Our Generation May Have Witnessed the Peak of the Petty Bourgeoisie
I previously wrote “Demographics: The Dividends of University Graduates and Involution Among Engineers Are Only Just Beginning” and “It Is Not Industrial Upgrading, but the Downgrading of Global Industry.” University education has now become widespread in China, Iran, India, Indonesia, and other Third World countries. The consequences of the university graduate dividend can be seen in China. The direct consequence of involution among university graduates is a machine that grinds down developed countries, advanced industries, and developing countries. A secondary consequence is that the room for survival on which the global petty bourgeoisie depends—that is, the dividends of monopoly—is shrinking.
For example, traditionally high-end professions such as programming, medicine, finance, and law have widely experienced excessive involution and declining compensation.
Our generation may have witnessed the high point of the petty bourgeoisie: its peak in both numbers and influence. The disappearance of those genteel petty bourgeois who enjoyed peaceful, comfortable lives and favored classical liberalism serves only to demonstrate the backwardness, uselessness, and historical transience of the petty bourgeoisie. It also signifies the collapse of the dreams of a middle class, a universally middle-class society, and social democracy.
This is a historical turning point. The loss of the petty bourgeoisie as a pressure-release valve and an object of aspiration marks an enormous turning point for social culture and consumer culture. (Part of my motivation for writing this article is also to stimulate thinking about investment; see my earlier article, “Investment Is in a Period of Historical Transformation.”) In a class society, the path to upward class mobility is the final pressure-release valve. For more than 1,000 years, the imperial examination system made China’s scholars willing servants of feudalism. From the belief that effort pays off to the belief that survival requires involution; from elitism to social Darwinism.
Of course, this does not mean the complete disappearance of the petty bourgeoisie. The micro-bourgeoisie is a more reactionary, more alienated class. University students born in the 2010s and 2020s have discovered the phenomenon of the “economic upswing.” Unlike those born in the 1970s and 1980s, they no longer dream of climbing into the petty bourgeoisie; instead, they compete frantically in examinations for permanent public-sector positions and “iron rice bowls.” We can see the sacrifices and offerings many people are willing to make for stability and a tiny amount of property.
Some of the phenomena we are witnessing are historical turning points, rather than transient phenomena confined to a single generation. Look at the history of 1789–1945: history was continually advancing and undergoing fundamental transformations. It is just that the prolonged period of peaceful development after World War II and two Kondratiev cycles accustomed people to a transient state of “peaceful, comfortable living.”
Having lived through industrialization and urbanization on the scale of a billion people, our generation has witnessed the exit of the peasant class and the transformation of the rural population into the proletariat—migrant workers and agricultural workers. This is the greatest change in the class structure. We then witnessed the exit of the petty bourgeoisie.
A proletariat of 800 million and a petty and micro-bourgeoisie of 200 million form the underlying social landscape, the foundation of the Bonapartist equilibrium.