myth of the French bourgeoisie
By shag carpet bomb • Jan 30th, 2008 • Category: Books, Class, History, Myth of the French BourgeoisieSeeing as how Chuckie’s back from vaca, it reminded me to share something I’d already shared at LBO. In my latest trip to the library, I stumbled over a book that caught my eye, Sara Maza’s The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750-1850. I’m getting desperately, desperately bored by non-theory stuff. aiyiyiyi. After awhile, it just feels like you’ve read it all before. Tell me something new! So far, Maza’s a delightful writer but what made me want to share is this line:
“The thesis of bourgeois nonexistence* derives from my belief that classes only exist if they are aware of their own existence, a knowledge which is inseparable from the ability to articulate an identity. I posit here that the existence of social groups, while rooted in the material world, is shaped by language and more specificially by narrative: in order for a group to claim a role as actor in society and polity, it must have a story or stories about itself, it must take directions for a tale that links memories of the past to desires for the future. The French bourgeoisie was briefly offered an inspiring story of this sort, the one written mostly in the 1820s by liberal politicians and historians such as Augustin Thierry, Fracois Guizont, and Adlphe Theirs. That narrative, however, did not prove compelling for very long.”
She also points out that, today, and historically, bourgeoisie was used more like yuppie is today. No one claimed membership per se, they used it as a label to mock others or to assign themselves, but only as sarcasm.
Anyway, I will report more if this book turns out to be interesting. I’ve read a couple of chapters, but things have been hectic, so I haven’t been able to focus. It’s mostly grabbing ten minutes here or there. And there are so many books I brought home last week that I’m distracted. I have a pile by the door to the veranda and they tempt me to pick through them, reading snippets here ‘n’ there depending on my mood.
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[…] my post on the book, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, I noted that Maza’s argument is in line with something others have noted about the marker […]
It sounds like Maza’s unaware of the old Marxist distinction between the “class in itself” and the “class for itself”. Does it not ?
And can I do html in here ? Well I’ve just found out.
@ Ileste
Maybe so, but if it’s the case that the bourgeoisie was never aware of itself as a class then that gives lie to Marx’s claims about the way the French Bourgeoisie marshaled itself to topple the aristocracy. If it’s true, as Marxists claim, that there are universal laws that govern the history of class warfare, then isn’t one of them that a class, like the bourgeoisie, comes to see itself as a class when ever it contests its ruling class. I’m not any kind of expert. Most of my reading is second and third source, but when Marx made the distinction, he wasn’t talking just about the working class under capitalism, but all classes throughout the history of class struggle.
I would really be interested in your thoughts on this.
“She also points out that, today, and historically, bourgeoisie was used more like yuppie is today. No one claimed membership per se, they used it as a label to mock others or to assign themselves, but only as sarcasm.”
This statement is simply false. With regard to Germany, the one European society I know reasonably well, I can assure you that the ‘buergerliche’ camp explicitly and proudly identifies itself as such. Aside from the empirical facts, there also seems to be a conceptual error in failing to recognize that bourgeois is not defined by opposition to proletarian, it is defined by opposition to noble/aristocratic.
More later this evening.
I have had time for two meager paragraphs. More on Thursday
I’m not about to criticize a book I haven’t read. But I will expound on the obvious fact that Maza isn’t a Marxist. I presume that SC Bomb excerpted this paragraph for us, because the premise Maza advances here articulates an ordinarily inarticulate, but fundamental assumption underlying ‘identity’ models. Since ‘identity’ models of social phenomena proliferate among scholars, journalists and activists, it’s worth clarifying how they differ from a Marxist analysis of class. From the methodological, conceptual perspective, Maza proposes an idealistic and mechanical model of social groups. Marxists, of course, would take a materialist and dialectical view.
Maza’s idealism appears at every level of her analytic hierarchy. These moments constitute ‘class’: knowledge, language, narrative, identity. Her mechanical causality appears in the reduction of awareness to ‘a’ knowledge, ‘a’ role, and ‘a’ story.
@ Joe
I think you’re starting from the assumption that “bourgeois revolutions” such as the American or French have to be led by a self-conscious bourgeoisie. In fact what makes a bourgeois revolution is not so much the fact that it is led by the bourgeoisie, as that its result is a legal, economic framework which allows the development of capitalism. In a number of countries this actually took the shape of “revolution from above” under the leadership of the aristocracy (e.g. Italian aristocrats of the 19th century having to “change everything so that everything remain the same” as Lampedusa put it in The Leopard).
Nonetheless, as Chuckie points out, it is the case anyway the bourgeoisie in both those revolutions was aware of itself in opposition to the aristocracy (and claimed then to represent “the people” as a whole).
It then became keenly aware of itself in opposition to the proletariat, labouring petty bourgeoisie and the slaves - the labouring classes - when those classes pushed to take the revolution further. But this awareness then comes in contradiction with the bourgeoisie’s claims to represent the interests of the whole of the people, hence the endless pussyfooting which is bourgeois ideology around issues of class and democracy, and its translation in the practice of bourgeois rule over the past 200 years.
It could indeed be argued that only the proletariat has the potential reach a full consciousness of itself as a class, whereas bourgeois self-consciousness is condemned to always remain partial.
wow. i missed you guys.
i have only half a cuppa joe in me, so i’m gonna be brief. I am guilty here of taking commentary I made elsewhere — LBO — and plopping it here. When I write at LBO, since I’ve been around since its birth in 1998 — I can get away with not being really explicit. I use shorthand b/c it would be tedious to get more detailed to an audience that has largely interacted for the same 10 years.
The quote caught my eye as an address to LBOers — notably Carrol Cox: we spar sometimes but I love him very much and have learned more from him than I can remember. One of the things he’s always on me (and others) about is using class to speak of working (blue/pink/white collar) class, middle class (white / pink colar) and upper middle class (managerial professional).
Carrol thinks that this is wrong: we’re all working class, so why muddy things up? Doing so is just bourgeois social science, which Max Weber and his *wink* idealist and antimarxist theories screwed up. If I keep talking this way, the worry goes, then I will make it worse and harder for people to understand that they are all working class. I give them succor (or something) and encourage them to think they are different with labels working, middle, upper middle.
I generally shoot back to point out that Das Kapital is filled with discussions of various classes, as is the 18th Brumaire. I think the Paris Commune is too. In any event, in the who’s got a bigger hard on for Marx wars, it is good enough to thwack someone over the head with quote from Das Kapital. Thank god for the Marxist archives.
Of course, when I start doing that, I feel like a bible thumper, only in my case the bible are books by Marx. And of course it turns out that being a fundamentalist about the text doesn’t ever resolve debate anyway.
And so, this book didn’t actually prompt me to think about identity politics so much as it prompted me to think about long standing discussions at lb0 — where I tend to weave materialist and idealist (anathema!) arguments, happy with neither one.
it also reached back to an argument I made abut what the left needs to be more successful. I said that it needs a narrative or story about “why we struggle”. I wrote about it long ago in re: Obama.
anys, i have to run and get ready for work.
laterlater
wasn’t very brief, huh?
are books by Marx — should be “IS books by Marx”
I think I get your drift. I think there has to be a distinction between class consciousness and “narrative”. As I mentioned above it didn’t need full class consciousness to come to power, but it certainly needed a narrative (=”ideology” no ?).
The working class of course also needs a narrative, needs to know why it struggles, have an image of what socialism would look like, an understanding of what lessons it draws from history, how it gets from here and now to after the abolition of classes and the state, in other words a revolutionary theory in the richest sense of the word. A theory which in the case of the working class has to involve class consciousness as a necessary part.
You can have the theory in verse form.
(and on your debates with Carroll, clearly to see only two classes as black and white blocks doesn’t work, not only are there shades of grey - middle management - there are also others : working shopowners, small farmers… so I’d be curious to have a look at the actual debates, but I think I’m on your side on this one.)
(although then again it is true of course that class in common parlance is out of joint with the economic reality - I always have to pout when I hear USers talk of factory workers as “middle class”)
ilestre! i totally love the passion with which you wrote that second paragraph! and i absolutely love this way of phrasing this idea: “in other words, a revolutionary theory in the richest sense of the word.”
*sigh*
i just love that as a way to think of what theory is all about. In the richest sense of the word, it’s a story about why we struggle, connecting past to present to future….
*double sigh*
and yes, it’s ideology! some days, I really hate how *snicker* bourgeois liberals (hi Chuckie! :) reject ideology as if it is bad. but everybody has an ideology — a theory — it’s a narrative about why things happen the way they do, about where you fit into that picture, what is a social problem and why and what you should do about such things… and on and on.
even the way everyone yammers on about feelings, emotions (sorry amber!), and god help me — theory! — is an ideology.
no one is ever outside ideology. even the claim that ideology is bad .. it’s a freakin’ ideology!
and, also? agit prop is cool. :)
*grin* more later, but I have a question. In France, is there such a thing as “labor aristocracy” — or, rather, people who call them that — and derisively so?
I’m assuming there is, since it’s a word that originated among Marxist thinkers. Lenin wrote about it and Kautsky gave it the name. I think that’s where that idea came from:
That’s from wikipedia article on “labor aristocracy”. (I know you know what it means and I imagine most folks here do — god, I soooooooooooo love only have a handful of people who read this! But I think a couple of folks here aren’t so versed in these debates.
I managed to not get to continue my comment tonight. So I can’t until Sunday, but I will. Just because we are a handful now.
Last night, I was chortling as I reread my own little intro there. That good old hairy-chested, ham-fisted denunicatory rhetoric of the 3rd International. Trusting that people might indeed recognize that ‘idealist’ and ‘mechanical
‘ are just slightly more sophisticated code worlds for ‘bourgeois.’
But I do want to make two sets of points. One concerns language and narrative. Because the social theory of language and the linguistic theory of social relations are the core of my scientific training. Like it or not. Ready or not. And this ‘discursive constructionism’ Maza employs is the most widespread garden variety post-modernism and doesn’t have a leg to stand on. And I have proof!
The second set of points are about the relations of class, class consciousness and ideology. Because ever since Halley’s reading of the 18th Brumaire got me rereading that essay, I’ve kept going back and back. And Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850. Sort of like the first draft. Well, actually the second draft, because first there were the articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on French events. But we’re not going there.
And I hope, in conjunction with remarks on materialist approaches to language as a social activity and class as a social process, a few passing blows at Obama’s rhetoric too.
Ooh, now I feel like a real post-modernist. Let me tell me what I’m going to tell you but that I will never tell you because that would be telling.
Shag ! I’m so glad we meet again, been missing you. Shame I can’t pop over for a drink ! I sometimes get the feeling I’m writing in a terribly serious style here, so I’m glad you see passion shining through.
Anyway labour aristocracy ! Well, it just so happens that I subscribe to Tony Cliff’s refutation of this theory. (and here’s another, more recent and thorough)
Of course there are better paid/better skilled sections of the working class, but it doesn’t follow they’re the most wedded to the system, in fact you’re more likely to be able to fight if you have a good wage and a more or less secure job and home than if you have to fend against other workers for employment and basic housing/food day in, day out.
Gramsci noted for instance that auto workers (definitely the labour aristocracy of his days) were in the forefront of the semi-revolutionary movement in Turin in 1920.
A different matter is management : obviously, as you go up the hierarchy, your situation gets more and more directly dependent on the continued rule of capital.