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Bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
Bourgeois redirects here. For other uses, see Bourgeois In Marxist philosophy the bourgeoisie is the social class
(disambiguation).
who owns the means of production and whose societal
In political economy, political philosophy, sociology, concerns are the value of property and the preservation
of capital, in order to ensure the perpetuation of their
economic supremacy in society.[3] Joseph Schumpeter instead saw the creation of new bourgeoisie as the driving force behind the capitalist engine, particularly entrepreneurs who took risks in order to bring innovation
to industries and the economy through the process of
creative destruction.[4]
1 Etymology
The Modern French word bourgeois derived from the Old
French burgeis (walled city), which derived from bourg
(market town), from the Old Frankish burg (town); in
other European languages, the etymologic derivations are
the Middle English burgeis, the Middle Dutch burgher,
the German Brger, the Modern English burgess, and
the Polish buruazja, which occasionally is synonymous
with the intelligentsia.[5] In English, bourgeoisie (a
French citizen-class) identied a social class oriented to
economic materialism and hedonism, and to upholding
the extreme political and economic interests of the capitalist ruling class.[6] In the 18th century, before the French
Revolution (178999), in the French feudal order, the
masculine and feminine terms bourgeois and bourgeoise
identied the rich men and women who were members of
the urban and rural Third Estate the common people
of the French realm, who violently deposed the absolute
monarchy of the Bourbon King Louis XVI (r. 177491),
his clergy, and his aristocrats. Hence, since the 19th century, the term bourgeoisie usually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper class of a
capitalist society.[7]
The bourgeoisie includes a historical range of socioeconomic classes. As such, in the Western world, since
the late 18th century, the bourgeoisie is a social class
characterized by their ownership of capital, and their
related culture"; hence, the personal terms bourgeois
(masculine) and bourgeoise (feminine) culturally identify the man or woman who is a member of the wealthiest social class of a given society, and their materialistic
worldview (Weltanschauung).
1
DENOTATIONS
History
3 Denotations
3.1 The Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
In the Middle Ages (AD 5001500), the bourgeois usually was a self-employed businessman such as a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur whose economic role in
society was being the nancial intermediary to the feudal
3.3
landlord and the peasant who worked the ef, the land
of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of the
Industrial Revolution (17501850) and of industrial capitalism, the bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling
class who owned the means of production (capital and
land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed
forces and legal system, police forces and prison system). In such a society, the bourgeoisies ownership of
the means of production enabled their employment and
exploitation of the wage-earning working class (urban
and rural), people whose sole economic means is labour;
and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the socio-political challenges of the lower classes,
and so preserved the economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained employers.[11]
In the 19th century, the German economist Karl Marx
distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist: (i) the
functional capitalist, the business administrator of the
means of production; and (ii) the rentier capitalist whose
livelihood derives either from the rent of property or
from the interest-income produced by nance capital,
or both.[12] In the course of economic relations, the
working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in
class struggle, wherein the capitalists exploit the workers, whilst the workers resist their economic exploitation,
which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to earn a living, he or she seeks employment
from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods
and services that are property of the employer, who sells
them for a price. The money generated by the sale of the
goods and services yields three sums (i) the wages of the
worker, (ii) the costs of production, and (iii) prot (surplus value). Thereby, the capitalist prots (makes extra
money) by selling the surplus value of the labour of the
workers; hence is new wealth created through work.
3
system of state capitalism, et cetera.
La Moyenne Bourgeoisie
People who belong to the moyenne bourgeoisie or middle
bourgeoisie, have solid incomes and assets, but without
the aura those who have become established at a higher
level. They tend to belong to a family that has been bourgeois for three or more generations. Some members of
this class may have relatives from similar backgrounds,
or may even have aristocratic connections. The moyenne
Besides describing the social class who own the means bourgeoisie would be the equivalent of the British and
of production, the Marxist usage of the term bour- American upper-middle classes.
geois also describes the consumerist style of life derived La Grande Bourgeoisie
from the ownership of capital and real property. As an The grande bourgeoisie are families that have been boureconomist Karl Marx acknowledged the bourgeois indus- geois since the 19th century, or for at least four or ve
triousness that created wealth, yet criticised the moral generations. Members of these families tend to marry
hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie when they ignored the true with the aristocracy or make other advantageous marorigins of their wealth the exploitation of the prole- riages. This bourgeoisie family has acquired an estabtariat, the urban and rural workers. Further sense deno- lished historical and cultural heritage over the decades.
tations of bourgeois describe ideologic concepts such The names of these families are generally known in the
as bourgeois freedom, which is opposed to substantive city where they reside, and their ancestors have often conforms of freedom; bourgeois independence; bourgeois tributed to the regions history. These families are repersonal individuality; the bourgeois family; et cetera, spected and revered. They belong to the upper class, and
all derived from owning capital and property. (See: The in the British class system would be considered part of the
Communist Manifesto, 1848.)
gentry. In the French-speaking countries they are sometimes referred la petite haute bourgeoisie.
3.2
Nomenklatura
La Haute Bourgeoisie
The haute bourgeoisie is a social rank in the bourgeoisie
that can only be acquired through time. In France, it is
composed of bourgeois families that have existed since
the French Revolution. They hold only honorable professions and have experienced many illustrious marriages in
4
their familys history. They have rich cultural and historical heritages, and their nancial means are more than secure. These families exude an aura of nobility, which prevents them from certain marriages or occupations. They
only dier from nobility in that due to circumstances, the
lack of opportunity, and/or political regime, they have
not been ennobled. These people nevertheless live a lavish lifestyle, enjoying the company of the great artists of
the time. In France, the families of the haute bourgeoisie
are also referred to as les 200 familles, a term which was
coined in the rst half of the 20th century. Michel Pinon
and Monique Pinon-Charlot have studied the lifestyle of
the French bourgeoisie, and how they boldly guard their
world from the nouveau riche, or newly rich.
BOURGEOIS CULTURE
power, for mutual benet and prot, the Mussolini Fascist rgime transcended ideology in order to merge the
political and nancial interests of Prime Minister Benito
Mussolini with the political and nancial interests of the
bourgeoisie, the Catholic social circles who constituted
the ruling class of Italy.
Philosophically, as a materialist creature, the bourgeois
man was irreligious; thus, to establish an existential distinction between the supernatural faith of the Roman
Catholic Church and the materialist faith of temporal religion; in The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s, the priest Giuseppe Marino said that:
economic results it yields to them. In that sense, contemporary societies are bourgeois to the degree that they
practice the mores of the small-business shop culture of
early modern France; which the writer mile Zola (1840
1902) naturalistically presented, analysed, and ridiculed
in the twenty-two-novel series (18711893) about Les
Rougon-Macquart family; the thematic thrust is the necessity for social progress, by subordinating the economic
sphere to the social sphere of life.[16]
The 17th-century French playwright Molire (162273) catalogued the social-climbing essence of the bourgeoisie in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670).
by the mores of the ruling-class, wherein their superimposed value system is abided by each social class (the
upper, the middle, the lower) regardless of the socio-
Conspicuous consumption
The critical analyses of the bourgeois mentality by the
German intellectual Walter Benjamin (18921940) indicated that the shop culture of the petite bourgeoisie established the sitting room as the centre of personal and
family life; as such, the English bourgeois culture is a
sitting-room culture of prestige through conspicuous consumption. The material culture of the bourgeoisie concentrated on mass-produced luxury goods of high quality; between generations, the only variance was the materials with which the goods were manufactured. In the
early part of the 19th century, the bourgeois house contained a home that rst was stocked and decorated with
hand-painted porcelain, machine-printed cotton fabrics,
machine-printed wallpaper, and Sheeld steel (crucible
and stainless). The utility of these things was inherent to
their practical functions. By the latter part of the 19th
6
century, the bourgeois house contained a home that had
been remodelled by conspicuous consumption. Here, the
goods were bought to display wealth (discretionary income), rather than for their practical utility. The bourgeoisie had transposed the wares of the shop window to
the sitting room, where the clutter of display signalled
bourgeois success.[17] (See: Culture and Anarchy, 1869.)
Two spatial constructs manifest the bourgeois mentality:
(i) the shop-window display, and (ii) the sitting room. In
English, the term sitting-room culture is synonymous
for bourgeois mentality, a philistine cultural perspective from the Victorian Era (18371901), especially characterised by the repression of emotion and of sexual desire; and by the construction of a regulated social-space
where propriety is the key personality trait desired in
men and women.[17] Nonetheless, from such a psychologically constricted worldview, regarding the rearing of
children, contemporary sociologists claim to have identied progressive middle-class values, such as respect for
non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy, gender equality and the encouragement of innovation; as in the Victorian Era, the transposition to the U.S. of the bourgeois
system of social values has been identied as a requisite
for employment success in the professions.[18][19]
BOURGEOIS CULTURE
Cet obscur objet du dsir (That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977) illuminates the practical self-deceptions required for buying love as
marriage.[27][28]
See also
Beurgeois (auent French Muslims of NorthAfrican descent)
Bildungsbrgertum
Burgess
Conspicuous consumption
Conspicuous leisure
Cultural hegemony
Economic stratication
[13] Bellassai, Sandro (2005) The Masculine Mystique: AntiModernism and Virility in Fascist Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 3, pp. 314335.
Gemtlichkeit
Grand Burgher (German Grobrger)
Habitus (sociology)
Homo economicus
Occupational prestige
Petite bourgeoisie
Political class
References
Notes
[1] Bourgeoisie, burguesa in the Diccionario de la Real
Academia Espaola (1994)
[2] Websters New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English
Language Unabridged (1951) p. 205.
[3] Bourgeois Society
[4] Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and
Democracy',' pages 83-84, 134
[5] The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology C.T. Onions,
Editor (1995) p. 110.
[6] Oxford English Reference Dictionary Second Edition
(1996) p. 196.
Further reading
8
Bledstein, Burton J. and Johnston, Robert D. (eds.)
The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of
the American Middle Class. Routledge. 2001.
Brooks, David, Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper
Class and How They Got There. Simon & Schuster.
2001.
Byrne, Frank J. Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865. University Press of
Kentucky. 2006.
Hunt, Margaret R. The Middling Sort: Commerce,
Gender, and the Family in England, 16801780.
University of California Press. 1996.
Kinder, Marsha. (ed.) Luis Buuels The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Cambridge University
Press. 1999.
Lockwood, David. Cronies or Capitalists? The
Russian Bourgeoisie and the Bourgeois Revolution
from 1850 to 1917. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2009.
Molire, and Warren, Frederick Morris (ed.)
Molires Le bourgeois gentilhomme. D.C. Heath
& Co. 1899. (full text)
Siegel, Jerrold. Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics,
and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 18301930.
The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999.
Stern, Robert W. Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent. Cambridge University
Press. 2nd edition, 2003.
External links
The Democratic State A Critique of Bourgeois
Sovereignty
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