what/who exactly is the bourgeoisie?
In: 3097
Huh. All this time I thought it referred to upper middle class people with cushy white collar jobs
People who make money by virtue of owning *capital* which is to say the non-human part of production. Factories or land. Without being aristocracy (the existence of nobility is why some seemingly clever people will try to say that the bourgeoisie are the middle class, which was true when the class structure was peasants – merchants – aristocrats). After the invention of industrialization, the class divide dropped the aristocracy and instead became a division between those who own the factories and those who work in the factories. You can substitute factory for any sort of business. The people who work retail are not those who own the business, etc.
The bourgeoisie are the owner class. They make money simply because the legal system says they own the machines and land and buildings and so forth. They pay workers, or the proletarian class, to do the actual labor. This payment is less than the full value of the produced good or service (e.g. if a product requires $1 of material to make, and you pay the worker $2 for each of these items produced, but then sell the item for $10, the profit ($7) goes to the owner of the factory who pays the workers).
The people owning the means of production (factories, offices, etc.). They’re the ruling class because everybody else is forced to sell their working power to them in order to survive in capitalist systems (which are almost all states)
Proletariats are wage earners… they are paid to produce a work product. Bourgeois make profits off of the proletariat’s labor and do not earn wages themselves
People who get a majority of their income through things they own. Like people who own a lot of stocks, people who own a company or landlords. Famous actors or sports stars wouldn’t be bourgeois, for example unless they invest all their money in capital assets.
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