The
petty bourgeoisie
Included
in this category are the owner-peasants, [7]
the master handicraftsmen, the lower levels of the intellectuals--students,
primary and secondary school teachers, lower government functionaries, office
clerks, small lawyers--and the small traders. Both because of its size and
class character, this class deserves very close attention. The owner-peasants
and the master handicraftsmen are both engaged in small-scale production.
Although all strata of this class have the same petty-bourgeois economic
status, they fall into three different sections. The first section consists of
those who have some surplus money or grain, that is, those who, by manual or
mental labour, earn more each year than they consume for their own support.
Such people very much want to get rich and are devout worshipers of Marshal
Chao; [8]
while they have no illusions about amassing great fortunes, they invariably
desire to climb up into the middle bourgeoisie. Their mouths water copiously
when they see the respect in which those small moneybags are held. People of this
sort are timid, afraid of government officials, and also a little afraid of the
revolution. Since they are quite close to the middle bourgeoisie in economic
status, they have a lot of faith in its propaganda and are suspicious of the
revolution. This section is a minority among the petty bourgeoisie and
constitutes its right-wing. The second section consists of those who in the
main are economically self-supporting. They are quite different from the people
in the first section; they also want to get rich, but Marshal Chao never lets
them. In recent years, moreover, suffering from the oppression and exploitation
of the imperialists, the warlords, the feudal landlords and the big
comprador-bourgeoisie, they have become aware that the world is no longer what
it was. They feel they cannot earn enough to live on by just putting in as much
work as before. To make both ends meet they have to work longer hours, get up
earlier, leave off later, and be doubly careful at their work. They become
rather abusive, denouncing the foreigners as "foreign devils", the
warlords as "robber generals" and the local tyrants and evil gentry
as "the heartless rich". As for the movement against the imperialists
and the warlords, they; merely doubt whether it can succeed (on the ground that
the foreigners and the warlords seem so powerful), hesitate to join it and
prefer to be neutral, but they never oppose the revolution. This section is
very numerous, making up about one-half of the petty bourgeoisie.
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