Petite Bourgeoisie: Visions of the Future

Petite Bourgeoisie: Visions of the Future

Note: This article is the personal opinion of the author and does not reflect the views of the CNBCIndonesia.com editorial team.

Introduction to the Series on the Death of Economics: In a world that moves ever faster yet feels increasingly empty, we invite you to pause for a moment, look back, gaze inward, and peer ahead.

The Series on the Death of Economics is not merely a collection of critiques. It is an honest effort to view economics from an angle rarely illuminated: from a side that is not always efficient, not always rational, but entirely human.

Here, we aim to refresh our memory of why economics exists—not just as a tool for calculation, but as a mirror of the joys, achievements, sufferings, inequalities, and hopes of our era.

Rafli first encountered the term not in the market, not at home, nor from his father’s stories, but in a lecture hall at Sciences Po. In the Economic Sociology class, the term emerged as part of a broader framework on how social classes form and endure.

Petite bourgeoisie, the French lecturer explained it emotionlessly, like explaining a law of physics. It is a class in the middle. Not substantial enough to be protected by the established capitalist system. Not small enough to fully become wage labourers. They possess something—small businesses and skills—but not enough to feel secure.

They live by daily decisions. From the ability to read shifting markets, and from the courage to take risks without a safety net. If they err, they fall alone. If they succeed, they merely survive. They were the buffers of the economy in the past, when we were not yet so familiar with formality.

And, the lecturer said, in many classical theories, especially those influenced by Marx’s thought, this class is considered unstable. It will be absorbed by big capital or fall into the working class; it will disappear.

Rafli noted that sentence. Like all the other students in the room. But for some reason, he could not continue writing. The word did not feel like theory. It felt… like something he had seen in his childhood.

And unbidden, an image appeared in his mind: a photograph of an elderly man standing in front of a fabric shop in Bukittinggi. Rolls of colour hanging behind him—red, blue, yellow, fading with time. His face calm, not grand, and unrecorded in history books. But he stood tall, as if his entire life, with all its uncertainties, he held in his own hands.

He was Said Rahman, Rafli’s grandfather, whose life somehow matched the description from that Sciences Po class that afternoon. He no longer heard the lecturer’s voice. The class continued, slides changed, new terms appeared, other hands kept writing. But for Rafli, something had come loose from its place. He stared at his own notes. Petite bourgeoisie: the class that will disappear. That sentence felt too simple, too clean. If it were true, how could he be here?

He imagined retracing his life. He was born into a home that never lacked. Not rich, but sufficient. Enough not to worry about tomorrow, enough to believe the world could be relied upon, and enough to dream of university—yes, even to Sciences Po in Paris.

His father, Pak Adit, never spoke much. But his life itself was an explanation. Wake up in the morning, go to the office, return with the same rhythm. In his office at Bank Indonesia, the world was arranged in numbers. Risks were calculated. Uncertainties were named. Everything moved within understandable bounds. And for young Rafli, that felt like truth. That life should indeed be like that. Measured, guarded, controlled.

He had never really questioned it before. How his father got there. What had to be left behind to make it all possible. Stories about his grandfather were always brief. Fabric merchant, simple life, hard work.

Until now. Sitting in Paris, with a term that did not even originate from his own world, but seemed to explain his origins, Rafli began to see that his life was not something standalone. It was the result of decisions and structures. Rafli recalled the stories about his grandfather from long ago.

Said Rahman surely never read Marx. He never called himself part of any class. But he knew one thing: that the world he lived in would not suffice for his son. And with that conviction, he chose something he had never done himself: to entrust his son to the system.

He forced young Pak Adit (Rafli’s father) to study. No compromises. If he spent too long helping at the shop, he would say curtly: “Enough, go home, study!”

The lapau even became a strictly forbidden place. If young Pak Adit was seen sitting there, laughing with the others, Said Rahman would come and say without room for negotiation: “You are not for here.” Then the sentence that was always remembered, even if not fully understood: “You are a school person.” Later, you will become a uniformed person, he said.

No praise, no tenderness. Only consistent pressure. Study, attend class, don’t follow the market. As if he were closing off the path and pulling his son out of the world he knew too well and did not want to pass on.

And from there, something was born. Pak Adit was no longer a market child. He became a school child. Books replaced the lapau, the classroom replaced the shop; eventually, he was no longer petite bourgeoisie like his father. He became a uniformed person, a tie-wearing person, someone who lived from the system. Said Rahman never called it social transformation. But every step his son took felt like a victory. And they were not alone.

In Jakarta, that story repeated. There were stories of university friends