Marxist theory According to
Karl Marx, the bourgeois during the Middle Ages usually was a self-employed businessman – such 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 class 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 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 labor; 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. In the 19th century, Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist: • the functional capitalists, who are business administrators of the means of production; •
rentier capitalists whose livelihoods derive either from the
rent of property or from the
interest-income produced by finance capital, or from both. In the course of economic relations, the working 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 earn 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 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, 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: , , , and .
Petite bourgeoisie The 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".
Nazism Nazism rejected the
Marxist concept of
proletarian internationalism and
class struggle, and supported the "class struggle between nations", and sought to resolve 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 support 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 (SA – Storm Detachments). 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, whom he referred to as "cowardly shits".
Fascist Italy 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 (working) classes of Italy. 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 dehumanized 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 victimized the Italian nation with an approach to life characterized by
hedonism and
materialism. Nevertheless, despite the slogan
The Fascist Man Disdains the "Comfortable" Life, which epitomized 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
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: Culturally, the bourgeois man may be considered effeminate, infantile, or acting in a pretentious manner; describing his
philistinism in (1939), Roberto Paravese comments on the: 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 assumption of
legitimate political power (government and rule) 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". ==Bourgeois culture==