Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie (/ˌbʊərʒwɑːˈziː/ ⓘ BOOR-zhwah-ZEE, French: [buʁʒwazi] ⓘ) are a class of business owners and merchants which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted with the proletariat by their wealth, political power, and education,[1][2] as well as their access to and control of cultural, social and financial capital.
The bourgeoisie in its original sense is intimately linked to the political ideology of liberalism and its existence within cities, recognized as such by their urban charters (e.g., municipal charters, town privileges, German town law), so there was no bourgeoisie apart from the citizenry of the cities.[3] Rural peasants came under a different legal system.
In
Etymology
The
In the 18th century, before the
Historically, the medieval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the
Contemporarily, the terms "bourgeoisie" and "bourgeois" (noun) identify the "ruling class" in capitalist societies, as a social stratum; while "bourgeois" (adjective / noun modifier) describes the Weltanschauung (worldview) of men and women whose way of thinking is socially and culturally determined by their economic materialism and philistinism, a social identity famously mocked in Molière's comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), which satirizes buying the trappings of a noble-birth identity as the means of climbing the social ladder.[10][11][page needed] The 18th century saw a partial rehabilitation of bourgeois values in genres such as the drame bourgeois (bourgeois drama) and "bourgeois tragedy".
Emerging in the 1970s, the shortened term "bougie" became slang, referring to things or attitudes which are middle class, pretentious and suburban.[12] In 2016, a hip-hop group Migos produced a song Bad and Boujee, featuring an intentional misspelling of the word as "boujee"[12] – a term which has particularly been used by African Americans in reference to African Americans. The term refers to a person of lower or middle class doing pretentious activities or virtue signalling as an affectation of the upper-class.[13]
History
Origins and rise
The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to commerce and crafts. This urban expansion was possible thanks to economic concentration due to the appearance of protective self-organisation into
In the event, by the end of the Middle Ages (c. AD 1500), under regimes of the early national monarchies of Western Europe, the bourgeoisie acted in self-interest, and politically supported the king or queen against legal and financial disorder caused by the greed of the feudal lords.[citation needed] In the late-16th and early 17th centuries, the bourgeoisies of England and the Netherlands had become the financial – thus political – forces that deposed the feudal order; economic power had vanquished military power in the realm of politics.[9]
From progress to reaction (Marxist view)
According to the Marxist view of history, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the bourgeoisie were the politically
had autonomously exercised during the feudal order.The
After the
Denotations
Marxist theory
Part of a series on |
Marxism |
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According to
In such a society, the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production allowed them to employ and exploit the wage-earning working class (urban and rural), people whose only economic means is labour; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the sociopolitical challenges by the lower classes, and so preserved the economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained employers.[15]
In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist:
- the functional capitalists, who are business administrators of the means of production;
In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in
Besides describing the social class who owns the means of production, the Marxist use of the term "bourgeois" also describes the consumerist style of life derived from the ownership of capital and real property. Marx acknowledged the bourgeois industriousness that created wealth, but criticised the moral hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie when they ignored the alleged origins of their wealth: the exploitation of the proletariat, the urban and rural workers. Further sense denotations of "bourgeois" describe ideological concepts such as "bourgeois freedom", which is thought to be opposed to substantive forms of freedom; "bourgeois independence"; "bourgeois personal individuality"; the "bourgeois family"; et cetera, all derived from owning capital and property (see The Communist Manifesto, 1848).
France and Francophone countries
In English, the term bourgeoisie is often used to denote the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses both the upper and middle economic classes,[17] a misunderstanding which has occurred in other languages as well. The bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking countries consists of five evolving social layers: petite bourgeoisie, moyenne bourgeoisie, grande bourgeoisie, haute bourgeoisie and ancienne bourgeoisie.
Petite bourgeoisie
The petite bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the modern-day middle class, or refers to "a social class between the middle class and the lower class: the lower middle class".[18]
Nazism
Hitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk.[23] Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews."[23] Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that capitalism had "run its course".[23] Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."[24] Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, whom he referred to as "cowardly shits".[25]
Modern history in Italy
Because of their ascribed cultural excellence as a social class, the
In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini gave a speech wherein he established a clear ideological distinction between capitalism (the social function of the bourgeoisie) and the bourgeoisie (as a social class), whom he dehumanised by reducing them into high-level abstractions: a moral category and a state of mind.[26] Culturally and philosophically, Mussolini isolated the bourgeoisie from Italian society by portraying them as social parasites upon the fascist Italian state and "The People"; as a social class who drained the human potential of Italian society, in general, and of the working class, in particular; as exploiters who victimised the Italian nation with an approach to life characterised by hedonism and materialism.[26] Nevertheless, despite the slogan The Fascist Man Disdains the "Comfortable" Life, which epitomised the anti-bourgeois principle, in its final years of power, for mutual benefit and profit, the Mussolini fascist régime transcended ideology to merge the political and financial interests of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini with the political and financial interests of the bourgeoisie, the Catholic social circles who constituted the ruling class of Italy.
Philosophically, as a
Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.[27]
Culturally, the bourgeois man may be considered effeminate, infantile, or acting in a pretentious manner; describing his philistinism in Bonifica antiborghese (1939), Roberto Paravese comments on the:
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 child-like or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of grandeur, honours, 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.[28]
The economic security,
Bourgeois culture
Cultural hegemony
Karl Marx said that the culture of a society is dominated by the
Conspicuous consumption
The critical analyses of the bourgeois mentality by the German intellectual Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) 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, he alleges, 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 first was stocked and decorated with hand-painted
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 "
Nonetheless, from such a psychologically constricted worldview, regarding the rearing of children, contemporary sociologists claim to have identified "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 US of the bourgeois system of social values has been identified as a requisite for employment success in the professions.[31][32]
Bourgeois values are dependent on rationalism, which began with the economic sphere and moves into every sphere of life which is formulated by Max Weber.[33] The beginning of rationalism is commonly called the Age of Reason. Much like the Marxist critics of that period, Weber was concerned with the growing ability of large corporations and nations to increase their power and reach throughout the world.
Satire and criticism in art
Beyond the intellectual realms of political economy, history, and political science that discuss, describe, and analyse the bourgeoisie as a social class, the colloquial usage of the sociological terms bourgeois and bourgeoise describe the social stereotypes of the old money and of the nouveau riche, who is a politically timid conformist satisfied with a wealthy, consumerist style of life characterised by conspicuous consumption and the continual striving for prestige.[34][35] This being the case, the cultures of the world describe the philistinism of the middle-class personality, produced by the excessively rich life of the bourgeoisie, is examined and analysed in comedic and dramatic plays, novels, and films (see Authenticity).
The term bourgeoisie has been used as a pejorative and a term of abuse since the 19th century, particularly by intellectuals and artists.[36]
Theatre
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman, 1670) by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), is a comedy-ballet that satirises Monsieur Jourdain, the prototypical nouveau riche man who buys his way up the social-class scale, to realise his aspirations of becoming a gentleman, to which end he studies dancing, fencing, and philosophy, the trappings and accomplishments of a gentleman, to be able to pose as a man of noble birth, someone who, in 17th-century France, was a man to the manor born; Jourdain's self-transformation also requires managing the private life of his daughter, so that her marriage can also assist his social ascent.[11][page needed][37]
Literature
Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materially comfortable style of life provided by the dedication to solid, middle-class
Yet, George F. Babbitt sublimates his desire for self-respect, and encourages his son to rebel against the conformity that results from bourgeois prosperity, by recommending that he be true to himself:
Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been.[41]
Films
Many of the satirical films by the Spanish film director Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) examine the mental and moral effects of the bourgeois mentality, its culture, and the stylish way of life it provides for its practitioners.
- L'Âge d'or(The Golden Age, 1930) illustrates the madness and self-destructive hypocrisy of bourgeois society.
- Belle de Jour (Beauty of the day, 1967) tells the story of a bourgeois wife who is bored with her marriage and decides to prostitute herself.
- values.
- Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977) illuminates the practical self-deceptions required for buying love as marriage.[42][43][page needed]
See also
- Aristocracy (class)
- Bourgeois of Brussels
- Bourgeois of Paris
- Bourgeoisie of Geneva
- Bourgeoisie of Nigeria
- Poorter (in the Netherlands)
- Beurgeois (affluent French Muslims of North-African descent)
- Bildungsbürgertum
- Boliburguesía
- Burgher
- Burgess
- Citizenship
- Conspicuous consumption
- Conspicuous leisure
- Cultural hegemony
- Economic stratification
- Gemütlichkeit
- Gentrification
- Grand Burgher (German Großbürger)
- Medieval commune
- Habitus (sociology)
- Hipster (contemporary subculture)
- Homo economicus
- Ilustrado
- Occupational prestige
- Oligarchy
- Petite bourgeoisie
- Political class
- Proletariat, the opposite of the Bourgeoisie
- Rational-legal authority
- Russian oligarch
- Social environment
- Social class in the United Kingdom
- Ukrainian oligarchs
- Upper middle class
- The Theory of the Leisure Class
- Vecino
- Yuppie
- Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (play)
References
- ^ "bourgeoisie Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about bourgeoisie". encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on 2 October 2016. Retrieved 28 September 2016.
- ^ a b c d Siegrist 2001, p. 785.
- ^ Hoipkemier 2015, p. 651.
- ^ "Bourgeois Society". Marxists Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 27 November 1999. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
- ^ Onions, C. T., ed. (1995). The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. p. 110.
- ISBN 978-0333673478.
- ^ Engels, Friedrich (1872). "How Proudhon Solves the Housing Question". The Housing Question – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Oxford English Reference Dictionary (Second ed.). 1996. p. 196.
- ^ a b "Bourgeoisie". The Columbia Encyclopedia (Fifth ed.). 1994. p. ?.
- ^ Benét 1987, p. 118, 759.
- ^ a b Molière 1899.
- ^ a b "What Does Boujee Mean And Who Said It First?". Dictionary.com. 11 April 2018. Archived from the original on 22 February 2023. Retrieved 22 February 2023.
- ^ Tulp, Sophia. "What you're really saying when you call something 'bougie'". USA Today. Archived from the original on 26 June 2021. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
- ^ Berend 2015, p. 94.
- ^ Marx, Karl (1850). The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850. Archived from the original on 30 December 2007 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Bottomore, T. B. A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. p. 272.
- ISBN 9780521466264. Archived from the original on 27 April 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2020 – via Google Books.
- ^ "the petite bourgeoisie". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 27 January 2018. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
- ^ Nicholls & Nicholls 2000, p. 245.
- ^ a b Burleigh, Michael (2000). The Third Reich: A New History. New York, USA: Hill and Wang. p. 77.
- ^ Nicholls & Nicholls 2000, pp. 159–160.
- ^ Hitler, Adolf; Domarus, Max. The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary. pp. 171, 172–173.
- ^ a b c Overy 2004, p. 399.
- ^ Overy 2004, p. 230.
- ^ Kritika: explorations in Russian and Eurasian history, Volume 7, Issue 4. Slavica Publishers, 2006. Pp. 922.
- ^ S2CID 144797296.
- ^ Marino, Giuseppe Carlo (1983). L'autarchia della cultura. Intellettuali e fascismo negli anni trenta [The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s] (in Italian). Rome: Editori Riuniti.
- ^ a b Paravese, Roberto (1939) "Bonifica antiborghese", in Edgardo Sulis (ed.), Processo alla borghesia, Roma: Edizioni Roma, pp. 51–70.
- ^ Émile Zola, Le Rougon-Macquart (1871–1893).
- ^ a b Walter Benjamin, The Halles Project.
- ^ Gilbert, Dennis (1998). The American Class Structure. New York: Wadsworth Publishing. 0-534-50520-1.
- ^ Williams, Brian; Sawyer, Stacey C.; Wahlstrom, Carl M. (2005). Marriages, Families & Intimate Relationships. Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-36674-0.
- ^ Weber, Max (1927). General economic history. UK: London: Allen & Unwin. 1306359007.
- ^ Zinn, Howard (1980). A People's History of the United States.
- ^ Sven Beckert "Propertied of Different Kind: Bourgeoisie and Lower Middle Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States" in The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class (2001) Burton J. Bledstein and Robert D. Johnston, Eds. (2001)
- ^ McCloskey 2016, p. XVII.
- ^ Benét 1987, p. 118, 512.
- ^ Benét 1987, p. 118, 137.
- ^ Neider, Charles (1968). The Stature of Thomas Mann.
- ISBN 0-415-06034-6.
- ^ Benét 1987, p. 65.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (25 June 2000). "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie movie review (1972)". RogerEbert.com. Archived from the original on 2 June 2013. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
- ^ Kinder & Andrew 1999.
Works cited
- Benét, William Rose (1987). Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia. .
- Berend, Ivan T. (2015). "Capitalism". In ISBN 9780080430768.
- Hoipkemier, Mark (2015). "Citizenship: Political". In ISBN 9780080430768.
- Kinder, Marsha; Andrew, Horton (1999). Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. .
- McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen (2016). Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World. .
- Molière (1899). Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme [Molière's The bourgeois gentleman] (in French). D.C. Heath & Company. .
- Nicholls, David; Nicholls, Gill (2000). Adolf Hitler: A Biographical Companion. .
- Overy, R. J. (2004). The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. .
- Siegrist, Hannes (2001). "Bourgeoisie and Middle Classes, History of". In ISBN 9780080430768.
Further reading
- Bledstein, Burton J.; Johnston, Robert D., eds. (19 July 2001). The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class. ISBN 9780415926423.
- ISBN 978-0684853789.
- Byrne, Frank J. (20 October 2006). Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820–1865. ISBN 978-0813124049.
- Cousin, Bruno; Chauvin, Sébastien (2021). "Is there a global super-bourgeoisie?". S2CID 234861167.
- Dejung, Christof; Motadel, David; Osterhammel, Jürgen (2019). The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire. ISBN 9780691177342.
- Hunt, Margaret R. (10 December 1996). The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780. ISBN 978-0520202603.
- Lockwood, David (23 April 2009). Cronies or Capitalists? The Russian Bourgeoisie and the Bourgeois Revolution from 1850 to 1917. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-0562-9.
- McCloskey, Deirdre N. (2006). The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. ISBN 978-0-226-55663-5.
- McCloskey, Deirdre N. (2010). Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World. ISBN 978-0-2265-5665-9.
- Siegel, Jerrold (1999). Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930. ISBN 9780801860638.
- Stern, Robert W. (2003). Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent (2nd ed.). ISBN 9780521009126.
- Trigilia, Carlo (2011). "Class, Social". In ISBN 9781412959636.
External links
- The Democratic State – A Critique of Bourgeois Sovereignty