Contenu du sommaire : Les classes moyennes

The middle classes and history, Serge Berstein. Whatever the Marxists said, the middle classes are not going counter to history. On the contrary, they have been powerful motors for France's contemporary history. They remain to be defined : neither bourgeois, nor proletarian, caught in a representation of society they take pleasure in, determined to climb, and often so fragile. They should be studied without preconceived ideas, using historical hypotheses and methods. Serge Berstein opens the discussion.

The concept of middle classes. Sociological notion or political slogan ? Klaus-Peter Sick. From the end of the 18th century to the 1930s, the changes in the notion of middle classes reflected the progressive modernization of French society. Long associated with an Aristotelian concept of politics, it was transformed by the emergence of liberal democracy and the era of the masses, and became little by little a gear, both symbolic and decisive, in France's political and social regulation.

The notion of an independent middle class. A survey of research, François Gresle. Unshakable and learned, the sociologists — followed by the historians ? — deny the middle classes their independent status. What if independence was not an empty word ? If it was necessary to look, far from the statistics, at internalized values and a certain appetite for the quality of life ? A monotonous bibliography reread.

Are craftsman the most popular of the middle classes ? Bernard Zarca. The very idea of the craftsman class appeared in France only after the First World War, as the resuit of a real work of creation aiming at building the image of a harmonious and fluid social body. But this typical product of republican culture displays many ambiguities, as shown by the complex and circuitous history of craftsmen's representative organizations.

The social and political identity of shop-keepers, Nonna Mayer. As early as the 19th century, the shops were a particular social category in the nebula of the middle class. But the perception of its social identity and political leanings has been evolving in the 20th century. A series of studies carried out from 1966 to 1988 shows that it is still depending on neigh-borhood and region, pulled between the " little " and the " big ", between " workers " and " bourgeois ", and still as uncomfortable with this binary logic. But — and this is new — small traders identify more readily today with the " average French men ".

Farmers between old and new, Isabel Boussard. Farmers, so strongly threatened today, are a social group typical of the " old " middle classes. They might participate more than generally realized in the realm of the " new " middle classes. Farmers have managed to maintain their social status within a rapidly changing rural world.

A prelude to bourgeois unionism. The Association for the defense of the middle classes (1907-1939), Gilles Le Béguec. This association, founded in Belgium in 1908 and which spread to France, was both one of the first unions for the social and professional defense of the middle classes and a parallel political group. It was able, at least until the wake of the First World War, not only to convince higher society to pay attention to the problems of the middle classes, but also to help the middle classes to obtain a clearer view of their distinct interests and to question the place which they had in society and that which they should have.

Middle class unionism. The CFPME, Sylvie Guillaume. It was the Confédération générale des petites et moyennes entreprises, the small and medium business federation, launched in 1944 and over which Léon Gingembre reigned, which contributed to defining the social category of small businesmen, not the reverse. By converting demonstrations to regular and pacified negotiation, this trade unionism played its full rôle as a social institution : the fact is rare enough in French society to be noted.

Civil servants' unionism (1900-1981), Jeanne Siwek-Pouydesseau. Sociologically and politically, civil service wage earners are a heterogeneous but nevertheless specifie social category. One could even hypothesize that they constitute the archetype of the wage earner of the future. Feminization and growing numbers, among other changes over a century, have not been accompanied by a radical transformation of the types of association and claims of the civil servants.

The concealment of the concept of middle classes during the German Occupation, Jean Ruhlmann. The Vichy " national revolution " concealed in its official discourse the concept of middle classes. The middle classes had no place in the corporative ideology which by definition denied any class organization of society. The discourse, nevertheless, was aimed at farmers, shopkeepers and small businessmen who formed one of the foundations of support for Marshal Pétain, even if Vichy failed in its attempt to give them a specifie place in the " new France ".