The petty-bourgeois character of the Turkish power-state makes me wonder whether such a tight relationship with a particular class is a must for all power-states. I don’t know enough about contemporary Russia or China to even make a wild guess, but I know a few things about the original power-state—the Second Reich. That state was dominated by Rhenish capital – the bourgeoisie proper – and the owners of large estates in the East – the infamous Junker aristocracy. Midcentury scholars saw the landlords as the more powerful element; from the 1980s on the tide has shifted toward the bourgeoisie. The mere fact that it’s possible for succeeding generations of scholarship to see the situation differently makes me think that there was no one class or class fraction that had a unique relationship with the state. So the Turkish case does not constitute the norm.
That makes me wonder: What kind of additional dynamics can we expect to arise from the petty bourgeois menagerie? More violence or less? More violence of a particular kind and less of another? More or less going power?
Off the top of my head, I’m thinking that the petty bourgeois connection must make constant and systematic scapegoating both more urgent and easier for the power-state. It is more urgent because the petty bourgeoisie is highly sensitive to economic crises on account of the limited wealth of its members. During the 1999-2000 crisis, some rather memorable acts of protest from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie troubled the Turkish government. In order to avoid that, the power-state must always be able to point fingers away from its direction.
It is easier because the petty bourgeoisie is wracked, more than any other class, by resentment. Not anger, resentment—that abrasive combination of frustration and jealousy felt toward individuals perceived to have higher status than one’s own. Not being rich in any kind of capital – economic, cultural, or symbolic – the petty bourgeoisie is always potentially subject to symbolic violence from multiple directions. It therefore has a big psychic incentive to lump all of its “superiors” under the same rubric, see them as part of the same conspiracy to hold it down. If it can convince itself that there is indeed a conspiracy, its subjugation will acquire sacred meaning – perhaps all of its suffering was for a noble reason – and seem manageable.
So here’s the golden question: How do you deal with widespread, quasi-rational, and state-supported resentment?
The Politics of the Sun 