The middle class and the well-off social class in which people who own property and high economic returns are grouped as bourgeoisie.
The term bourgeoisie derives from the French bourgeoisie, to refer to people who lived in cities where they had certain work privileges such as being merchants or artisans.
The bourgeoisie is a term that represents people who do not do any type of manual work and who have a significant accumulation of goods and money that makes them wealthy. Therefore, it is a term that designates the wealthy middle class.
The bourgeoisie is divided into three categories that are: the high bourgeoisie, which is responsible for the means of production and high political office; the middle bourgeoisie, who are the people who exercise a liberal profession; and the lower bourgeoisie, which are the people who are part of the industrial and commercial sector.
According to Karl Marx the bourgeoisie is a social class of the capitalist regime, in which its members are responsible for production, they own their own business and are the opposite of the working class.
Likewise, Marx recognizes that it is thanks to the bourgeoisie and its values that the term society was evolving and opened the way for obtaining civil rights and a representative State.
Origin of the bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie arose in the Middle Ages, specifically in Europe, when rural labor was still the main source of work, although there were already merchants of clothing, jewelry and spices, as well as artisans.
Therefore, the term bourgeoisie was used to name people who had left the countryside and rural activity to move and live within walled cities in new spaces called burgos. However, these people were despised by the nobility.
It should be noted that the bourgeois were not feudal lords or servants, nor did they belong to privileged estates such as the nobility, the clergy or the peasantry.
Since then, the bourgeoisie was on the rise and in the eighteenth century the bourgeois ideologically expressed their values and interests regarding the individual, work, innovation, progress, happiness, freedom and equal conditions, topics summarized in the French revolutionary motto: liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Likewise, it was the bourgeois who actively participated in the French Revolution and in the Industrial Revolution demanding their social rights, political rights and economic rights.
On the other hand, with the emergence of the bourgeoisie, bipartisanship originated in the political system, after the French Revolution, which consists of the composition of two major parties, in this case, the bourgeois on the one hand and the aristocracy for the other.
Currently, people who belong to the middle class or who have their own business are called bourgeoisie. However, there is also a derogatory use of the term bourgeoisie since it is used to catalog the common and vulgar people who do not have very good taste.
Characteristics of the bourgeoisie
Below are the main characteristics of the bourgeoisie.
- It is composed of levels in which groups of individuals differ according to their wealth, work activity and prestige.
- Its fundamental value is to recognize civil rights and the division of powers.
- It is based on the conception that states must possess a representative political system.
- The bourgeois may hold political positions.
- The bourgeois can form select groups of people of great economic and political influence.
- It benefits from capitalist economic activity.
- It establishes the differences between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
