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

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In any case the phrase did not originate with Napoleon, or even Barère. It first appears in a non-pejorative sense in The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith, who wrote:

This confused me. I remember thinking that there must be plenty of people who didn’t ‘own the means of production’, but who also wouldn’t qualify as ‘working class’. My parents were teachers with no power over the curriculum, but they were hardly proletarian. I flipped the problem round. Tradespeople controlled their own ‘production’, but I wouldn’t have called a plasterer or electrician ‘bourgeois’. Well-meaning though the speaker had been, I felt like his simplistic interpretation of class made little sense.The author dismisses the widely understood myth that class is about wages and instead proceeds with the Marxian understanding of being about one's social relationship at work and ownership of the means of production

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.” Evans does a terrific job of helping us break out of classic class schemas that are either too abstract to help practical political interventions or have not kept up to date with the evolving and complex developments in the formation of classes in Britain. ”– Mike Wayne, author of England’s Discontents shopkeepers". Napoleon.org. Angleterre…a people which he [Napoleon] so disdainfully used to call a nation of shop-keepers Yet, far from disappearing, structural changes to the global economy under neoliberalism have instead grown the petite-bourgeoisie, and the individualist values associated with it have been popularized by a society which fetishizes "aspiration", home ownership and entrepreneurship. So why has this happened? This is a brilliant and provocative book and I recommend it highly. Not because Evans gets it right as I am unconvinced by his primary thesis.The physical exhibition closed on 31 August 2021. The online exhibition includes images of all exhibits with captions. A Nation of Shopkeepers is a book exploring the history and present of the petite bourgeoisie, particularly in Britain. Evans looks at the complicated class structure of modern Britain, how education and housing play a part in class, and considers the impact of individualism upon politics and the left. The conclusion offers suggestions for how the petite bourgeoisie, which Evans positions as vital in modern Britain, could come together with the working class to actually make a difference.