A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petite Bourgeoisie

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This work serves as the foundational catalyst for a fresh perspective in the realms of analysis, discourse, and strategic thinking for Socialists. In Britain the intellectual retreat from class was spearheaded by those post-Marxist trends, with which Sivanandan had sparred, who derided the Miners’ Strike whilst expressing ‘barely concealed admiration’ for the neoliberal counterrevolution and ‘the celerity of the “New Times” of which it was an expression. p. 7) He talks about his own experiences in the tenants’ union ACORN in Splott, a town south of Cardiff where many ex-steelworkers have purchased former council houses. Although such an informal approach in an informal environment is understandable, it inevitably raises problems, evident in Evans’ own claim - notably in a book on class, not a casual chat - that the likes of current Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and previous Labour Party leadership candidate Owen Smith are “the left at the upper echelons”.

In recent years, it's seemed like a lot of nonfiction gets published on 'progressive' topics that might be good for the author's career, but doesn't make that much of a contribution to knowledge. A symbol for the ‘left behind’ working class who voted for Brexit, this was in reality a much broader social constituency. Many self-employed workers came to this situation from unemployment following the 2008 financial crisis.He redeems himself in the conclusion, having a go at the sections of the liberal left whose identity is protest and those building a nice media career off it, and looks to build a movement led by the working class, well outside the Labour Party and the stagnant bureaucracy of most of the trade unions, dragging the petite-bourgeoisie along with it and away from reaction. Cannock, an ex-Labour constituency since 2010, is a white enclave town in post-industrial Staffordshire with a higher percentage of ‘lower paid, manual and routine jobs’ than the national average. One speaker, true to his Marxist principles, responded: ‘everyone who doesn’t own the means of production.

Evans sees this precarity in the aspirational behaviour of the petty bourgeoisie, both fractions of which reject working-class life while desperately seeking to climb the social ladder.

State-authorised multiculturalism was accompanied by imperialist warmongering and intensifying state racism, but political elites were quick to blame enduring societal discontent on excessive ‘tolerance’, and the failings of ‘progressive’ neoliberalism were ascribed to the left. The Network was a way to bring these atomised workers together into an Industrial Union to develop common demands that would make work-life better for them all. Halfway through, an audience member raised their hand and asked the panel to define the ‘working class’. The petty bourgeoisie — the insecure class between the working class and the bourgeoisie — is hugely significant within global politics.

It was only from the late 1960s, when wider class militancy challenged a prevailing corporate and political paternalism, that Black radicals were able to form (critical) alliances with trade unionists as well as new left activists. These failures may be a consequence of us having built an organisation on a social base of people who aspired and failed to enter the PMC, and are frustrated with their lot. The charting of the history of education and housing in Britain and how this has been impacted by and influences politics and class gives a good framework for seeing some of the structural elements that create and maintain the petite bourgeoisie and gives a good background for what has gone before.Significantly, they built alliances with core sections of the industrial working class, as well as ancillary porters and cleaning workers. Thought this was great until the conclusion, at which point Evans made a few claims that were larger than justified or poorly argued. The flow of writing can also feel a little uneven at times, jumping sharply between hefty Marxist theory and light-hearted anecdote. One of the great cons of the New Labour era was the promise of a white collar, “knowledge economy” career for everyone who earned a degree.