A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
Rule of thumb to define "petite bourgoise": if you lose your business you risk becoming proleteriat (lumpen or not).
Freelancers and artists can slide towards artisanal reaction and hold bourgoisie sensibilities as a means of survival under capitalism:
If you own a business but don't employ other workers, you're neither bourgeois nor proletarian (unless you're an independent contractor selling your labour power), but you are very likely to have petit bourgeois aspirations. Artisans are always under pressure by the bourgeoisie and will either end up joining them or, in most cases, being "demoted" to a wage worker
The frame of reference is my partner who is a photographer and gets projects like weddings, concerts, products etc. Same with her mom who is a puppet maker and painter, also gets contracted for different projects. So they are essentially demoted to a wage worker if I understand correctly, since they still sell their labour.
They don't sell their labour [power], they sell the product of their labour; as a result, assuming they don't employ anyone (or use contract labour), they are artisans, a fairly small but distinct class that shares traits with both the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie.
Actually, wouldn't this make them an artisan? Not proletarian because they own the tools they use to do their work, but not bourgeois because they also don't exploit any workers other than themselves.
But they have control over where and when their labor power is utilized, which is what makes their situation different.
This is a good question, thanks for asking it. It makes me realize there is more of a spectrum between lumpenproletariat and monopoly capitalist, although there are actors that are very clearly in one category, there are areas where it blends. And of course it's always in flux.
They sell the output of their labour, not the right to use their labour for a day/week/month at the going rate for labour power (the average cost to reproduce a worker plus maybe some bonus pay for scarcer labour skills or a bribe for being a labour overseer).
In the one case, the service of photography is being sold at the going rate for photography and no surplus value is extracted from the labour. In the other case labour power itself is purchased, and the capitalist is now responsible for extracting as much useful input as possible from the labourer during the time they've purchased the labour. In that way they can profit from surplus value produced in excess of the cost they paid for the labour power.
A key feature about the classification is that small business owners do not enter negotiations with an owner for their value of their labour-power, they themselves are the owner and decide that. That being said, being petite-bourgeois does not automatically make one better well economically nor does it mean that you work less hours than working class people which is something that confuses a lot of people, a good example is farmers, these are commonly viewed as petite-bourgeois for their relation to capital yet everyone acknowledges that they're pretty much enslaved to their capital.
Because they control more than just their labor power (some capital), but not enough capital to not have to work. They will get crushed in a downturn so I guess that's where the size reference comes in- bigger bourgeoisie can withstand bigger downturns.
Not sure why we have to use French words but c'est la vie I guess!
the alternative would be german and no-one would take us seriously if we went around talking about the "Kleinbürgertum"
Omg ok yea, case closed. French please.
Because French is a sexy language.
username checks out 
It's the nature of capitalism. To put it bluntly, everyone is told to be nice with each other, but beat out the competition.
You're special, believe in yourself and you'll succeed!
But it's obvious from the start that only a few can succeed.
This truth is too painful to face with, the successful end up withdrawing into their tiny ponds, filtering out information in ways that suits their interest, they're disconnected from reality and have no interest in seeking truth. They just want to be validated.
The only way for every individual to succeed is to give up on individual success, work together, share the fruits of our labor, stop hoarding dead labor, but that requires bravery, courage, class consciousness, it requires betrayal of personal interest and trust in others, to not betray you.
Yeah I've found that my current social group of people that I talk to all aspire to get more money, but mainly with changing jobs or getting a higher education. Is this actually considered wrong from a ML perspective?
marxism leninism is not a lifestyle guide
There isn't an easy answer to that question. You got to read the theory and work together with your group to figure out the best possible solution you can come up with, for your given circumstances.
I know it sucks to hear and we all want to press the socialism button, but you just can't do that. It would have happened already if it was that easy.
lol nice, the metal gear solid to communism pipeline in one comment 
The bourgeoisie are defined by their ownership of enough means of production that they do not have to use their labor. Petit bourgeoisie own enough means of production to make money but not enough to not have to work. Proletarians own nothing but their labor power and must sell it to to survive.
Artists that are struggling to survive will almost all end up getting a job. They are proles with delusions of grandeur. Just like all those construction trade businesses owners who dream of working for themselves they find out that they still work for bosses they just have to also manage payroll, supplies, scheduling, etc. Almost all of them fail and next to none leave a good enough business to pass on to the next generation so that they don't fall back to being proles.
And that is an important thing to remember you are born into your class. Some individuals might move up the class ladder but they are an infinitesimal percentage and many of them don't pass that change of class on to the next generations. That is why we have to abolish class because it isn't about one person working hard and reaping the benefits. It is a system where some people are born to luxury while the rest of us work for them to pay them rent.
Artists that are struggling to survive will almost all end up getting a job. They are proles with delusions of grandeur.
Why would this be delusions of grandeur? An artist is still selling their labour to work for those with capital are they not? Usually they are just trying to make a living wage.
Expecting art to pay a living wage is a misunderstanding of its use value. If an artist wants a living wage they have to get a job making art for the man. (become a proletarian) Or do commissioned work (become a petit bourgeoisie) but managing a business is hard work and the market is extremely competitive because there is not much demand.
if they work for a wage, yes. freelance artists control their own labour (they control price of product, their hours etc), which is why they are considered bourgeois.
Don't feel apprehensive about asking questions. So long as they're genuine and in good faith, people here have always been more than happy to help in my experience.
I'll link you a comment thread where I asked similar questions about artisans a few months ago and got great answers from @Cowbee@lemmygrad.ml and @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml. I also found the (very short!) excerpt that @darkernations@lemmygrad.ml linked, "Stalin's Shoemaker", quite helpful.
Here's the comment thread: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9364892/7108472
Petty bourgeoisie ≠ bourgeoisie. They are best not understood as just the bourgeoisie but slightly smaller, but better understood as essentially a distinct class. The petty bourgeoisie do not necessarily always have class interests aligned with the bourgeoisie. The Manifesto talks about how the petty bourgeoisie may even side with the proletariat at times. It depends upon whether or not they see their future prospects under the capitalist society favorable such that they may grow to become a member of the bourgeoisie, or whether or not they see it as more likely the bourgeoisie will ruin them and they will be hurled into the proletariat. In the latter case, they may find themselves more sympathetic to the proletariat, wanting a social safety net for the workers in anticipation that they may join them soon.
The property relations are also not the same between petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie are either self-employed, meaning their own their own means of production directly, or they run a fairly small business, so there may technically be antagonisms between the socialization of labor and private appropriation, but the antagonisms are very small. There is a reason you sometimes you hear common people talk positively about "mom and pop shops," because typically with smaller enterprises there is a less of a disconnect between the ownership and the workers so conditions tend to be a bit better than working for a giant faceless megacorporation owned by shareholders who never even stepped foot in the corporation in their lives.
The small scale of petty bourgeoisie property also makes it incapable of being a basis for a socialist society, since a socialist society introduces socialized appropriation on a national scale, so the enterprise must be on a national scale or else the socialist government would be introducing a contradiction between socialized appropriation and private production rather than resolving one. Economic systems aren't moral ideas written on paper, but real physical machines in the real world, that require real infrastructure and computational technologies to run it, and this will limit the scale in which you can meaningfully operate an enterprise.
If a sector of the economy is dominated by the petty bourgeoisie, it means the technology and infrastructure simply has not advanced enough in that sector to nationalize it. If you nationalize it, you will not physically be capable of operating it on a national scale, which will lead to huge bureaucratic problems if you try to do so anyways. The failure of the government to then plan that sector will cause the spontaneous rise in a black market to resolve the government's failures, and if you try to then crush that black market by force, you will just be destroying something that came into existence due to your own government's failures, and thus destroying your own economy.
Small-scale production is simply not the basis for socialist society, and outlawing small-scale production makes zero sense from a Marxian socioeconomic analysis. The proletariat thus can only meaningfully expropriate the property of the bourgeoisie, and then has to focus on encouraging the development of the forces of production, because in the long-run, that will cause much of the petty bourgeoisie to destroy themselves, and the rest to become into the bourgeoisie, which then allows for the gradual extension of that expropriation.
Yes, free lancers and struggling artists are also members of the petty bourgeoisie. That is not an insult because these labels aren't moral judgements, and it's not even a declaration that these people are the "enemy," as, again, the Manifesto points out that the petty bourgeoisie can side with the working class. A self-employed struggling artist might still support working class movements precisely because they are struggling, believing they will likely end up having to get a job in the long-run so they might as well support the proletariat class, and many do. But they also might not, as some might see themselves as just a misunderstood great artist who will one day catch a break and their art will take off, and they will become rich and famous, and because of that belief they could also see their interests as aligned with the bourgeoisie.
The point is just that petty bourgeoisie (1) have their own class interests which are not necessarily aligned with bourgeoisie or proletariat and can side with both depending upon the historical conditions, (2) has a different property form of private production which is too underdeveloped to be the material basis of socialist society as it is distinct from the socialized production of the bourgeoisie, and (3) therefore do not have the same relations to production as either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat.
It is quite common in capitalist societies for the interests of the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie to clash. There are not literally the same class as the bourgeoisie that just happens to be smaller. They are more of a distinct social class. This social class also has a different trajectory to it. The proportion of petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie in capitalist society is always shrinking in proportion to proletariat with the development of the forces of production. But when the petty bourgeoisie's numbers shrink, it is because they are destroyed by the bourgeoisie, and so in the long-run, all the petty bourgeoisie are doomed to destruction by the bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie cannot destroy themselves, at least not entirely. Only the proletariat can end the bourgeoisie as a class. The trajectories of the two classes are thus also different.
Because that's literally what "petite bourgeoisie" means in french...
Employing wage slaves is the same whether 5 or 5,000, if they are not given a voice in how the organization operates and profits utilized.