Dissection of "petty bourgeoisie"

1. Identifying the name

As Feng Lin said, the term "petty bourgeoisie" should be regarded as a borrowing. The argument is passed on and quoted by people (especially online). It's like everyone mentions time and thinks they know the meaning of time, but if someone really asks you what time is, it's probably difficult for you to blurt out an answer that is comprehensive and can withstand scrutiny.

This article does not intend to give an explicit definition of petty bourgeoisie (that is, use some recognized and clear vocabulary to define it), but hopes to highlight its significance through analysis and dissection in speculation and history.

2. Two levels

It should be noted that "petty bourgeoisie" has two levels of meaning: one refers to living conditions. The second refers to value pursuit.

When it refers to the state of life, it basically means an elegant and leisurely individual existence, which contains a kind of praise. Investigating further, it is because after society and personal life began to transition from scarcity to well-off society, people said goodbye to poverty, running around and toiling and had free time, and actively sought spiritual aesthetics and pleasure in their free time. It is not to counteract the anxiety caused by material desires, but to fight against the blankness and nothingness of individual existence presented by free time. It must be mentioned that this kind of spiritual aesthetics and pleasure is always realized and completed through commodity exchange. In a word, it is "enjoyment" (aesthetics) and "le" (pleasure) bought with money.

In my opinion, when people talk about "petty bourgeoisie", they mean more of its second level - the level of value pursuit, that is, it does not refer to a state of actual life and activities. It is the value orientation in people's conscious activities: directing value attention to one's own state of existence, thereby seeking self-acceptance, self-satisfaction and self-movation.

3. Objectification, Desire and Humanization

The second level of meaning of "petty bourgeoisie" has been more derogatory by people because it is used in the originally harsh environment. Seems too weak and avoidant in real life.

People undoubtedly seek freedom. Human social activities and the ideal human society also seek to maximize human liberation. What makes a human being human is that in the process of reproduction and evolution, human beings possess and hone great wisdom and rationality. With the help of intelligent insight and rational critical power, mankind has been able to establish a moral and legal system, create science and humanities and arts, and develop brilliant technology and material civilization. Marx said that freedom is the understanding of necessity. It is (and only) through the great human reason that we can understand necessity more deeply and gain greater and higher freedom.

However, reality is always complex and difficult, and the road to human freedom must also be tortuous and circuitous. For example, when people exchange for a greater freedom at the expense of restricting a freedom, the results of this restriction and freedom often constitute a higher level of oppression on the person themselves that people did not expect (such as, Human alienation brought about by moral imprisonment and industrial civilization).

Rationality is a double-edged sword. It is originally intended to serve the liberation of people and regards people as the subject and purpose. But in analysis and criticism, it has to treat people as objects, and in social practice it often treats people as means.

When people realize that they have been alienated as means and tools, they will naturally seek new liberation. On the one hand, it is the arrangement of rationality and the promotion of social practice that cause human alienation and bondage. On the other hand, we must rely on reason to regain freedom and liberation. There is no other way.

We might as well call this situation that reduces people from purpose and subject to means and tools as the "materialization" of people.

It is out of dissatisfaction and resistance to the objectification of human beings that the irrational trend of thought with existentialism as its peak emerged in the West in the last century. Sexual liberation and hippies are just the results and manifestations of this resistance movement. Its spiritual core is to emphasize the meaning of existence, and to actively reject "arrangement" after realizing the absurd fate of life being thrown and arranged. While people enthusiastically embraced and eulogized their living life experiences, they also cast their rational gaze on the human spirit and the mechanisms and mysteries of conscious activities. From this, psychoanalysis and various psychological theories were born.

This is a movement that discovers and affirms human life and desires. It opens up a field unknown to human beings before. In a brand-new picture and picture, human beings gain understanding of themselves. A new, more complete understanding.

However, perhaps it is the laziness of human nature itself that makes people seem to have found an excuse to vulgarize the meaning of human beings because of this movement. On the one hand, people openly pursue the endless satisfaction of desires, thinking that The increase of personal wealth and sexual liberation are all about the liberation of human nature. On the other hand, they give up rational reflection and criticism, believing that as long as they comply with the instinctive desires of life, they can achieve the ideal freedom of mankind.

After refusing to be "arranged", people only blindly affirm their natural and primitive instincts, indulge in the satisfaction of desires, only use reason to direct the construction of desires, and reject and give up rationality. The world, especially a critique of human nature itself.

In addiction, we give up excellence and the active pursuit of higher possibilities, thereby closing human beings in the confines of desire and not being able to transcend or be free - we can call it human. The "desire transformation". (Just like making human beings slide from one end of "objects" to the other end of "animals") Reification and desire should be regarded as specific stages and processes in which human beings gradually get rid of ignorance and strive for and realize liberation. In the history of human beings, , they mean both liberation and imprisonment. Because mankind's pursuit of freedom and liberation will be a process that will never end. The history of mankind is the history of the continuous pursuit of maximum human freedom, and the history of "humanization" that saves people from all kinds of dehumanization.

4. Put down the whip and pick up the fan

The petty bourgeoisie sentiment is to put down the whip of rational criticism and pick up the fan of fanning the cold, the fire and the sensation, and remove the coldness and coldness of reality. The harshness of society is hidden, disguised, or turned a blind eye, refusing to criticize and reflect on society, and seeking self-acceptance, self-satisfaction, and self-movation in escape.

The rationality of the petty bourgeoisie sentiment lies in the fact that a modern society with a full division of labor will not require each of its members to assume the responsibility of social criticism. People who are well-fed and clothed have full freedom to satisfy and move themselves. But there are two things we must oppose: 1. Thinking that petty bourgeoisie is a superior, elegant, fully free and humane life, and its values ????are also the most advanced - but the fact is that petty bourgeoisie is just a compromise of desire And addiction, which through human desire, closes the possibility of higher freedom for human beings. 2. Let petty bourgeoisie enter the elite consciousness of a society and become a universal and advocated value orientation - it is very terrible for a society to lose the power and power of rational criticism (the law is rigid and limited, and it is not enough to maintain continue the progress of a society).