Tradesmen and philistinism as a social group and a phenomenon of bourgeois culture: a Marxist approach

The article is devoted to the place and role of the tradesmanes and the philistinism as a petty bourgeois stratum of urban residents who, engaged in handicraft and trade activities on the "sidelines" of the agricultural economy of feudal society, turned out to be the vanguard of the bourgeoisie as such and the pioneers of the capitalist mode of production. The history of the philistinism began in the IX-XI centuries, when ancient cities were revived and new ones were built in feudal Europe, the first inhabitants of which were mainly artisans and traders who ensured the exchange of products of labor between the city and the village. With them began the history of the bourgeoisie, its development from the petty bourgeoisie as small producers, conducting commodity production, to the merchants, owners of manufactories, factories, plants and bank owners, using hired labor. This layer of townspeople, directly connected with material production, eventually gave rise to a special socio-psychological personality type, which subsequently spread among representatives of different layers and professions of the urban population of modern and contemporary times. The basis of the existence of the philistinism is commodity production and trade as a means of exchange between commodity producers, which plays a contradictory role in society, since its task is to obtain commercial benefits which opens up space for deception, fraud and other violations of the existing norms of morality and ethics in society. The trading side of the life of the tradesmanes forms in them a special type of personality with a corresponding psychology and way of thinking, which subsequently spreads widely in society and is adopted by representatives of other layers and professions of the urban population.