exploitation of labour-power by the capitalist. As the number of the co-operating workers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital, and, necessarily, the pressure put on by capital to overcome this resistance. The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function arising from the nature of the social labour process, and peculiar to that process, but it is at the same time a function of the exploitation of a social labour process, and is consequently conditioned by the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the raw material of his exploitation. Similarly, as the means of production extend, the necessity increases for some effective control over the proper application of them, because they confront the wage-labourer as the property of another [fremdes Eigentum].1 5 Moreover, the co-operation of wage-labourers is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them. Their unification into one single productive body, and the establishment of a connection between their individual functions, lies outside their competence. These things are not their own act, but the act of the capital that brings them together and maintains them in that situation. Hence the interconnection between their various labours confronts them, in the realm of ideas, as a plan drawn up by the capitalist, and, in practice, as his authority, as the powerful will of a being outside them, who subjects their activity to his purpose. If capitalist direction is thus twofold in content, owing to the twofold nature of the process of production which has to be directed – on the one hand a social labour process for the creation of a product, and on the other hand capital’s process of valorization – in form it is purely despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism develops the forms that are peculiar to it. Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour as soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, properly speaking, first begins, so now he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workers and groups of workers to a special kind of wage-labourer. An industrial army of workers under the command of a capitalist requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and N.C.O.s (foremen, overseers), who command during the labour process in the naine of capital. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function. When comparing the mode of production of isolated peasants or independent artisans with the plantation economy which rests on slavery, political economists count this labour of superintendence as part of the faux frais de production.16 But when considering the capitalist mode of production they on the contrary identify the function of direction which arises out of the nature of the communal labour process with the function of direction which is made necessary by the capitalist and therefore antagonistic character of that process.1 7 It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist ; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge were attributes of landed property .

[Chapter 13]

The knowledge, the judgement, and the will, which, though in ever so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman, in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the exercise of his personal cunning these faculties are now required only for the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. [43] It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual potencies of the material process of production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power. This separation begins in simple co-operation, where the capitalist represents to the single workman, the oneness and the will of the associated labour. It is developed in manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail labourer. It is completed in modern industry, which makes science a productive force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital.

[Chapter 14]

The technical subordination of the workman to the uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar composition of the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and which fully develops the before mentioned labour of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army.

[Chapter 15]

The actual issue here is about the power of capital, which the salaried ‘overlookers’ represent within the workplace: they are, in other words, the personnifications of capital that confront the worker face-to-face on a daily basis.

So if we keep this in mind, we can see how the growth of this particular section of the middle class is completely different from the small-property-holding petty producers of the peasantry and the petty-bourgeoisie. This doesn’t mean ‘overlookers’ and the like constitute another class: Marx certainly never says so, obviously, and this would be jumping hastily to conclusions. But it does offer a structural explanation of this kind of function within capitalist production: the real subsumption of labour by capital brings about a specific divison of labour which emulates the hierarchical discipline of the military, ‘barrack discipline’, as Marx puts it.

Notes/References

Hal Draper, KMTR 2, 613-627.
“advanced” simply in the sense of the stage of capitalist development, i.e. in terms of the all-encompassing structural domination of capital over the whole of society, e.g. real subsumption etc…
Tom Bottomore, A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Second Edition, Blackwell Publishers, 1991 (1983), p. 378.
If you switch between translations (say, the one in the MECW as opposed to the one you find on the MIA), you sometimes literally see this at play: I’ve seen some parts of the German Ideology where “burgher class” and “middle class” were used alternatively in different translations. I found this use of “middle class” throughout his articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In one article in the New-York Daily Tribune – “The Elections in England. – Tories and Whigs” (1852), he says explicitly: “The Whigs are the aristocratic representatives of the Bourgeoisie, of the industrial and commercial middle class.”
He says that “the petty bourgeoisie can maintain a revolutionary attitude against the upper bourgeoisie only so long as the proletariat stands behind it”. I didn’t want to include this at this point because it mentions a key element from the part on the petty bourgeoisie.
The fact that the word “bourgeoisie” is part of “petty bourgeoisie” is almost misleading (but it was also undoubtedly customary to use this term in Marx’s time and circles) insofar as it can make the reader believe it is a “small” bourgeoisie, which is precisely not the case. ‘Small capital’ isn’t the same as small proprietors who live primarily from their own labour (=petty bourgeoisie), even though it seems like it’s the case.
Mentioning his words from the Manifesto in his Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx says the same thing: “The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class — as the bearer of large-scale industry — relative to the feudal lords and the lower middle class, who desire to maintain all social positions that are the creation of obsolete modes of production.”
That is, of course, apart from the basic facts that the petty-bourgeoisie is urban and the peasantry rural, and the latter thus generally owns lands and farming tools as opposed to commerical or artisanal means of production which is the property of the petty-bourgeois.
RUBEL, Maximilien. “Karl Marx Et Le Problème Paysan.” Revue D’histoire Économique Et Sociale, vol. 32, no. 1, 1954, pp. 98–100.
As indicated in footnote 1106, p. 378: Draper quoted in “Notes from the Editors,” Monthly Review 55, no. 5 (October 2003). Marx and Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,” 112.