what/who exactly is the bourgeoisie?
In: 3097
In its original sense, the bourgeoisie were the middle class of pre-revolutionary France: not nobility or priests, but not what we would now call working-class either. They used to teach that the primary examples would be the owners of shops or factories, except, again, for nobilty. If you’ve read Les Miserables, Jean Valjean’s post-prison identity of Monseiur Madeleine would have been considered bourgeoisie (by those who don’t know his background, anyway, but he kept his past a secret, so that means most of the cast).
The US doesn’t have hereditary nobility or a state religion, so in theory the bourgeoisie would, by that old sense, just be anyone who owns a business or collects rent. This doesn’t play well to the voter bases of most people who use the term “bourgeoisie” in a modern context, though, so it has morphed into a nore general “the rich”.
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