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

Product Information

A Nation of Shopkeepers sheds a light on this mysterious class, exploring the class structure of contemporary Britain and the growth of the petty bourgeoisie following Thatcherism. It shows how the rise of home ownership, small landlordism and radical changes to the world of work have increasingly inculcated values of petty bourgeois individualism; how popular culture has promoted and reproduced values of aspiration and conspicuous consumption that militate against socialist organizing; and, most importantly, what the unstoppable rise of the petit-bourgeoisie means for the left.’ The petite-bourgeoisie — the insecure class between the working class and the bourgeoisie — is hugely significant within global politics. Yet it remains something of a mystery. Though the original supposed usage by Napoleon was meant to be disparaging, [10] the term has since been used positively in the British press. After all, imperialism is a capitalist imperative that benefits not only the ruling classes, but every class in the imperial core, even the most exploited ones. Perhaps because he is British, he is unaware of how strongly the desire to attain and retain the objective and subjective power of being an American motivates people’s politics. Even the working class in the imperial core *does* have something to lose — the massive privilege and power that simply being a part of the empire affords us. This fuels reactionary politics across all classes as strongly as domestic conditions do, if not even moreso. (For instance, the traditional petite bourgeoisie in the US has long identified China as a source of competition, which leads them to support right-wing politicians who are more willing to engage in openly racist denunciations of China, which in turn prompts the Democrats to try to match their “tough on China” rhetoric, thus ratcheting the entire Overton window even further towards racist, imperialist reactionary politics). A Nation of Shopkeepers explores the class structure of contemporary Britain and the growth of the petty bourgeoisie following Thatcherism. It shows how the rise of home ownership, small landlordism and huge changes to the world of work have promoted individualism and conspicuous consumption – and what this means for the left.

Evans argues that we should treat class as “active relationships” within capitalism and the “function” that different workers and agents play in the system. For example, the function of a low-paid supervisor is to discipline the workforce, giving them proximity to management and alignment with their interests. This helps to reproduce cultural, social, and ideological positions – such as anti-collectivism, opposition to trade union organising, rugged individualism, promotion-seeking and upward mobility. The number of self-employed workers in the UK is hard to believe, over five million in 2019! Many self-employed workers came to this situation from unemployment following the 2008 financial crisis. As Evans writes: “Crucially, this rise has been driven almost entirely by ‘solo self-employment’, i.e., own-account workers without employees, who comprise the absolute majority of the total self-employed. This is a huge change: in 1975, nearly half of the self-employed had employees.” One third of all employment growth since 2008 has been in solo self-employment, including over one million gig-economy workers. This exhibition showcased the collection (transferred from OUP in 1968) to the world. The catalogue remains the standard work on the collection and its formation, and is available online (PDF, 1.6MB). A Nation of Shopkeepers, 2001 Mike Savage, author of The Return of Inequality “A brilliantly readable exploration of the difficulties and the necessity of class analysis for any imaginably successful left politics.”

Other displays

Reading this book was a bit like marking a mathematical solution where the pupil gets every step wrong but somehow gets to the right answer at the end. Evans does this in a storming final chapter that excoriates Labourism and left wing activism - for both their disconnect from and contempt for working class people - and ultimately suggests a return to the workplace. Dan Evans, A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie, Repeater Books 2023. Buy a copy here. There's a lot of really interesting stuff in A Nation of Shopkeepers, and it's notable in that it doesn't feel as though the author is waffling for the sake of reaching a word count to justify the book's existence. 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. In contrast, this book feels important. It feels original. And it has personality, with Dan Evans weaving in his own experiences and generally departing from the convention that seems to exist where books engaging with the sociology of class must be unreadably dense and leave most readers feeling too stupid for the subject OR be dumbed down to the point where you doubt the author's credibility. However, this book is more than just an essay on class identity. Those familiar with Desolation Radio podcast will know Evans as a firm critic of the established Left (i.e., the Labour Party) in Wales and the UK. In A Nation of Shopkeepers , he argues convincingly that Labour has given up on serious class analysis. The party has become one of professional-managerial types, flogging the same old neoliberal capitalism dressed up in flimsy cultural progressivism. Its attempts at class discourse have been reduced to embarrassing faux-proletarian dress-up, typified by ex-Pontypridd MP (and pharma lobbyist) Owen Smith’s claim to be unfamiliar with the concept of a cappuccino .

A vivid and passionate account of the renewal of class divisions in British society and the visceral forms they take. Anyone who doubts the relevance of contemporary class divides is encouraged to read this book.” Walter Benn Michaels, author of The Beauty of a Social Problem “An incisive, erudite and provocative analysis of the changing class composition and dynamics in Britain. A Nation of Shopkeepers will be central to future debates on class in Britain and further afield.” I'll admit, I don't read much Marxist literature, and it will take study for me to fully understand this book. But from what I do understand, I like the critiques of the media's inability to understand the existence of people living in 'working class' towns who are not actually working class in terms of their social position, despite having accents/not having degrees from Oxbridge/etc. I also like the critiques of the snobbery and insularity of the English Left. Initially identified as a powerful political force by theorists like Marx and Poulantzas, the petit-bourgeoisie was expected to decline,as small businesses and small property were gradually swallowed up by monopoly capitalism.

A Nation of Shopkeepers

Dan Evans’ new book cuts through the nonsense and provides useful working definitions for fractions of the Middle Class and their role in the capitalist system. Building on the work of thinkers such as Poulantzas, Bourdieu and Marx, his analysis challenges syndicalists to learn how to build alliances with those fractions with whom we share common interests. Those of us on the far-left need to be clearer on the kind of future we want to build, and we should work to convince and organise those who would benefit. We want labour to be a place where we engage in meaningful work that is socially useful and makes us happy, where we have agency and autonomy in how we carry out tasks, where we make decisions collectively about what we do and where it goes. We also want them to be areas of relationships, friendships, collaboration and cooperation, where we can all flourish together. In this way, top-down nationalisation of industries is not satisfactory, and neither is a retreat to isolated self-employment. A society where bottom-up democratic Industrial Unions govern production and distribution could be a way of meeting our basic creative human needs in a way that follows the maxim, from each according to ability to each according to need. — A fascinating and accessible account of a social class that is too often neglected or misunderstood. This book powerfully makes the case for a sociologically informed analysis of the capitalist class structure today.”– Tom Mills, author of The BBC: Myth of a Public Service