Denotations
- The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
In the Middle Ages (AD 500–1500), the bourgeois usually was a self-employed businessman — proprietor, merchant, banker, entrepreneur, et alii — 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 enabled their employment and exploitation of the wage-earning working class (urban and rural), people whose sole economic means is labour; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the socio-political challenges of the lower classes, and so preserved the economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained employers.
In the 19th century, the German economist Karl Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist: (i) the functional capitalist, the business administrator of the means of production; and (ii) the rentier capitalist whose livelihood derives either from the rent of property or from the interest-income produced by finance capital, or both. In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle, wherein the capitalists exploit the workers, whilst the workers resist their economic exploitation, which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to earn a living, he or she seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer, who sells them for a price. The money generated by the sale of the goods and services yields three sums (i) the wages of the worker, (ii) the costs of production, and (iii) profit (surplus value). Thereby, the capitalist profits (makes extra money) by selling the surplus value of the labour of the workers; hence is new wealth created through work.
Besides describing the social class who own the means of production, the Marxist usage of the term "bourgeois" also describes the consumerist style of life derived from the ownership of capital and real property. As an economist Karl Marx acknowledged the bourgeois industriousness that created wealth, yet criticised the moral hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie when they ignored the true origins of their wealth — the exploitation of the proletariat, the urban and rural workers. Further sense denotations of “bourgeois” describe ideologic concepts such as “bourgeois freedom”, which is 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)
- The state bourgeoisie
In the 20th century, communist states developed the nomenklatura, a state bourgeoisie constituted by the bureaucrats who administrated the country’s government, industry, agriculture, education, system of state capitalism, et cetera.
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