While i'm on the Education Station - the term is petite bourgeoise! It comes up pretty often in socialist convos and it's, I think, a term people point to as one of the jargony things we say a lot. Lemme do a quick breakdown of it for anyone unfamiliar with the idea. https://twitter.com/leonardpierce/status/1348682584046383105

So there exists the Bourgeoise and the Proletariat, y'all know those two, right? The owners and the workers. Those who hold capital, and those who sell their labour. There exists several other classes outside of this duality, and the Petite Bourgeoise, or the PB, are one of them

PB are people who have obtained some small amount of capital - Small business owners, essentially - their class politics tend to align with the bourg for obvious reasons, but not always. They tend to be wealthier than proles, although not always.

One of the reasons that small business owners (PB) are given a lot of material allowances by the state btw is cause they're a dangerous class to piss off - their adjacency to power and capital makes them significantly scarier to the ruling class than the workers

Think about how much them rifles you see the fuckin' nazis waving costs. Think about that dude toting antique SA Army revolvers and how much you think he makes.

Its also why they're heralded in the media and society as some kinda higher class of citizen - they effectively are. You can exploit this if you're a small business owner who aligns themselves with the workers and use that power against the system p effectively.

PB tend to just replicate the wider class conflict on a smaller scale - they make a mil a year from a used car dealership their dad gave them and they treat their employees like shit and vote for trump and so on.

I could go into more but any breakdown is gonna be limited. They are an interesting group with interesting class dynamics. They have been historically both allies and enemies of progress, but their material incentives put them firmly on the side of capitalists as a group.

You know that thing about "Americans see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"? that is, kinda, sorta, in a way, about the PB. They see themselves as the ruling class, but they are like fleas when compared with the predators like Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc.

In America PB (and PB asperants) have developed the kind of wackadoo conspiracy nonsense to explain why they're not billionaires - the Corrupt Government Keeping Them Down sorta deal. You get the picture.
Here's a reddit thread about them: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/5xjiet/what_exactly_is_so_bad_about_the_smallscale/

Oh! One important thing about the PB (and other classes in Marxism) is that, for all intents and purpose, their class exists only temporarily. Capitalism will eliminate them, or revolution will force them to protect capital or work with us to demolish it. One or the other