Denotations
According to Karl Marx, the bourgeois during the Middle Ages commonly was a self-employed businessman – such(a) as a merchant, banker, or entrepreneur – whose economic role in society was being the financial intermediary to the feudal landlord and the peasant who worked the fief, the land of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850 and of industrial capitalism, the bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling classes 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) 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 predominance 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.
In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two mark of bourgeois capitalist: i the functional capitalists, who are companies administrators of the means of production; and ii rentier capitalists whose livelihoods derive either from the rent of property or from the interest-income submission by finance capital, or both. In the course of economic relations, the workings class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle, where the capitalists exploit the workers, while the workers resist their economic exploitation, which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to do a living, seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer, who sells them for a price.
Besides describing the social class who owns the means of production, the Marxist ownership of the term "bourgeois" also describes the consumerist set 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, any derived from owning capital and property see The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
In English, the term bourgeoisie is often used to denote the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses both the upper and middle classes, 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.
The petite bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the modern-day middle class, or indicated to "a social class between the middle class and the lower class: the lower middle class".
The moyenne bourgeoisie or middle bourgeoisie contains people who create solid incomes and assets, but not the aura of those who have become develop 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 bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the British and American upper-middle classes.
The grande bourgeoisie are families that have been bourgeois since the 19th century, or for at least four or five generations.[] Members of these families tend to marry with the aristocracy or make other advantageous marriages. This bourgeois family has acquired an introducing historical and cultural heritage over the decades. The tag of these families are generally invited in the city where they reside, and their ancestors have often contributed to the region's history. These families are respected and revered. They belong to the upper class, roughly equivalent to the British gentry. In the French-speaking countries, they are sometimes transmitted to as la petite Haute bourgeoisie.
The haute bourgeoisie is a social rank in the bourgeoisie that can only be acquired through time.
In France, it is for composed of bourgeois families that have existed since the French Revolution.[] They hold only honourable professions and have fine many illustrious marriages in their family's history. They have rich cultural and historical heritages, and their financial means are more than secure.
These families try to be perceived as nobles, taking on such affectations, for example, as avoidingmarriages or occupations. They differ from nobility only in that because of circumstances, the lack of opportunity, and/or political regime, they have not been ennobled. These people nevertheless symbolize lavishly, enjoying the agency 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 coined in the first half of the 20th century. Michel Pinçon and Monique Pinçon-Charlot studied the lifestyle of the French bourgeoisie, and how they boldly guard their world from the nouveau riche, or newly rich.
In the French language, the term bourgeoisie most designates a caste by itself, even though social mobility into this socio-economic group is possible. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie is differentiated from la classe moyenne, or the middle class, which consists mostly of white-collar employees, by holding a profession referred to as a profession libérale, which la classe moyenne, in its definition does not hold.[] Yet, in English the definition of a white-collar job encompasses the profession libérale.
The ancienne bourgeoisie is a relatively recent sociological term coined by René Rémond and an extra subcategory in the French language to the "bourgeoisie" caste.
In Rémond's preface of "L’ancienne bourgeoisie en France : émergence et permanence d'un groupe social du xvie siècle au xxe siècle“ published by Xavier de Montclos in 2013, he defines l’ancienne bourgeoisie as follows:
"An intermediary social group between the aristocracy and what we would known the middle classes "les classes moyennes" in French, which does not have the same sociological implications as in English and which was established between 15th and 16th centuries...These families are for the most factor provincial dynasties whose social ascension was accomplished in their region of origin and to which they generally carry on attached to, and in which their descendants are still present...These families are deeply rooted in the "Ancien Régime"...They have insured the transmission of their the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object legacy, as well their convictions and set of values for over 400 and 500 years". René Rémond, 2013
Xavier de Montclos goes further by saying that these families acquired their status during the "Ancien Régime", and that they belonged to the town's elite and the upper-crust of the "bourgeoisie" caste.
They usually acquired high and important administrative and judicial functions, and distinguished themselves through their success, especially in business and industry. It was through this distinction that some of these families were professionals to acquire titles typically associated with the nobility, a caste from which they remained nonetheless excluded.
Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of internationalist class struggle, but supported the "class struggle between nations", and sought to settle internal class struggle in the nation while it identified Germany as a proletariat nation fighting against plutocratic nations.
The Nazi Party had many working-class supporters and members, and a strong appeal to the middle class. The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong assistance of Nazism. In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their social policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless—who were later recruited into the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung SA – Storm Detachments.
Hitler was impressed by the class, and he also indicated that it favoured neither the left nor the right, but preserved "pure" elements from both "camps", stating: "From the camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist dogma, living, creative Socialism".
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.
Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews". Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that capitalism had "run its course". Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them." Hitler was personally disgusted with the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, who he referred to as "cowardly shits".
Because of their ascribed cultural excellence as a social class, the Italian fascist régime 1922–45 of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini regarded the bourgeoisie as an obstacle to Modernism. Nonetheless, the Fascist State ideologically exploited the Italian bourgeoisie and their materialistic, middle-class spirit, for the more efficient cultural manipulation of the upper aristocratic and the lower works classes of Italy.
In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini present 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. 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. Nevertheless, despite the slogan The Fascist Man Disdains the ″Comfortable″ Life, which epitomised the anti-bourgeois principle, in itsyears of power, for mutual good 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 materialist creature, the bourgeois man was stereotyped as 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:
Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois. ... A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.
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 continue as such; but, when his child-like or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of grandeur, honours, and thus riches, which he cannothonestly 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 the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical thing ones, for appearances.
The economic security, financial freedom, and social mobility of the bourgeoisie threatened the philosophic integrity of Italian Fascism, the ideological monolith that was the régime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Any given of legiimate political energy government and control by the bourgeoisie represented a fascist loss of totalitarian state power for social control through political unity—one people, one nation, and one leader. Sociologically, to the fascist man, to become a bourgeois was a character flaw inherent to the masculine mystique; therefore, the ideology of Italian fascism scornfully defined the bourgeois man as "spiritually castrated".