bourgeoisie

1. The middle class.
2. In Marxist theory, the social group opposed to the proletariat in the class struggle.

[French, from bourgeois, bourgeois. See bourgeois.]

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Term originally referring simply to those who lived in urban areas. However, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it became increasingly identified with a particular stratum of town-dwellers, the merchants who traded for profit and who employed others to work for them, and with what were seen as this group's distinctive values, including thrift, hard work, moral uprightness, the sanctity of the family, and respect for private property and the law. Both the profit orientation of the bourgeoisie and their values were viewed with distaste by sections of the land-owning classes and the former became objects of satire, so the term acquired pejorative connotations of money-grubbing, exploiting others, and dull conformity. As such it was seized upon by Marx to describe the dominant class of capitalist society which existed by exploiting the wage labour of the proletariat and which was ultimately doomed to extinction. Subsequently, ‘bourgeois’ became a term of abuse on the left for attacking its enemies, as in ‘bourgeois values’, ‘bourgeois democracy’, or ‘bourgeois social science’. Although capitalism has come back into fashion, the word itself has remained a term of abuse.

— Stan Taylor

For much of the twentieth century, historians used the term "bourgeoisie" unselfconsciously to denote that rather vague middle group between the nobility and the masses of peasants and urban workers. The middle classes, the middling sort, the Bürgertum, the bourgeoisie; these terms were all used to describe the merchants, the guild members, the pensioners, and the elite non-nobles (professionals, financiers, and officials) who dominated much of the early modern urban landscape. They enter the European scene in the Middle Ages—the tradesmen and other urban figures who did not fit neatly into the idealized tripartite society of Three Orders: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. These individuals worked, but they did not till the land like peasants. While some definitions of bourgeoisie include the artisan, most exclude those whose work soiled their hands. But these urban merchants and manufacturers were economically useful; they dealt in goods, and they dealt in cash. They would become Max Weber's Protestant capitalist, imbued with an ethic of ascetic capitalism, and Karl Marx's budding bourgeois class, the owners of the means of production. We see hints of this nineteenth-century meaning of bourgeoisie in earlier times; workers referred to their employers as "bourgeois," and peasants used the same term for their urban landlords.

Difficulties of Definition

Historians of France have led the way in trying to better understand the character and function of the early modern bourgeoisie. Steeped in a Marxist historiography that termed the French Revolution a "bourgeois revolution" fueled by class conflict between a politically aspiring bourgeoisie and a moribund aristocracy, scholars have closely examined the social class structure of Old Regime France in search of an economic and political bourgeoisie that would seize control of the Revolution's direction. But revisionist historians since the early 1970s have worked to demolish the Marxist framework, the notion of a dynamic precapitalist bourgeoisie leading a world-historical Marxian revolution. The bourgeoisie, if it existed prior to the French Revolution, they argue, was risk-adverse and keener on social mobility than class power. As soon as they earned enough money, individuals wanted to leave the bourgeoisie to become part of the nobility. Members of this group were far more attached to the trappings of status than to the accumulation of capital, the fruits of profit. Furthermore, links between the upper reaches of the bourgeoisie and the nobility—who frequently intermarried, and socialized in the salons and academies—were so close as to render meaningless the notion of "class conflict" between aristocrat and bourgeois. The elite—noble and non-noble—was quite unified, certainly more unified than any amorphous "bourgeoisie."

This suggests the importance of social mobility to any definition of bourgeoisie. Traditionally, historians have differentiated between the upper, the middle, and the petty bourgeoisie. There was always some mobility within this group; an education and a profession, not to mention the accumulation of wealth, could move one from the ranks of the petty into the middle, or from the middle into the upper bourgeoisie. But there was also movement from the upper reaches of the bourgeoisie into the ranks of the elite. As the numbers and power of old noble families began to decline in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in a number of western European countries, many wealthy bourgeois families moved in to take their place through the purchase of land, and eventually, the purchase of venal offices, some of which conferred noble title. Social mobility—up and down—blurs the boundaries between the bourgeoisie and other social groups.

These fuzzy boundaries complicate the picture considerably. Focusing on linguistic and cultural categories, Sarah Maza argues that there was no middle class—no "bourgeoisie" beyond a precise set of legal meanings—in pre-Revolutionary France. According to Maza, until there is an actual discourse about the middle class, until it is named and given a social, political, moral, or historical importance, it does not exist; and thus, it did not exist in early modern France. A similar argument has been made for early modern England and for other European countries. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century sociological definitions of the bourgeoisie fit uncomfortably in early modern society, which would not have recognized the categories we impose.

Furthermore, the bourgeoisie—composed of relatively comfortable urban dwellers—was a small segment of the population in any European country before the nineteenth century, seldom more than 10 percent of the total population, except in the commercial countries of Holland and England, where the total urban population surpassed 50 percent and 25 percent, respectively. About 20 to 30 percent of Londoners were members of the middle classes by the eighteenth century, with some 3 to 5 percent in the upper class. During the same period, about 8 percent of the French population could be considered bourgeois—but only about 2 percent of the population counted in the upper reaches of that group. In other words, the size of the upper bourgeoisie in France was roughly equivalent to that of the nobility. The same was true in the city of Nuremburg in the sixteenth century, where rough numerical parity existed between the rich merchants of the city and the aristocracy.

Moreover, lack of real class solidarity attenuated the political importance of the bourgeoisie. Even in Great Britain, which boasted perhaps the largest and proudest middle class in Europe by 1800, the aristocracy dominated the reins of government well into the nineteenth century. If "the middle classes are always rising," as the old adage goes, their ascent had barely begun.

And yet, despite the admonitions of those who would consign the term "bourgeoisie" to the dustbin of history, historians continue to use it, as did early modern individuals themselves. But the sets of meaning that this term conveys are imprecise. Just as the boundaries between the bourgeoisie and other social classes are vague, the definition of "bourgeoisie" is equally so. Depending on context and assumptions, the historian conjures up sometimes radically different images when using the term. Definitions of "bourgeoisie" generally fall into one of four categories: legal, economic, political, and cultural.

Legal Definition

The legal definition of bourgeoisie is both the most precise (although it varied from place to place) and the most restrictive. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, burgenses was the term applied to the inhabitants of any seigneurial territory that was granted a written coutume or charter. This charter granted privileges to the inhabitants of that territory, but the specific privileges varied from place to place, and indeed, from country to country. Sometimes those privileges were quite narrow; for example, individuals enjoying the title "Bourgeois de Bordeaux" were allowed to bring their wine into the city free of duty and had the monopoly of retail sale within the city limits. Because the privileges associated with the legal title "bourgeois" could be quite specific and quite lucrative, it was not uncommon for nobles to seek the status of "bourgeois." In general usage, however, the term "bourgeois," from medieval times through the age of the French Revolution, referred to the non-noble inhabitants of towns, citizens who enjoyed the privileges associated with living in a particular place.

Economic Position

The economic definition, which emphasizes the economic activity and financial standing of the bourgeoisie, is both more contentious and more compelling. It denotes the bourgeoisie as the capitalist class, the social group that emerged with towns and trade. A market-centered focus and control of commerce and capital made the bourgeoisie a potent rival to the aristocracy in a number of European countries, most notably England and the Dutch Netherlands. In the German states, the small to midsized towns, especially the trading cities on the coast, were also dominated by the merchant, craftsman, and financier. It was the rising power of the capitalist that foreshadowed the end to a European political and economic system governed by aristocrats barred from trade by the threat of dérogation—loss of noble title. The bourgeoisie pioneered the commercial capitalism of the early modern era in the same way that it would spearhead the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

But not all "bourgeois" individuals were involved in trade and manufacture. The term encompasses lawyers, doctors, and non-noble officials, sometimes counted on the fringes of, or even at the center of, the elite. It also includes the so-called bourgeois vivant noblement, the "bourgeois living nobly" from the proceeds of investments and no longer required to labor for an income. While status in the early modern era was not invariably linked to wealth, wealth could go far in blurring the lines between middle class and elite, at least for those who were involved in the professions and not directly connected to the less noble function of trade. In many countries—most notably France and Spain—trade was considered a dishonorable profession, one that any person of fortune would try to leave behind as quickly as possible. It is this desire on the part of the bourgeoisie to move out of trade—the dynamic sector of the economy—and to invest in the more respectable lifestyle of land- or office-holding that calls into question Marx's vision of the rising capitalist bourgeoisie, challenging the aristocracy for economic, political, and cultural supremacy. Some historians have blamed the status-seeking French bourgeoisie for the stagnant nature of the French economy in the eighteenth century as compared to the rapidly industrializing British economy where the middle classes were less eager to disinvest from the productive sectors of the economy.

Political Influence

Still, the economic clout of the bourgeoisie as individuals and as a group could go far in conferring political power along with social status. Economic resources allowed bourgeois individuals to obtain professional expertise for their sons through education, as well as to purchase land from the weakened aristocracy. This phenomenon was particularly pronounced in England at the close of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1471), which had wiped out many of the most powerful baronial families, but it was repeated in other regions as well. The wealthy bourgeoisie, the nouveaux riches, embedded in business and administrative circles, moved into the positions of economic and political influence once held by the aristocracy and eventually supplanted them as the new aristocracy. This regeneration of the old elite with social climbers from the bourgeoisie is a common theme in early modern history. The aristocratic diarist Saint-Simon railed at the tendency of Louis XIV of France (ruled 1643–1715) to choose bourgeois individuals, vile men "raised from the dust," as his ministers at the expense of his traditional advisors, the nobility. Within a few generations, these "vile men" would hold sway as prestigious members of the court. A similar process took place in the Prussian bureaucracy under Frederick William I (ruled 1713–1740).

This would suggest a tight nexus between the rise of absolutism and the role of the bourgeoisie in early modern states. Kings bent on increasing their authority would turn to members of the bourgeoisie to serve the state and carry out the king's will at the expense of the old feudal nobility, whose wealth and regional power bases made it a constant threat to central authority. Affluent commoners, ready for the peace, rationality, and business benefits a centralizing monarch could introduce into the operations of government, eagerly supported the king against the rapacious nobility, and their educated sons entered into royal service. Recent scholarship that indicates more mutual dependence between monarchs and their nobility throws this line of analysis into question, but certainly the perception of an aggressive bourgeoisie usurping aristocratic privileges and rights was a powerful one, as the writings of Saint-Simon indicate.

But another interpretation of the political role of the early modern bourgeoisie also undermines the notion of complicity between king and merchant. The traditional social interpretation of both the English Civil War of the 1640s and the French Revolution of 1789 painted a bourgeoisie confident in its commercial importance, seeking political power commensurate with its economic power. Jürgen Habermas cites the creation of a "bourgeois public sphere" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which a nascent public opinion called into question the monopoly of state and clergy over political discussion. This desire for a political voice brought the bourgeoisie into conflict with aristocracy and crown, both jealous and unwilling to sacrifice political control. Accordingly, a powerful, independent, and discontented bourgeoisie was essential in bringing about revolution or parliamentary democracy or both in countries like France and England; and the absence or weakness of that same class (as in Prussia or Russia) was responsible for the prolongation of absolutist dictatorship. In the words of Barrington Moore, Jr., "No bourgeois, no democracy." The growing political awareness of the eighteenth-century bourgeoisie and the intense political partisanship linked to the effects of the French Revolution throughout Europe played a key role in shaping middle-class consciousness.

Cultural Interpretations

But bourgeois identity also had important cultural roots that went beyond political activism, including a belief in property, virtue, and talent as the bases for social advancement, and attachment to religious values, frugality, a work ethic, public service, and especially material comfort. The bourgeoisie is also associated with an emphasis on the conjugal family and sentimental familial relations, in contrast to the focus on lineage associated with the aristocracy. This sociocultural interpretation of the bourgeoisie, with its focus on values, attitudes, and rules of conduct, has dominated historical scholarship in recent years. This consciousness of difference, of cultural and moral superiority to the idle aristocracy and the lower-class masses, had appeared among the middle classes by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even if a clear-cut notion of class solidarity did not yet exist.

Still, "bourgeois values" were never uncontested, even in the nineteenth century, often heralded as the golden age of the western European bourgeoisie when its ideology triumphed across class lines. Aristocrats were notoriously contemptuous of the bourgeois values of thrift, acquisitiveness, and morality. They ridiculed the lack of culture and refinement, the crudeness, the avariciousness, the "shopkeeper mentality" of the bourgeoisie. They saved their sharpest barbs for the upwardly mobile, the individual who was trying to buy his way up the social ladder, but whose lack of blood and breeding would forever mark him as bourgeois. Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1671) underlines aristocratic disdain for the wealthy parvenu. And the lower classes, who might have looked to emulate certain characteristics of their bourgeois betters, saw them as calculating, exploitative, and cruel.

Those who give weight to the sociocultural interpretation of the bourgeoisie often underline gender relations within this social group. The ideology of domesticity, which emerged by the eighteenth century, emphasized the importance of harmonious familial relations, a moral private life, prescribed gender roles, and the celebration of the home as a haven from the rational, but heartless, world of the market. The consolidation of bourgeois class status was marked by the movement of women out of family businesses and into the home. Women were central to maintaining the standing of bourgeois families, in creating a moral center for the family and a suitable home with the necessary material comforts.

Contradictions in the Image of the Early Modern Bourgeoisie

The early modern bourgeoisie emerge as a contradictory group. They are the dynamic protocapitalists, trading and running manufacturing enterprises, working as lawyers and doctors in the liberal professions, running town and state as government officials; they are the status-conscious upwardly mobile, looking only to accumulate enough wealth to invest in land and venal offices and to withdraw from productive activity. They are toadies of absolute monarchs, imposing centralized governments throughout Europe; they are bold political actors, demanding an end to monarchical despotism and a role in the political process. They are a group that values thrift, order, religious principles, industriousness, gender-appropriate behavior, and material comforts; they are a small-minded, petty, and greedy group whose base roots can never be camouflaged, even if their wealth propels them into a higher social category. These contradictory images cannot be resolved, but contradictions are normal within a group as large and as loosely defined as the early modern bourgeoisie.

Despite the self-confidence and belief in the values of hard work and honesty that were part of bourgeois identity, anxiety also permeated the self-image of the early modern bourgeoisie. The status of these individuals was hard-won and was not undergirded by the security of noble title. While we focus on the success stories, downward mobility was at least as common a phenomenon as upward mobility. A merchant could lose his fortune; a lawyer could lose his clients; an official could face dismissal by his ruler. No social safety net existed to protect him. Work, frugality, and reputation were all that stood between the bourgeois and the downward slide to social oblivion. That anxiety may explain his attachment to the conservative values we consider "bourgeois," often long after he had left the middle classes behind.

Bibliography

Adams, Christine. A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family in Eighteenth-Century France. University Park, Pa., 2000.

Barber, Bernard, and Elinor G. Barber, eds. European Social Class: Stability and Change. New York, 1965.

Barber, Elinor G. The Bourgeoisie in Eighteenth-Century France. Princeton, 1955.

Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century. 3 vols. Translated by Siân Reynolds. New York, 1982–1984.

Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850. Rev. ed. London and New York, 2002.

Earle, Peter. The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989.

Garrioch, David. The Formation of the Parisian Bourgeoisie, 1690–1830. Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1996.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass., 1989.

Hunt, Margaret R. The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996.

Huppert, George. Les Bourgeois Gentilshommes: An Essay on the Definition of Elites in Renaissance France. Chicago, 1977.

Jones, Colin. "Bourgeois Revolution Revivified: 1789 and Social Change." In Rewriting the French Revolution, edited by Colin Lucas, pp. 69–118. Oxford, 1991.

Lucas, Colin. "Nobles, Bourgeois, and the Origins of the French Revolution." Past and Present 60 (August 1973): 84–126.

Maza, Sarah. "Luxury, Morality, and Social Change: Why There Was No Middle-Class Consciousness in Prerevolutionary France." Journal of Modern History 69 (June 1997): 199–229.

Moore, Barrington, Jr. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston, 1966.

Sperber, Jonathan. "Bürger, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft: Studies of the German (Upper) Middle Class and Its Sociocultural World." Journal of Modern History 69 (June 1997): 271–297.

—CHRISTINE ADAMS

In general, the middle class. Applied to the Middle Ages, it refers to townspeople, who were neither nobles nor peasants. In Marxism it refers to those who control the means of production and do not live directly by the sale of their labor. Karl Marx distinguished between the “haute” (high) bourgeoisie (industrialists and financiers) and the “petite” (small or “petty”) bourgeoisie (shopkeepers, self-employed artisans, lawyers). Marxism postulates a fundamental conflict between the interests of the bourgeoisie and those of the propertyless workers, the proletariat.

Tutor's tip: A "bourgeois" is a male of the middle class, a "bourgeoise" is a female of the middle class, and the "bourgeoisie" is the middle class. The "booboisie" is a class composed of fools and oafs.

It has been suggested that History of the bourgeoisie be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Sgraffito of bourgeoisie

Look up bourgeoisie or bourgeois in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie (adjective: bourgeois) describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late medieval to now, the bourgeoisie are a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture. They are a part of the middle or merchant classes, and derived social and economic power from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from social classes whose power came from being born into an aristocratic family of titled land owners granted feudal privileges by the monarch. The bourgeoisie emerged from late feudal and early modern towns, through the control of long distance trade and petty manufacture. Bourgeois and bourgeoisie originate in the French language, meaning "city-dweller" (from bourg, cf. German Burg).

Marxism defines the bourgeoisie as the social class that owns the means of production in a capitalist society. Marxism views the group as emerging from the wealthy urban classes in pre- and early capitalist societies.

In contemporary (capitalist) societies, the term bourgeoisie can refer to middle, upper middle, and/or upper classes and or their lifestyle and values.^{[citation needed]}

These terms have stronger connotations of retiring, sitting room culture in European contexts.^{[citation needed]} Bourgeois often refers to the cloistering, socially conservative, idle customs^{[citation needed]} of the newly rich.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Etymology and uses 2 Academic concepts 2.1 Within Marxism and historical materialism 2.1.1 The petit bourgeois 2.1.2 Marxist Anarchist's perspectives 3 Social history 3.1 Emergence of burghers within European feudalism's third estate 3.2 Urban bankers, merchants and creditors within other "feudal" societies 3.3 Rise in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages and Early modern period 3.4 Political triumph and social decline in the twentieth century 3.4.1 Fascist Italy 4 Bourgeois culture 4.1 Bourgeois mentality 4.2 Representation in literature and film 5 Use as a pejorative 5.1 Within the socialist movement 5.2 Within the United States 5.2.1 Popular culture 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

Etymology and uses

Bourgeoisie is a French word that was borrowed directly into English in the specific sense described above. In the French feudal order pre-revolution, "bourgeois" was a class of citizens who were wealthier members of THE Third Estate. The French word bourgeois evolved from the Old French word burgeis, meaning "an inhabitant of a town" (cf. Middle English burgeis, Middle Dutch burgher and German Bürger). The Old French word burgeis is derived from bourg, meaning a market town or medieval village, itself derived from Old Frankish burg, meaning "town".^[1]

The term bourgeoisie has been widely used as an approximate equivalent of upper class under capitalism. The word also evolved to mean merchants and traders, and until the 19th century was mostly synonymous with the middle class (persons in the broad socioeconomic spectrum between nobility and peasants or proletarians). As the power and wealth of the nobility faded in the second half of the 19th century, and that of the merchant and commercial classes came to be dominant, the bourgeoisie emerged, by definition, as the replacement of the deposed nobility and the new ruling class.^{[citation needed]}

Academic concepts

This section requires expansion with: non Marxist theoretical frameworks of the bourgeoisie, Veblen's leisure class?.

Within Marxism and historical materialism

Marxism defines the bourgeoisie as the social class that owns the means of production in a capitalist society. As such, the core of the modern bourgeoisie is industrial bourgeoisie, which obtains income by hiring workers to put in motion their capital, which is to say, their means of production - machines, tools, raw material, etc. Besides that, other bourgeois sectors also exist, notedly the commercial bourgeoisie, which earns income from commercial activities such as the buying and selling of commodities, wares, and services.

In medieval times, the bourgeois was typically a self-employed proprietor, small employer, entrepreneur, banker, or merchant. In industrial capitalism, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie becomes the ruling class - which means it also owns the bulk of the means of production (land, factories, offices, capital, resources - though in some countries land ownership would still be a monopoly of a different class, landed oligarchy), and controls the means of coercion (national armed forces, police, prison systems, court systems). Ownership of the means of production enables it to employ and exploit the work of a large mass of wage workers (the working class), who have no other means of livelihood than to sell their labour to property owners; while control over the means of coercion allows intervention during challenges from below.^[2] Marx distinguished between "functioning capitalists" actually managing enterprises, and others merely earning property rents or interest-income from financial assets or real estate (rentiers).^[3]

Marxism sees the proletariat (wage labourers) and bourgeoisie as directly waging an ongoing class struggle, in that capitalists exploit workers and workers try to resist exploitation. This exploitation takes place as follows: the workers, who own no means of production of their own, must seek employment in order to make a living. They get hired by a capitalist and work for him, producing some sort of goods or services. These goods or services then become the property of the capitalist, who sells them and gets a certain amount of money in exchange. Part of this money is used to pay workers' wages, another part is used to pay production costs, and a third part is kept by the capitalist in the form of profit (or surplus value in Marxist terms). Thus the capitalist can earn money by selling the surplus (profit) from the work of his employees without actually doing any work, or in excess of his own work. Marxists argue that new wealth is created through work; therefore, if someone gains wealth that he did not work for, then someone else works and does not receive the full wealth created by his work. In other words, that "someone else" is exploited. In this way, the capitalist might turn a large profit by exploiting workers.

Marx himself primarily used the term "bourgeois", with or without sarcasm, as an objective description of a social class and of a lifestyle based on ownership of private capital, not as a pejorative. He commended the industriousness of the bourgeoisie, but criticised it for its moral hypocrisy. This attitude is shown most clearly in the Communist Manifesto. He also used it to describe the ideology of this class; for example, he called its conception of freedom "bourgeois freedom" and opposed it to what he considered more substantive forms of freedom. He also wrote of bourgeois independence, individuality, property, family, etc.; in each case he referred to conceptions of these ideals which are compatible with condoning the existence of a class society.

The petit bourgeois

Main article: petite bourgeoisie

The term (also petty bourgeoisie) is used to describe the class below the bourgeoisie but above the proletariat (usually independent operators with a small number of employees or no employees at all).

Marxist Anarchist's perspectives

In the view of some 20th century Marxist currents, the nomenklatura or lower state bureaucrats in "communist states" were or are a state bourgeoisie presiding over a system of state capitalism. To some schools of anarchists, all prominent members, functionaries and leaders of any kind of state are part of this state bourgeoisie. According to these interpretations, the bourgeoisie is composed of any individuals who have exclusive control over the means of production, regardless of whether this control comes in the form of private ownership or state power.^{[citation needed]}

Social history

Emergence of burghers within European feudalism's third estate

This section requires expansion with: Early history of the burghers.

Urban bankers, merchants and creditors within other "feudal" societies

This section requires expansion with: Chinese mercantile diaspora, India, Islamic / African trading system.

Rise in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages and Early modern period

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme

In the late Middle Ages, as cities were emerging, artisans and tradesmen began to emerge as both a physical and economic force. They formed guilds, associations and received charters for companies to conduct business and promote their own interests. These were the early bourgeoisie. In the late Middle Ages (the 14th and 15th centuries), they were the highest guildsmen and artisans, as evidenced in their ability to pay the fines for breaking sumptuary laws, and by paying to be called citizens of the city in which they lived. In fact the King of France granted nobility to all of the bourgeoisie of Paris in the late fourteenth century.^{[citation needed]} They eventually allied with the kings in centralising power and uprooting feudal barriers against trade.

In the 17th and 18th century, the bourgeois supported the English revolution^[4], American revolution and French revolution in overthrowing the laws and privileges of feudal order. These changes in property law cleared the way for the rapid expansion of commerce and the establishment of capitalist societies. With the expansion of commerce, trade, and the market economy, the bourgeoisie grew in size, influence, and power. In many countries, the aristocracy either transformed into essentially bourgeoisie rentiers, or found itself overthrown by a bourgeois revolution.^{[citation needed]}

The bourgeoisie was never without critics. It was first accused of narrow-mindedness, materialism, hypocrisy, and lack of culture, among other things, by persons such as the playwright Truldière and the novelist Flaubert, who denounced its supposed banality and mercenary aspirations. The earliest recorded pejorative uses of the term "bourgeois" are associated with aristocratic contempt for the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. Successful embourgeoisement typically meant being able to retire and live on invested income.

Political triumph and social decline in the twentieth century

This section requires expansion with: Success of bourgeois parliamentary institutions, and pro-bourgeois fascism, decline as proportion of population.

Fascist Italy

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The Italian fascist regime regarded the bourgeois as an obstacle of modernism because of its purported par excellence.^[5] The bourgeoisie and the bourgeois spirit were exploited, with the latter being used to manipulate the public. For example, Benito Mussolini, in a 1938 speech, voiced the clear distinction between capitalism and the bourgeoisie,^[5] in which case he described the bourgeoisie as a moral category, a state of mind. He possessed the articulateness to singlehandedly isolate the bourgeoisie as a parasitic entity of the state that is draining the state of potentiality because of its materialistic, hedonistic approach to life.^[5] This principle was condensed in the slogan "The Fascist man disdains the «comfortable» life". In the final years of the regime, interests of Catholic circles and that of Benito Mussolini merged. During this period, one priest who founded the journal Frontespizio, Giuseppe De Luca, declared that:

"Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois .... A Christian, a true Christian and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois."^[6]

The bourgeois was perceived as unmanly, effeminate, and infantile in the following quote:

"Middle class, middle man, incapable of great virtue or great vice: and there would be nothing wrong with that if only he would be willing to remain as such; but when his childlike or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of grandeur, honors, and thus riches, which he cannot achieve honestly with his own 'second-rate' powers, then the average man compensates with cunning, schemes, and mischief; he kicks out ethics and becomes a bourgeois. The bourgeois is the average man who does not accept to remain such and who, lacking the strength sufficient for the conquest of essential values - those of the spirit - opts for material ones, for appearances."^[7]

The economic freedom and mobility as exemplified by the bourgeois posed a direct threat to the integrity of the fascist regime. If and when the bourgeois gain power, there is the potential loss of control and unity as maintained by the state, so this is seen as threatening by Mussolini and his followers. To become bourgeois was still a fault pertaining to the masculine mystique: not by change, shortly after, the bourgeois was scornfully defined as someone who was "spiritually castrated".^[7]

Bourgeois culture

Marxism describes human culture as being subject to a dominant ruling class culture, in this sense all human culture is currently "bourgeois" culture. However, in a more precise manner, a set of shared cultural mores have been attributed internationally to the bourgeois, many having their apparent origins in the shop culture of early modern France. This was ridiculed at length in the Emile Zola novel series, Les Rougon-Macquart.^[8] Most noted features of bourgeois culture focus on the central cultural space of the sitting room, in English bourgeois culture is often attacked as a sitting room culture. Bourgeois material culture has focused on mass-produced high quality luxury items, though the material content of this has varied over time. The painted porcelain, machine printed wall-paper and cotton fabrics, and Sheffield steel of the early nineteenth century have given way to luxury consumer items and contemporary conspicuous consumption. These items are often displayed wealth, rather than used wealth as in nineteen century working class homes. In the past display involved cluttered small rooms;^[9] however, in the contemporary era this display involves large expanses of open space in the domestic setting.

Bourgeois mentality

Much of the earlier mentality can be viewed through the two key spatial construct: the shop display, and the sitting room.^[9] In English, the term "sitting room culture" is a synonym for bourgeois mentality. This cultural view is associated with Victorianism, in particular the repression of emotional and sexual desires, and the construction of an intensely regulated social space where the key desirable personal trait is propriety.

Sociologists such as Paula LeMasters have identified progressive values such as respect for non-conformity, self-direction, autonomy, gender equality and openness to innovation as middle class values in child-raising.^[10][11] Many values identified as belonging to the middle classes may be related to the needs of middle-class professions. Self-control, advanced expertise, as well as innovation are commonly important to succeeding in middle-class occupations.^[10]

Representation in literature and film

A famous early satire of certain aspects of the bourgeois personality is Le Bourgeois gentilhomme by Molière.^[12] The bourgeois is a recurring subject matter for Buñuel especially evident in the films Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie and the surrealist master piece L'Âge d'Or.^[13][14]

Use as a pejorative

Within the socialist movement

In the rhetoric of some Communist parties, "bourgeois" is sometimes used as a pejorative, and those who are perceived to collaborate with the bourgeoisie are called its lackeys. Socialists, especially Marxists have multiple uses for the term: the original meaning, the social class of capitalists, and the pejorative. Something or someone is decried as bourgeois if it generally lacks authenticity, is superficial, and/or is counterrevolutionary.^{[citation needed]}

Within the United States

In the United States—outside of Marxism and anarchism^[15]—the word bourgeois often refers to the social stereotype of the middle classes. It is associated with consumerist lifestyles often emphasising conspicuous consumption and material status.^[16]

Popular culture

In popular culture, the word bourgeoisie has given rise to the word "bourgie."^[17][18] The word has come to represent middle class values in their attempt to give the semblance of discerning taste. For example, a music track by the songwriting and recording artist duo Ashford & Simpson titled Bourgie Bourgie uses the word critically in addressing middle-class values among blacks.^[19] However, the word "bourgie" has been used off and on as a pejorative for some time. The phrase was used language in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Another derivative is "bushwah."^[20]

See also

• Aristocracy
• Capitalism
• Embourgeoisement thesis
• French Revolution
• Social structure of Britain
• History of the bourgeoisie

References

1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary etymology
2. ^ The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, Works of Karl Marx, 1850
3. ^ A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, T. B. Bottomore, Page 272 states this distinction was made in Marx's work Capital III
4. ^ Christopher Hill, Century of Revolutions
5. ^ ^{a b c} Bellassai, Sandro. (2005). The masculine mystique: anti-modernism and virility in fascist Italy. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 3, 314-335.
6. ^ Marino, Giuseppe Carlo (1983) L'autarchia della cultura. Intellettuali e fascismo negli anni trenta, Roma: Editori Riuniti.
7. ^ ^{a b} Paravese, Roberto (1939) 'Bonifica antiborghese', in Edgardo Sulis (ed.), Processo alla borghesia, Roma: Edizioni Roma, pp.51 - 70.
8. ^ Emile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, 1871-1893.
9. ^ ^{a b} Walter Benjamin. Halles project.
10. ^ ^{a b} Gilbert, Dennis (1998). The American Class Structure. New York: Wadsworth Publishing. 0-534-50520-1. 
11. ^ Williams, Brian; Stacey C. Sawyer, Carl M. Wahlstrom (2005). Marriages, Families & Intimate Relationships. Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-36674-0. 
12. ^ Molière, ed. Warren 1899
13. ^ see this review by Roger Ebert
14. ^ Kinder (ed.) 1999
15. ^ Howard Zinn. People's history of the United States.
16. ^ Beckert, S 2001 "Propertied of Different Kind: Bourgeoisie and Lower Middle Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States" in Burton J. Bledstein and Robert D. Johnston (eds.), The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class Routledge.
17. ^ "What Happened To Bourgie?". http://www.diamondsuite.net/index.php/?p=83. Retrieved 2009-07-02. 
18. ^ "Urban Dictionary:Bourgie". http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bourgie. Retrieved 2009-07-02. 
19. ^ Ashford & Simpson - Love Don't Make It Right / Bourgie Bourgie (Warner Bros. Records - K 17679 T)
20. ^ Bushwah definition, Dictionary.com. Accessed March 22, 2009.

Further reading

• Burton J. Bledstein and Robert D. Johnston (eds.), The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class. Routledge. 2001.
• David Brooks, Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Simon & Schuster. 2001.
• Frank J. Byrne, Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865. University Press of Kentucky. 2006.
• Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780. University of California Press. 1996.
• Marsha Kinder (ed.), Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Cambridge University Press. 1999.
• David Lockwood, Cronies or Capitalists? The Russian Bourgeoisie and the Bourgeois Revolution from 1850 to 1917. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2009.
• Molière, and Frederick Morris Warren (ed.), Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme. D.C. Heath & Co. 1899. (full text)
• Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999.
• Robert W. Stern, 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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Dansk (Danish)
n. - det velstillede borgerskab, middelklassen

Nederlands (Dutch)
bourgeoisie, burgerij

Français (French)
n. - bourgeoisie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Bourgeoisie, Bürgertum

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μπουρζουαζία, μεσαία τάξη

Italiano (Italian)
borghesia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - classe (f) média

Русский (Russian)
буржуазия

Español (Spanish)
n. - burguesía, clase media

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - bourgeoisie, borgarklass, medelklass

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
中产阶级, 资产阶级

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 中產階級, 資產階級

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 중산 계급의 사람, 자본가, 상공업자

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 中産階級, 有産階級

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الطبقه الوسطى‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮בורגנות‬

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