The mediaeval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were
the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries
which
are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these
two
classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern civilisation has become fully
developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed,
fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing
itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The
individual members of this class, however, are being constantly
hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition,
and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment
approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent
section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures,
agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more
than half of the population, it was natural that writers who
sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use,
in their criticism of the bourgeois regime, the standard of the
peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these
intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for the working
class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the
head of this school, not only in France but also in England.
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