Petite bourgeoisie (French pronunciation: [pəti buʁʒwa]) is the political, economic, and historical term (small bourgeoisie) that originally denoted the middle classes in the 18th and early-19th centuries. Beginning from the middle of the 19th century, the German economist Karl Marx and Marxist theorists applied the term petite bourgeoisie to identify the socio-economic stratum of the bourgeoisie that comprised small-scale capitalists such as shop-keepers and government employees.^{[citation needed]}

The petite bourgeousie are economically distinct from the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat, who are social-class strata who entirely rely on the sale of their labor-power for survival; and also are distinct from the capitalist class haute bourgeoisie who own the means of production, and thus can buy the labor-power of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat to work the means of production. Though the petite bourgeoisie can buy the labor of others, unlike the haute bourgeoisie, they typically work alongside their employees; and, although there are business owners, they do not own a controlling share of the means of production.^{[citation needed]} Because the means of production owned by the petite bourgeoisie do not generate enough surplus value to permit the accumulation of capital to be reinvested to production, they cannot be economically reproduced in scale sufficient to constitute capital proper.^{[citation needed]}