Concept

Bourgeoisie

Overview

The bourgeoisie are a social class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted with the proletariat by their wealth, political power, and education, 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, recognised 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. Rural peasants came under a different legal system.

In Marxist theory, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat form an antagonistic relationship based on the former's exploitation of the latter’s labour within the system known as capitalism. The main activity of the bourgeoisie within this framework is the accumulation of capital through the ownership and control of the means of production such as factories, land, and technology. By employing the proletariat, they extract surplus value from the workers' labour, a process fundamental to the functioning and expansion of the system. Consequently, their primary objective is the constant reinvestment and preservation of this capital to maintain their economic and political dominance, a position that is sharply contrasted by the working class they exploit. According to Marxists, the bourgeoisie will eventually be overthrown by the proletariat. Following this revolution, as the exploitation of labour is abolished and a classless society is established, the bourgeoisie would cease to exist.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Bourgeoisie is discussed.

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
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In speaking of the bourgeoisie I include the so-called aristocracy, for this is a privileged class, an aristocracy, only in contrast with the bourgeoisie, not in contrast with the proletariat. The proletarian sees in both only the property-holder--_i.e_., the bourgeois. Before the privilege of property all other privileges vanish.
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892
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Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
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Everybody knows that the opposite is the case. The bourgeoisie, originally bound to pay feudal dues to the dominant feudal nobility, recruited from bond slaves and thralls, in a subject state, has, in the course of its conflict with the nobility captured position after position, and finally has come into possession of the power in civilized countries. In France it directly attacked the nobility, in England it made…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
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We relied on the fact that the proletariat is the historically rising class, and that bourgeois society could not develop without increasing the forces of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie to-day is a falling class. It not only no longer plays an essential part in production, but by its imperialist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless…
Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy
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Bourgeoisie

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Bourgeoisie

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