Bourgeoisie

“ In speaking of the bourgeoisie I include the so-called aristocracy, for this is a privileged class, an aristocracy, only in contrast with the bourgeoisie, not in contrast with the proletariat. The proletarian sees in both only the property-holder—i.e., the bourgeois. ”

“ I have now reached the point, Gentlemen, where it becomes necessary that, in order to avoid a possible gross misapprehension of what I have to say, I explain what I mean by the term 'bourgeoisie' or 'great bourgeoisie,' as the designation of a political party—that I define what the word 'bourgeoisie' means in my use of it. ”

“ With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. And the bourgeoisie, which suppresses all privilege and recognizes no value that does not stem from the exploitation of labor, has appropriately identified its own value as a ruling class with labor, and has made the progress of labor the measure of its own progress. The class that accumulates commodities and capital continually modifies nature by modifying labor itself, by unleashing labor’s productivity. ”

“ Now, it is the bourgeoisie are uppermost. Trade and money-getting, railroads and mines, have seized hold of the nation’s heart; and where the bâton of a Maréchal was once the most coveted of all earthly distinctions, a good bargain on the Bourse, or a successful transaction in scrip, are now the highest triumphs. ”

“ It is the bourgeoisie which, more than any other class, is conservative and retrogressive. It is the bourgeoisie which makes and unmakes ministries. It is the bourgeoisie which has destroyed the influence of the Upper Chamber, and which will dethrone the King whenever he shall become unsatisfactory to it. ”

“ The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. ”

“ The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class -- as the bearer of large-scale industry -- relative to the feudal lords and the lower middle class, who desire to maintain all social positions that are the creation of obsolete modes of production. ”

“ And at times his figure grew and expanded till it became, as it were, an incarnation of the whole bourgeoisie—that bourgeoisie which at the division of the spoils in 1789 appropriated everything, and has since fattened on everything at the expense of the masses, and refuses to restore anything whatever. ”

“ After a long and difficult struggle against feudalism the bourgeoisie, the class possessing the means of production, came out victorious. It has grown and become more powerful, and in almost all the countries where capitalism exists it is still the directing class. ”

“ This new comfort, knowledge, and wealth went not merely to nobles and prelates; it was noticeable most of all in a new class, the "bourgeoisie." In the towns of Europe lived bankers, merchants, and shop-keepers,—intelligent, able, and wealthy enough to live like kings or princes. These bourgeois or townspeople (bourg = town) were to grow in intelligence, in wealth, and in political influence; they were destined to precipitate revolutions in industry and politics, thereby establishing their individual rule over factories, and their collective rule over legislatures. ”

“ Then follows a history of the fall of feudalism, leading to a description of the bourgeoisie as a revolutionary force "The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part." "For exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe." ”

“ The bourgeoisie was victorious and successful. The rural populations were vanquished and trampled upon. The bourgeoisie, therefore, has had its poets, historians, and flatterers, whilst the poor peasant, rude, untutored, and ignorant, never had a lyre nor a voice to bewail his lamentable sorrows and sufferings." Prof. De Vericour, Wat Tyler (Royal Historical Society, Transactions, number 8, volume 2) . ALSO IN: G. Lechler, John Wiclif, chapter 9, section 3. ”

“ Thus the struggle of the two classes landed, after a short and stormy flare-up, in a compromise, which gave the bourgeoisie for many years to come more unlimited power than in any other land with the modern system of production. ”

“ The mediaeval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie. ”

“ The industrial magnates, he says, saw that the best policy for preventing the growth of a public sentiment favoring the encroachments of labor would be to increase the number of bourgeoisie interested in industrial affairs. ”

“ Socially, the influence of nobles and clergy steadily declined. As steadily arose the numbers, the ability, and the importance of the traders and commercial magnates, the moneyed people, all those who were identified with the new wealth that the Commercial Revolution was creating, the lawyers, the doctors, the professors, the merchants,—the so-called middle class, the bourgeoisie, who gradually grew discontented with the restrictive institutions of their time. ”

“ It has seemed to the author that particularly from the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century dates the remarkable and steady evolution of that powerful middle class—the bourgeoisie— which has done more than all other classes put together to condition the progress of the several countries of modern Europe and to create the life and thought of the present generation throughout the world. The rise of the bourgeoisie is the great central theme of modern history ”

“ If the crisis demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer [122] modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. ”

“ The British bourgeoisie
Is not born,
And does not die,
But, if it is ill,
It has a frightened look in its eyes. ”

“ To appreciate the demoralizing effects of an income obtained without labor and without trouble on men of small culture, we need only witness the bourgeoisie at great watering places, pilgrimage places, seats of courts and university cities supported largely by students. ”

“ But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it did not prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions. In spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois régime maintained a fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the middle class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouring masses poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation. ”

“ The new class of wealthy factory owners, (I dislike the word "bourgeoisie" which has been used to death by the apostles of a new social order,) slowly increased its hold upon the government, and the conditions of industrial life in the large cities continued to transform vast acres of pasture and wheat-land into dreary slums, which guard the approach of every modern European town. ”

“ The bourgeoisie, when they Page 123 recovered from their astonishment and found that the stone they had set rolling under the name of reform had dislodged their own Revolution of 1830, and the peasants of the provinces, when they found that all the praise and all the profits were solely for the working-men of the capital, were very far from satisfied. ”

“ Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval commune, [4] here independent urban republic ”

“ The greatest of the feudal lords, the sovereign, was the mighty father of all, and his government was often a shield to the weak and helpless. The third estate, the bourgeoisie—those who pursued trades and commerce—were connected together, and with the rest of society, by guilds and corporations. The arrangements of these institutions brought into close personal contact master and laborers. ”

“ Next below this is a numerous body of the Middle Classes (bourgeoisie) , consisting of two distinct sets; the one, the active class, is engaged in commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and the liberal professions; the other, generally designated amongst us as the bourgeoisie oisive, consists of men without active employment, landholders who derive an income of 500 or 1500 dollars from their estates, by rents or sharing the produce with the cultivator, without attempting to increase it, and the small body of holders of public stock. ”

“ The bourgeoisie is too enlightened, and keeps its accounts much too carefully, to care for that privilege of the feudal nobility, the ostentation of splendor among its retinue. The very conditions of bourgeois existence compel it to keep careful accounts. ”

“ B. The mass of the bourgeoisie:, that is, the capitalists, and those landholders who have the industrial, bourgeois ideology.
C. Small entrepreneurs, small and middle-class proprietors, small and more or less well-to-do peasants, petite bourgeoisie, as well as those workers who have submitted to a bourgeois point of view. ”

“ On the level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the imbecile flatness of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects. ”

“ Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions. ”

“ The class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie came to the front in the history of the most advanced countries in Europe, in proportion to the development, upon the one hand, of modern industry, upon the other, of the newly-acquired political supremacy of the bourgeoisie. ”

“ That jealous class called the bourgeoisie in France, which is beginning to arise in England, was then not known: nothing came between the rich land-owners and the men occupied with their trades. Everything had not yet become machinery in the manufacturing professions, folly in the privileged classes. ”

“ The bourgeoisie originally developed its independent economic power during the medieval period when the state had been weakening and feudalism was breaking up the stable equilibrium between different powers. In contrast, the modern state — which began to support the bourgeoisie’s development through its mercantile policies and which developed into the bourgeoisie’s own state during the laissez-faire era — was eventually to emerge as a central power in the planned management of the economic process. ”

“ The economic renaissance due to the great maritime discoveries had the consequence of concentrating wealth in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Owing to their mental qualities, their tendencies and their resources, the bourgeoisie had been, if not alone, at least most apt in profiting by the development of industry, by the extension of commerce, and by the formation of a new and mobile means of enriching themselves. ”

“ The capitalist bourgeoisie, the most revolutionary class that ever oppressed human societies, cannot increase its wealth without continuously revolutionizing the means of production, continuously incorporating into its industrial [Pg 73] equipment new applications of mechanics, chemistry and physics. ”

“ Ergo, we are a democratic nation." [626] "With the change in economic conditions, with the growth of manufacture, the rise of the bourgeoisie meant the downfall of feudalism. The plutocrat supplanted the baron, capitalism became king. ”

“ Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer. ”

“ The correctness of the so-called economic conception of history, which considers the political development as dependent on the economic, cannot be brought more strikingly and convincingly to the mind than by the change which in the course of the Nineteenth century has been wrought in the bourgeoisie. It can be demonstrated with the greatest precision how with the change in the productive relations a change of political view and attitude has taken place in the bourgeoisie. ”

“ From the mouths of the bourgeois themselves come complaints of that moral and intellectual decay of the elite of the English laborers which they share with the bourgeoisie itself and to-day indeed they are scarcely more than little bourgeois and are distinguished from them only by a somewhat greater lack of culture. ”

“ Since the protective system forces capital and labor away from the production of raw material and into industry, it exerts a great influence on the relations of the classes or estates of a country to one another. The immense preponderance possessed in medieval times by the nobility, agriculture, the country in general as contradistinguished from the city, by the aristocratic and conservative elements, is curtailed in favor of the bourgeoisie, of industry, of the cities generally, and of the democratic and progressive elements. ”

“ A durable reign of the bourgeoisie has been possible only in countries like America, where feudalism was unknown, and society at the very beginning started from a bourgeois basis. And even in France and America, the successors of the bourgeoisie, the working people, are already knocking at the door. ”

“ The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the State. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death. ”